incandescent light bulbs

i think many people [here in the uk] use heat mats mounted vertically on a viv wall to maintain temps for snakes. you could also try a ceramic heater, a bit expensive but quite popular. neither of these are light emitting, do your snakes need uv? as well as the usual flourescent tube [negligable heat] mercury vapour spot lamps are available providing heat and substantial uv.

btw i keep bearded dragons, which you probably see every day in the wild.

speakerguy, that was a great explanation, i didn't know they generated enough heat to burn themselves out???? i have 9 of those in my house, and only one so far has burnt out somehow, it had a little brown burn hole in the side (faulty?)

monkeybiter said:

i think many people [here in the uk] use heat mats mounted vertically on a viv wall to maintain temps for snakes. you could also try a ceramic heater, a bit expensive but quite popular. neither of these are light emitting, do your snakes need uv? as well as the usual flourescent tube [negligable heat] mercury vapour spot lamps are available providing heat and substantial uv.

btw i keep bearded dragons, which you probably see every day in the wild.

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The heat mats sound like a good idea. I have a couple of tanks with ceramics in them but the get incredibly hot, even the cage around them gets too hot to handle. My snakes don't need UV so the only issue I have is heating. Do the mercury vapour spot lamps emit UVA or UVB?

Beardies are cool. I have an Eastern Beardie at the moment but am selling him to concentrate on snakes. I also have Central Netted Dragons that I am selling as well. For snakes I have Olive Pythons, Jungle Carpets, Port Mac Carpets, Spotted Pythons, Centralian Carpets and Woma Pythons. We do see a lot of bearded dragons around here, unfortunately a lot of road kills We also have a lot of Blue Tongue Lizards and Shinglebacks.

hi nightowl,
You could consider 'under-running' say a 60Watt car headlight bulb, instead of 12V use a 9V transformer.
I cannot see how the 'establishment' would object to that lamp usage.

Mount the enclosed transformer/PSU inside the reptile house enclosure, so all the 'heat' would be utilised.
This would give a maximum efficiency conversion.


With a little experimentation you could find the lamp intensity which gives you the optimum IR, rather than light.
Wire a number of 12V lamps in series, to cover a bigger area.

An extension to this, would be to use a a variable 6V to 12Vdc psu to drive the car lamp, then you could use a heat sensor to control the heat from the lamp by controlling the psu output.

Eric

Thanks Eric! I wasn't aware car headlights threw out that much heat?! That could be more economical than running heat cord. I will experiment with that idea and see what comes of it

This idea may be more suited to Solar Power as well?

Thanks again
Shane

solar panels are really expensive, especially for generating enough power to heat anything, also you said you don't get very much sunlight, i think solar may be out of the question, but if you have the money and are prepared to spend it on huge solar panels, go ahead, anything's possible,but at a price!!!

Night0wl said:

Thanks Eric! I wasn't aware car headlights threw out that much heat?! That could be more economical than running heat cord. I will experiment with that idea and see what comes of it

This idea may be more suited to Solar Power as well?

Thanks again
Shane

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Hi,
Go to your local car breakers yard and get some old car headlamp assemblies, the reflectors would enhance the heating beam and make it directional.

Regards

Night0wl said:

Hi all,

I keep reptiles and use 25 watt 'party globes' as heating for their enclosures. I'm not sure if there is any reptile enthusiasts in here but basically the bulb is at one end of the enclosure to provide heat for the reptile and the other end stays cool to create a thermal gradient from warm to cool, one end to the other. This is because reptiles can't create their own body heat so we provide the temp gradient so they can choose the optimal temp they require at the time.
{snip}
Thanks for your time,
Shane

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Shane, I have tried to make it simple for you once before but you are only responding to all these hair brained ideas. Like I said the first time, a 100w (light output) florescent bulb gives you about the same amount of heat as your 25w incandescent!

Rolf said:

Shane, I have tried to make it simple for you once before but you are only responding to all these hair brained ideas. Like I said the first time, a 100w (light output) florescent bulb gives you about the same amount of heat as your 25w incandescent!

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Maybe I read your post before you edited it with that information? I didn't see that paragraph in your post the first time I read it which is possibly why I never responded to it?

Thanks for the idea, I'll replace one of my current 25 watt globes with a 100w (light output) florescent bulb and compare the heat output.

The main issue I have is the light colour. I never mentioned this before because I was thinking of using non light emitting heat sources. The reptiles require darkness at night so at the moment I use red or blue party globes because apparently they don't notice, or can't see, these two colours. I could try using coloured gels from par cans used in stage performance I suppose?

