Help with bringing room temps up

My snakes are in the basement this is 2 rooms which was built partly as a favor for cheap. It has been really cold here in jersey last few days and so has it in the rooms, I then took some plastic and taked around the window which had a bad draft because of old wood fram. I switch the thermometer on inside and it was reading 58-61 and this is with an oil filled radiator heator on high. I should be getting my new jungle habitats cage 2morrow, now the wood cage is heated with a buld hot side was only upper 70's low 80's I then had to put a human heat pad in. Something I notice when they made the room is that they didnt put too much effort into insulation, the insulation seem small it didnt full the entire gap between each beam and some spots I dont think they put any. I tried to use another oil filled heater but it triped the breaker and knock the power out. Is there anything I can do to get the temps up? are there any heaters that may be better then the oil filled? Should I try to carefully take the sheet rock walls down find good insulation and put the walls back up? any ideas you have that you may have done would be apreciated.

bigdee,

Basements will tend to be colder. I'm not sure what options you have but if they must stay in the basement, I would wall off part of the basement as your reptile room so you can control the temps better. I don't know your financial situation so I'm not sure if that is an option for you. As you continue to work on bringing up the ambient room temp make sure that they have a nice hot spot that runs about 85 - 90 degrees. Heat pads are fine if that is all you have right now. I actualy have 2 snakes that are using head pads under their sweater box on one end, until I can finish another snake rack.

I have an air conditioner and a ceramic heater in my reptile room. I really like the ceramic heaters because they have an automatic cut-off if tipped over and they have a digital temp setting. Some models are also capable of moving side to side (oscillating) as they blow warm/hot air. I purchased mine from Lowes but I'm sure you can find the same one at a Home Depot or WalMart. I have never used an oil filled heater so I can't comment much on them.

It has been in the 20's at night here in Georgia so I know what you mean. My reptile room's ambient temps are between 78 - 80 during the day and around 75 degrees at night. I use an enclosed snake rack with slide boxes and heat tape. My heat tape is set to 90 degrees and the cool side of the slide box is around 75 - 80 degrees. There have been a few times the temps have dropped to 72 degrees (which requires me to tweak the heat settings).

I hope this helps. Good Luck and Take Care.

if they are colubrid snakes, the only thing is they will go off feed for awhile in which many of us do anyway. If they are large constrictors, probabaly not a good idea below 70 some odd degrees. I use no whole room heat now in my out barn for my snakes of colubrids and venomous north american. My room is only insulated by insulation and sheet rock. I DO however use light bulbs in wood cages set to a dimmer type reohstat ( manually though ). I'm using 40 watts red lights for the brumation deal. Out here in central Kansas, we have finally got down to the single digets and daytime in the teens to 20ties. My snake room is at 45 -50 degrees with NO room heat what-so-ever. The cages in temp. are at 55 to 60 degrees. So not a
big problem unless they were fed very recently and the lower temp . might cause a problem with digesting. Now I could also possibility see a problem if you have some neonate snakes only been fed several times and not wanting the temps to fall. But with ny babies I have left over , i feed probably only several times anyway before lowering the temps for brumation. Hope this might of helped.

the best way to insulate with sheet rock already up is blow in insulation, check with your local hardware or lumber yard for prices and blower rental.