# Heating a Rep Room.



## Mal (Jul 22, 2007)

Im in the process of converting my garage into a reptile room, mainly for Leos. Its just about complete, just the staging and racking to go in. Its heavily insulated with polystyrene under a raised floor, walls and ceilings stud pannelled with rock wool underneath.Windows are brand new double glazed units and two double glazed doors into the room. I have put an ac unit in for summer as I can imagine when the animals are in it might get a bit too warm. (88f couple of days back). I will probably only use that when I have to leave the house/garage unattended, would rather have doors and window open to cool it because Im trying to keep running costs/electric bills down.

My worry is the winter months because despite the insulation I think it will get a bit cold. Can anyone recommend a good, efficient and economical heater I could use in winter please ? I dont think it will need to be a very big heater, room is 13ft x 10ft x 7ft. Heat source for the tubs and vivs will be mats and heatcable. Im not using any heatbulbs or ceramics. I would like to keep the room temp around 70f during winter.


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## fixitsan (Apr 15, 2008)

Heating is very expensive these days, and just as in the way that if you don't remove money from your bank account you become richer every time you put some in, then reducing losses from a heated enclosure is your best defense againt throwing money away, and from what you have described you seem to have a done a great job of cutting yoiur losses to a bare minimum.

In terms of costs, conventional heating costs vary depending on which fuel you use, and rise in price in terms of running costs inthe following way, from cheapest to most expensive.
Heat Pump,Gas, Oil, Propane(and cylinder gas), Electricity.

At a glance it might seem like tagging a radiator onto a gas fired central
heating system would work out very cheap, but you would then have the problem of having to leave the CH running all of the time if that is your only source of power. Alternatively you could fit a water tank which could be heated by the hot water of the CH and trickle that through a secondary radiator. This is just an idea I'm bouncing around, I happen to have an old copper immersion tank and a couple of spare radiators kicking about somewhere and they would do me fine !

By far and away the most expensive heating source is daytime electricity.
Within that category though, there are different levels of operating efficiency. The most efficient is direct air heating. The least efficint are still air heat mats and radiant lamps. If you could build a system which blew warm air through all of your tanks and recycled it you would be onto a winner. The problem is that all the tanks will all be at the same temperature and they all share the same air, which isn't good because you transfer any parasites from one viv to the next and your animals have no cool places to go to. 

The next best thing is if you custom made your tanks to allow a black plastic PVC tube to pass through them all, and you passed either warm air or warm water through them, like a miniature central heating system, but that is a huge amount of work although it would pay itself back if you thought you were going to be using it over a period of many years.

If you live in a windy location then a >1kW wind generator and a battery bank might provide a useful amount of heating, and so would a water solar panel or even an electric solar panel.

I see your problem as being that you need to heat the room to a reasonable level in order to prevent excessive losses from the vivs, and then you need to heat the vivs themselves. You could consider insultaing each viv really well but that means reducing airflow, so if you had some form of base heat producing system to get you off the ground temperature , like you would get from a small turbine or solar panel, you will hack into expensive utility bills.

A lot of this stuff might seem very extreme, but I can gaurantee that the highest bill payers are the people who just run a thick cable into a room and use all electric heating. While that works, even if you use the waste heat from the vivs to heat the room, which probably works well, I think now that the cost of power is going through the roof it's time to think about things in a more canny way

Chris


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## reptiles-ink (Nov 4, 2006)

some good ideas there.
2 ways I would say is underfloor heat cables which are cheap to run, or as you already have the a.c. set it to heat asit will be thermostat controlled and normally they are i think about 3:1 efficient meaning the equivalent of say 3kw is achieved by using 1kw.
I heat/cool both my rep rooms with a.c. units.


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## Mal (Jul 22, 2007)

I looked into tagging onto the CH system but that wasnt viable. I picked AC that didnt have a heating element because the heating side of it uses the juice big time. Its something thats going to take a lot of careful thought. Thanks for the ideas though, will look into the options you have suggested.


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## McDirty (Jan 29, 2008)

Is the garage flat roofed or pitched, or does it have another room situated above it??