Shane

Night0wl said:

Maybe I read your post before you edited it with that information? I didn't see that paragraph in your post the first time I read it which is possibly why I never responded to it?

Thanks for the idea, I'll replace one of my current 25 watt globes with a 100w (light output) florescent bulb and compare the heat output.

The main issue I have is the light colour. I never mentioned this before because I was thinking of using non light emitting heat sources. The reptiles require darkness at night so at the moment I use red or blue party globes because apparently they don't notice, or can't see, these two colours. I could try using coloured gels from par cans used in stage performance I suppose?

Shane

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Could it be as simple as slipping a metal can (drink the beer first) over the bulb? Or maybe you could have two bulbs one for daylight and one in-closed for night and just switch them with a timer and a relay.

Incandescent lightbulbs are being banned becaue 90% of the energy into them is heat, not lght. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs are about 4 times more efficient and last about 5 times longer.

The government doesn't know that some people are raising snakes.
Snakes? Reptiles? Cold-blooded? Yikes!

The rest of the story ........

Rolf said:

Could it be as simple as slipping a metal can (drink the beer first) over the bulb? Or maybe you could have two bulbs one for daylight and one in-closed for night and just switch them with a timer and a relay.

{snip}The main issue I have is the light colour. I never mentioned this before because I was thinking of using non light emitting heat sources. The reptiles require darkness at night so at the moment I use red or blue party globes because apparently they don't notice, or can't see, these two colours. I could try using coloured gels from par cans used in stage performance I suppose?

Shane

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Shane, please let us know what you did to resolve the problem. This is like a novel with the last chapter missing.
.

Rolf said:

Shane, please let us know what you did to resolve the problem. This is like a novel with the last chapter missing.
.

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lol sorry about that Rolf, I am in the process of starting a new business here and haven't had time to do much else.

I still have a heap of bulbs to go through and the heat source change most likely won't happen for approximately 12 months. I am deciding between Radiant Heat Panels, Heat Cord and Ceramic Heat Emitters for heating. heat cord uses the lowest wattage so that is a plus.

I will try LED's for lighting, seeing that the said heat emitters do not project light. That subject requires further investigation when I have time.

coincidently, & slightly off topic, my new business is reptile related and we will be offering these heating and lighting products. The site is still being built with only a few items available in online shopping, but if anyone would like to check it out the address is;
www.xoticpetsupplies.com (I am not advertising, just showing the address incase anyone is interested in what I am doing )

At this stage we only send to Australian residents. I am currently sourcing a distributor for thermostats, radiant heat panels and other parrot products. We have a few suppliers already but I want to buy stock in before advertising it on the site.

I will let you all know what I am doing with the reptile enclosures when I get started on them

Thanks for all your help
Shane

Have you considered other places like ebay?

Perhaps I should start and eBay shop aimed at selling incandescents to Australians, it looks like there's money to be made.

how much is shipping? they haven't been banned yet, but it's going to be bad for me also, i use lots of effects(disco) lights, and they use halogen bulbs. so far there is no more efficient ways of producing the same amount of light as a halogen, in the same sized packaged.

Can't you use LED clusters?

I would hope they are keeping the specialised incandescent lamps used in disco effects and projectors if a suitable more energy efficient alternative isn't available.

Hero999 said:

Can't you use LED clusters?

I would hope they are keeping the specialised incandescent lamps used in disco effects and projectors if a suitable more energy efficient alternative isn't available.

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I imagine the whole thing is being over exaggerated, there are numerous applications where there is no other option (and none foreseeable), you can't just ban an entire technology!.

I would imagine the ban is on your typical bulbs used in general household lighting. I'll try and find more info about it.

In every case where there have been bans proposed or programs implemented (Australia, UK, US, Cuba, Venezuela) there are exceptions as needed. The primary focus is on household use.

The biggest effect is lowering power consumption, so places like Cuba, which has frequent brown-outs, will benefit the most. In theory, it reduces greenhouse gases and other coal related emissions like mercury. Of course, broken bulbs will release mercury, China will increase production of the bulbs which requires more manufacturing, which requires more coal fired plants energy, which have absolutely no environmental regulation, which output clouds of toxic fumes, which travel with the jet stream to the US west coast and around the rest of the world. There are far more electronics in a CFL so the other toxic byproducts of electronics manufacturing will also increase. Politicians will look "green" (as long as nobody looks too close), and large power corporations won't have to add environmental controls to their high concentration point sources.

I agree but thiey've talked about having more CFL recycling schemes but in reality this will just be an extra expense and the bulbs might be exported to China where they won't be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner.