Keeping reptiles cool

[Snoopysmom]

From May to Oct I run a local campground. Last year we set up a "Critter Corner" in our Office/camp store building. We had an Easter Garter, a Brown snake, a Musk turtle, a Painted and a Map turtle. The problem we ran into was keeping them cool in the heat of the summer. We do not have AC and it can get pretty hot in there even with all the doors and windows open. Last year we froze water bottles and put one in each cage at least once a day during the hottest part of the summer. It seemed to work fairly well because it created a cool space for them to go if they needed to.

I was wondering if anyone had any better ideas outside of getting AC... I have already tried to talk my director into getting it and he says that there is no money in the budget. (It's a fairly big building with very little insulation)

 

[Kiote_9]

I never had a problem keeping my reptiles cool enough in the summer before I had AC, but they were in a small dark room with an open window and fans.

Could you use a larger tank for the turtles and keep a "waterfall" going to keep the water cooler and keep the snakes in cages with deeper substrate so they could burrow to escape the heat, maybe? Keep good fans moving the air?

 

[Seamus Haley]

I never had a problem keeping my reptiles cool enough in the summer before I had AC, but they were in a small dark room with an open window and fans.

Could you use a larger tank for the turtles and keep a "waterfall" going to keep the water cooler and keep the snakes in cages with deeper substrate so they could burrow to escape the heat, maybe? Keep good fans moving the air?

Those won't really help mitigate a high ambient temperature. Burrowing works outside because the temperature is being directly caused by the sun, move away from the heat and the problem is solved. Indoors, in an enclosure, the substrate would just be the same temperature as everything else.

Moving water and moving the air won't work either- they cool people off because we're producing heat and moving the matter surrounding us lets that energy disperse and assists with how we sweat. It won't cool off something that is itself the ambient temperature, like an ectothermic animal or a small volume of water. Technically, it'll heat it up very very very slightly as a result of air friction, although it's such a tiny amount that it's not going to matter much.

My suggestion would be to... y'know... not cram animals into tanks if the tanks can't be maintained under suitable and healthy conditions, especially if they were- as it sounded like- locally fresh caught and doing just fine where they were.

Ice bottles is... No. Bad. No.

 

[Kiote_9]

Seamus,

I just saw your avatar and literally choked on my hot cocoa. I think it went up my nose...

 

[Mokele]

For the turtles, I know there are several commercially available aquarium coolers for cold-water species or for dealing with just this problem. It may even be possible to use them in the snake cages, if set up just right.

 

[Seamus Haley]

For the turtles, I know there are several commercially available aquarium coolers for cold-water species or for dealing with just this problem. It may even be possible to use them in the snake cages, if set up just right.

You're not wrong and chillers are a great tool- I actually have a few chilled aquariums and stuck some fossorial, low temperature requiring snake enclosures between the chilled aquariums because the localized temperature is lower...

But most of them do cost more than a window air conditioning unit.

 

[Snoopysmom]

Well, the building is basically a pole barn with siding on the outside and paneling on the inside right up against the siding. Plus there are windows all around. It would really be wasted money trying to put AC in a building like that. I'd like to add a room on sometime in the future and if we did that we could put air in there. However, our budget keeps shrinking instead of getting bigger.

I'd hate to discontinue the "critter corner" because it was very popular last year and it was nice to be able to have visuals for my wildlife talks. I'm wondering how hard it would be to section off a like 5 ft by 12 ft area and put a small AC in there. For an area that small it would be nice if the public would be able to view the animals from the outside. I'll have to think on it some more...

 

[Mokele]

But most of them do cost more than a window air conditioning unit.

Ahh. I've never used them myself, so I never needed to price them


To the OP: Another thing worth considering is insulation. Remember, insulation works for both keeping cool and keeping warm, so if you can just insulate the hell out of the reptile area, it'll both slow the heat buildup and reduce losses, allowing whatever cooling device you use to operate more economically.

It's an ugly problem - heat is usually a byproduct of our technology, wasted energy, and is easy to make, but making cold requires fighting against the thermodynamic flow (hence why freezers cost 10x more than space heaters).

Mokele