# Heating multiple vivs - heating\thermostat



## GaryBoa (Sep 25, 2008)

I am getting back into breeding reptiles and use to have thermostat\heating for each viv unit. I just built a new 8ft viv for my two common boas and looking at building two 4ft vivs to sit on top of that and two 3ft vivs and one 2ft viv sitting above that, possibly more but they that will be another block of separate units. 

Any suggestions on the best way to heat these vivs and to control the heat using thermostats. As the obvious answer is to have separate heating units for each viv that are regulated by separate thermostats. But am looking for a cheaper way as the ceramic heaters do tend to eat the electricity a little more so would be good to use the same heating devices for multiple vivs. I know this may be a bit of a generic question as this would depend on the reptiles kept in them. But so far am thinking of breeding the boa morphs, possibly piebalds and uromastyx. 

Before I start building I want to plan it all, and thought that breeders and reptile shops that house many reptiles must have a better way of doing it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

Thanks

Gary


----------



## GaryBoa (Sep 25, 2008)

any suggestions please?


----------



## fixitsan (Apr 15, 2008)

GaryBoa said:


> Before I start building I want to plan it all, and thought that breeders and reptile shops that house many reptiles must have a better way of doing it.
> 
> Any suggestions would be appreciated
> 
> ...



I think there's going to be some trial and error involved, unless you can say what your heat loss rate is from each one is, but there are some basic principles which can help.

If the vivs aren't completely insulated then your running costs overall will go down as the temperature of the room which they're in increases.

I would start by getting the temperature of the bottom viv correct first, using whatever heater was to hand and then after allowing 24 hours for settling and to allow the temperature to even out, see how little heat you need for the next level, and so on.

As for which heater is the cheapest to run I think placement and efficiency are the most important things. As a crude example, 200W spotlight 2 feet above the top of the viv will produce a nice basking spot, but at least 80% of the useable heat will be wasted outside of the viv; now replace that spotlight with a 40W spotlight and put it inside the viv and all the heat produced is inside the viv.

If you don't need any light don't use lights to produce heat, use heaters instead, because there is approximately a 85%/15% split between heat and light with conventional bulbs ,so if you don't need light you are wasting 15% of your input energy. You can get some very powerful low voltage led lights which can be used to fill in when there is a lack of lighting.

Heat mats are efficent if you can direct all of their output to the inside of the viv. Ceramic heaters are also pretty efficient but produce a more localised form of heating than mats which doesn't always heat as much air as a mat of similar power could do.

If yiou can position the stack in front of a moderated central heating radiator to provide gentle background heating then that is a good idea, but, if all you get from the radiator is uncrontrolled heat then it's a bad idea.

Heat cable seems like a very efficient use of electricicyt if you can direct it into the places where you want it, but if you want temperature gradients in each viv then only heat the cable just enough to achieve a low level background heat and 'top up' each tank possibly with a small mat, which then puts basking spots and gradients in each unit with the added bonus of having a reliable background low temperature should a heater fail


There is virtually no reason to think that more heaters consume more electricity, because if you have two forms of heating one naturally supplements the other. Or in other words there is a definate calculable amount of heat required to warm any viv from one temperature up to another temperature and if you used multiple heaters their thermostat would still switch off after they had used virtually identical amounts of power as if you had used only one of them, and the only thing which changes is the rate at which they raise the temperature.
The only time this isn't true is where you have large amounts of heat loss, such as if you had large ventilation holes top and bottom which allowed cold air to enter as quickly as warm air is leaving.

In short, a low wattage heat cable to provide a warm substrate and to heat the air to , say, your minimum required night time temperature (18c ?) , with much smaller individual heaters in each viv will allow you to have set different maximum temperatures in any unit and still retain a gradient in each one too, but I'm sure that you could start off with only the heat cable and 'trial and error' your way into finding a good setting for all vivs.


----------



## GaryBoa (Sep 25, 2008)

Thanks for the reply. 

I already have the 8ft viv set up with a 250 watt ceramic heater and spot bulb and getting about 92 - 94 F at the hot end (raised it to this as there are signs of slight mucus coming from one of my boas nostrils, only just bought him and could be due to transportation and new environment so raised the temp as advised by vet, hoping not a RI). 

I will build the other vivs and do some trial and error.

Thanks for all the information though has been a help.


----------



## Josh-sama (Sep 26, 2008)

Apparantly you can buy "Heat Rows" it's a really long heatmat, the reptile shop close to my uses it.


----------



## GaryBoa (Sep 25, 2008)

I might pop down to Cold Blooded reptiles (excellent reptile shop) and have a look at their setup, they have quite a few reptiles so might bounce some ideas of them. Thanks for the reply


----------