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## fixitsan (Apr 15, 2008)

Mal said:


> I looked into tagging onto the CH system but that wasnt viable. I picked AC that didnt have a heating element because the heating side of it uses the juice big time. Its something thats going to take a lot of careful thought. Thanks for the ideas though, will look into the options you have suggested.


 
Look into heat pumps if you're serious. The average air temperature in the UK is 12 celsius, and thats enough for a heat pump to heat water above 40C if it's installed well, but it depends where you live really. If you lived on the South Coast of Devon renewable sources and air sourced heat pumps are very viable alternatives to utility supplies, if you can stomach the initial outlay


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## firefighteralex (Feb 8, 2008)

I started using a room in my house just for reps. The room is well insulated above in the loft 12inchs loft insulation. In the morning the sun heats the room through the window. With my bottom 4x2x2 I just have a 60w red reflector bulb and its on about half glow on dimmer. The viv above with same bulb is just a slight glow in basking spot. With just these 2 The room at 3 ft off the floor is 27. This I find works as a good background heat and then have heat mats on stats with the others just for a higher basking spot if they want. 

Since doing this a few months ago I've had no problems with any snakes and a happier wife. In the winter I will just have the radiator on with it's own stat to judge the room right.


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## Mal (Jul 22, 2007)

This is an outdoor garage with a flat roof. Very well insulated now. I think its going to have to be tagged into the current electrical set up, alternative energy wouldnt be viable, the outlays too big. I know there are hundreds of electric heaters/rads with the manufacturers all saying they are cheapest,most economical and energy efficient. The problem is choosing one that lives up to its claim. I was hoping someone may be able to recommend a mains electric heater that has lived up to the claims. Im in Blackpool so get some rough NW coast weather but its by no means the coldest place in the UK. Thanks for the replies, they are appreciated.


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## fixitsan (Apr 15, 2008)

Mal said:


> This is an outdoor garage with a flat roof. Very well insulated now. I think its going to have to be tagged into the current electrical set up, alternative energy wouldnt be viable, the outlays too big. I know there are hundreds of electric heaters/rads with the manufacturers all saying they are cheapest,most economical and energy efficient. The problem is choosing one that lives up to its claim. I was hoping someone may be able to recommend a mains electric heater that has lived up to the claims. Im in Blackpool so get some rough NW coast weather but its by no means the coldest place in the UK. Thanks for the replies, they are appreciated.


That's a shame about renewable being too much, daytime elctricity is a real drain on the wallet. I don't know about efficient electric heating, it doesn't really exist as far as I'm concerned.

A lightbulb produces about 10% light and 90% heat, a halogen bulb produces slightly less heat and slightly more light. The most efficient way to heat a room is to heat the air itself because very little light is produced. 

Heat sources like heat cables and heat mats produce heat in two ways, in different amounts for each type. They both produce radiant heat and they both heat via conduction (with the air or with the material they're mounted on). Some heat cables can be operated in a radiant mode which would make you feel like yoiu were in front of an infra red lamp, but it doesn't actually heat the air. What you need is something which heats the air via conduction. You are probably going to find that you need to bite the bullet and get some form of recirculating fan heater, because although they are usually high powered they are very efficient because they produce no real light.

It's possible to improve efficiency by heating in small amounts. So for example running two fan heaters wired together in series so that they only get warm, but don't produce much infra-red is going to really improve the efficiency of conduction heating, but it is a slow process.

I looked into some ideas for heating caravans, because I think it's a similar problem, with the exception that you can't find any fumes from burning fuel acceptable which really narrows down the options even more unfortunately, but there are a couple of small 6kW water boilers which can run off bottled gas, but your back to making a large outlay again.

I think yoiu need to know how much heat you need first of all. I'm busy jsut now but I'll do a bit of maths for you if that would help and then you might be better placed to make a decision based on costs.

Chris


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## firefighteralex (Feb 8, 2008)

Just another note on insulation. If you have the money, you can buy sheets (8x4ft i think) of foam insulation that is foli backed from places like jewsons. The stuff is expensive but if I recall correctly 1.5 inches of the stuff is about the equivalent of 8-10inches of normal loft insulation. If you put this on all the walls/celing and then plasterboarded over it you would have an unbelievably heat insulated area. Any heat from the vivs that escaped would pretty much stay in the room apart from the door and window.


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