TrpnBils
22 is not enough snakes
My wife and I are in the process of buying our first house (we're renting it now) and would like to convert part of the basement to our snake room once the house is ours. Right now we keep and/or breed several species including green tree pythons, ball pythons, macklots pythons, rainbow boas, corn snakes, and a random burm, redtail boa, and honduran milk snake..... so almost all tropical stuff.
The current reptile room is a 1st floor bedroom at the corner of the house. We don't heat the room much in the winter because of excess heat from each of the cages (use mostly radiant heat panels and flexwatt). The room also has two large windows which allow us not to have to use additional lighting.
The new reptile room will be in the basement (see attached picture) and is about 370 sqft. The room is drywalled, although we might put on an additional insulated layer because I think it's just drywall on top of cement block right now, so that will reduce the square footage a little. The floor is concrete, the only windows are small "window well" type windows on half of the one wall up near the ceiling, and there is electric baseboard heat along one wall.
We thrown around a few ideas: We want to put some counters/cabinets in one corner (lower right corner of the picture). We'd like to have a sink there, but it would be a more in-depth part of the project because there's no nearby water lines or drains (on the other side of that wall is a hallway, and on the other side of that hallway, directly across from where the counters would be, is a bathroom so there is a small sink there at least).
Here are my concerns at this point:
Heat: Because it's below ground level, it gets cold down there. It might help shield against the cold wind in the winter, but even in summer it's cold down there. I know it'll heat up a little once we put in the cages with their heaters, but it won't make up for all of the heat deficit. If the cage heaters are on all day long it's going to dry the cages out bigtime too...
Light: Because there are only a couple of small windows, it's pretty dark down there. The obvious solution is to leave the room lights on during the day, but we'd like to come up with something that's energy efficient so we don't run our electric bill up real high if we don't have to. If there was some way to do some kind of solar-supplemented lighting and/or heating for the room I'd be all for that in the long run, but I don't know how feasible that is at this point in the project.
Humidity: It's damp just like most basements, but I'd be with the cool air and the possibility the heaters will be on a whole lot I'm not sure how stable the humidity will be.
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Feel free to chime in here and shoot me some ideas or concerns you would have if doing this project. I've heard mixed opinions on basement reptile rooms so I'd like to be educated on this before we really start to move on it. If it was your room, what would you do?
The current reptile room is a 1st floor bedroom at the corner of the house. We don't heat the room much in the winter because of excess heat from each of the cages (use mostly radiant heat panels and flexwatt). The room also has two large windows which allow us not to have to use additional lighting.
The new reptile room will be in the basement (see attached picture) and is about 370 sqft. The room is drywalled, although we might put on an additional insulated layer because I think it's just drywall on top of cement block right now, so that will reduce the square footage a little. The floor is concrete, the only windows are small "window well" type windows on half of the one wall up near the ceiling, and there is electric baseboard heat along one wall.
We thrown around a few ideas: We want to put some counters/cabinets in one corner (lower right corner of the picture). We'd like to have a sink there, but it would be a more in-depth part of the project because there's no nearby water lines or drains (on the other side of that wall is a hallway, and on the other side of that hallway, directly across from where the counters would be, is a bathroom so there is a small sink there at least).
Here are my concerns at this point:
Heat: Because it's below ground level, it gets cold down there. It might help shield against the cold wind in the winter, but even in summer it's cold down there. I know it'll heat up a little once we put in the cages with their heaters, but it won't make up for all of the heat deficit. If the cage heaters are on all day long it's going to dry the cages out bigtime too...
Light: Because there are only a couple of small windows, it's pretty dark down there. The obvious solution is to leave the room lights on during the day, but we'd like to come up with something that's energy efficient so we don't run our electric bill up real high if we don't have to. If there was some way to do some kind of solar-supplemented lighting and/or heating for the room I'd be all for that in the long run, but I don't know how feasible that is at this point in the project.
Humidity: It's damp just like most basements, but I'd be with the cool air and the possibility the heaters will be on a whole lot I'm not sure how stable the humidity will be.
----------------------------------------
Feel free to chime in here and shoot me some ideas or concerns you would have if doing this project. I've heard mixed opinions on basement reptile rooms so I'd like to be educated on this before we really start to move on it. If it was your room, what would you do?
