Heating Suggestions

[Craig Mackay]

With the winter months coming in I'm finding that my heat mats are struggling to heat my tanks without an extra heater to heat the room. The only thing is that its one of those expensive to run convector heaters and I'm looking for something that'll be a bit more economical as I'm sure its gonna get alot colder.

Currently I have a heat strip running the length of a shelf of a bookcase and a smaller heat mat attached to a box that I keep all my spiderling pots in. Both heat mats are backed with polysyrene and are connected to one of those dual channel habistat thermostats. I also have an exo terra digital thermometer to give me a constant reading of the temp but with this setup the temp struggles to reach above 66 degrees in the tanks so I find me having to put the convector heater on for extended periods of the day which'll be costing me a fortune but does raise the temp to around 77 degrees. I'm dreading my next bill.

I did an internet search to find alternative solutions and read about tubular storage heaters. My thermostat can take a load of 300w in each channel and I've seen tubular heaters with an output of 120 watts that cost less than £20 so I could use one or two of them. Does anyone else use these or have any other suggestions? Are they any cheaper to run? I've recently insulated my loft and thats made a big difference. Any help would be mucho appreciated.

Cheers
Craig

[Lisa Baines]

If you have enough room, strip light (and unit if it's like a complete unit from the top of an aquarium) above the enclosures will provide some extra heat without cooking your tarantula's.
But it does need to be pretty close to the enclosure to get the heat from it.

I use this for my scorpions and it works quite well. And strip lights dont cost much to run

[Ray Gabriel]

One of the reasons i sugest heated cabinets, if you cannot get a cabinet then a second hand reptile viv will suffice for a while.

Ray

[Rich.Harrington]

As long as your room isnt overly large, then use an oil filled radiator. Cost around £40 and will happily keep a 10x8approx room up into the mid-high 70's.

Bear in mind im in northern ireland so you may have a wamer/colder climate than me, I found it added around £40 a month to the bills, so while not totally cheap it is saving money against running lots and lots of mats for any collection over 15 animals.

[Craig Mackay]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

If you have enough room, strip light (and unit if it's like a complete unit from the top of an aquarium) above the enclosures will provide some extra heat without cooking your tarantula's.
But it does need to be pretty close to the enclosure to get the heat from it.

I use this for my scorpions and it works quite well. And strip lights dont cost much to run

Would the bright light not drive the T's mad? They just about blind me when I open my aquarium lid, lol. You do get a fair amount of heat of them though.

One of the reasons i sugest heated cabinets, if you cannot get a cabinet then a second hand reptile viv will suffice for a while.

Ray

I do like the heated cabinet idea Ray. I actually saw a cabinet yesterday that looked like it'd be really good but it was a little out of my price range. I guess a cabinet would pay for itself quickly though with the electricity I'd save.

As long as your room isnt overly large, then use an oil filled radiator. Cost around £40 and will happily keep a 10x8approx room up into the mid-high 70's.

Bear in mind im in northern ireland so you may have a wamer/colder climate than me, I found it added around £40 a month to the bills, so while not totally cheap it is saving money against running lots and lots of mats for any collection over 15 animals.

The rooms not too big so this might be an option. I should get a bill soon and I'll be able to compare the rise to the £40 with your oil heater. What wattage is the heater you use. It'd be good to get something I could use my thermostat with.

Thanks guys
Craig

[Rich.Harrington]

They range from around 1.2kw upto 2kw. As for limiting it you dont need to go to expense. Get a digital themometer (around a tenner) and stick it to the wall roughly in the middle of the room. Then keep the radiator at one end, and you have a natural gradient. They all come with dials for hot hot it wants the room so have a day or so fiddling until you find the spots on the dial for a good day/night ranges and just mark them, that way you know instantly where to turn the dial each morning/evening.

Here's something very similar to what I have at the moment.

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=10186624&fh_view_size=6&fh_location=%2f%2fcatalog01%2fen_GB&fh_search=oil+radiator&fh_eds=%c3%9f&fh_refview=search&ts=1226843590059&isSearch=true

You can get ones with digital readins and so on, but I prefer the dial types and a seperate digital reader in the room. Overall this has allowed me to easily and quickly have a day/night range as well as changing the high/lows for summer/winter.

Your only real downfall with this setup is some species may like it hot and others somewhat cooler, whilst you can get around a 5 degree gradient in the room, anything outside that you have the desicions to make on what to keep and what is outside the habitat ranges. It's one of the reasons I ended up getting rid of my phormictopus as I have more of an interest in species from warmer climates.

[Lisa Baines]

Would the bright light not drive the T's mad?

Well it doesn't drive my scorps mad, they mainly come out at night but it keeps them warm during the day so they have some energy for the night time wonder about their enclosures!
You can dampen the brightness of the light taping a black bin bag over the plastic light cover... we've done that for our slings. They all sit in a small aquarium and we cut a bin bag down to fit over the light unit. They keep nice and warm without being blinded.

Just a suggestion though

[Craig Mackay]

They range from around 1.2kw upto 2kw. As for limiting it you dont need to go to expense. Get a digital themometer (around a tenner) and stick it to the wall roughly in the middle of the room. Then keep the radiator at one end, and you have a natural gradient. They all come with dials for hot hot it wants the room so have a day or so fiddling until you find the spots on the dial for a good day/night ranges and just mark them, that way you know instantly where to turn the dial each morning/evening.

Here's something very similar to what I have at the moment.

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=10186624&fh_view_size=6&fh_location=%2f%2fcatalog01%2fen_GB&fh_search=oil+radiator&fh_eds=%c3%9f&fh_refview=search&ts=1226843590059&isSearch=true

You can get ones with digital readins and so on, but I prefer the dial types and a seperate digital reader in the room. Overall this has allowed me to easily and quickly have a day/night range as well as changing the high/lows for summer/winter.

Your only real downfall with this setup is some species may like it hot and others somewhat cooler, whilst you can get around a 5 degree gradient in the room, anything outside that you have the desicions to make on what to keep and what is outside the habitat ranges. It's one of the reasons I ended up getting rid of my phormictopus as I have more of an interest in species from warmer climates.

Thanks Rich, I'll have a look about.

Well it doesn't drive my scorps mad, they mainly come out at night but it keeps them warm during the day so they have some energy for the night time wonder about their enclosures!
You can dampen the brightness of the light taping a black bin bag over the plastic light cover... we've done that for our slings. They all sit in a small aquarium and we cut a bin bag down to fit over the light unit. They keep nice and warm without being blinded.

Just a suggestion though

Sorry Lisa, didn't mean it to sound like I was dismissing your idea. Hope you didn't think so. The bin bag things sounds like a sound idea. Cheers.

[Lisa Baines]

no not at all I should have put the bin bag bit in, in the first place.

DOH!

[Craig Mackay]

No probs Lisa

[Samantha Lewanewsky]

£40 a month for an oil filled radiator???!!!!!!!!!

Now I understand why I don't get pocket money! XD

[mary walters]

I use am oil filled radiator with a timer, on 12hrs off 12hrs, plus theres a radiator in the room running off central heating so when that comes on the oil filled one is cancelled by it's thermostat. My spider room is really small though bout 6ft wide and 12 ft long, with the door to the backyard in it too, so when you go out it gets a bit cool, heater soon sorts it though and costs about a tenner a week to run.