Heating The Habitat

An IR Fusion view of Troy holding fluffy.

One of the most important features of a habitat is heat and lighting. When we built our habitat we originally drilled holes in the top of the cage to allow for the ventilation and dissipation of heat. We realized one serious thing, we built a fire hazard!

Fluke Tis Handheld Infrared Camera

After we built the cage we used a Fluke Tis infrared camera to analyze the buildup of heat in the cage. We were lucky that a family friend who works in building inspection has one for his business. Otherwise there are other cheaper IR thermometers you can buy, or just go to the pet store and pick up a thermometer and place it in areas where you want to monitor heat. Checking the temperature buildup is especially important when you're building your cage out of wood. The point at which wood ignites at about 570° F according to some quick internet research. I was more concerned with the adhesive in the plywood igniting, as glue can ignite at 212° F depending on what kind of glue it is. So depending on what kind of plywood you're using if you allow temperatures to reach past 180° F you're risking a fire. Additionally you want the maximum heat in an animal habitat to be no greater than 100° F. Optimum conditions for desert lizards are to have a dry environment with a gradient of heat across the habitat allowing the animal to retreat to a cooler or warmer area if they so desire. Another behavior to watch for is if your lizard is constantly opening their mouths this can indicate that they're trying to cool off. When a lizard is in a hot environment and opens its mouth for no reason it's somewhat analogous to when a dog pants, they're trying to cool down.

As I was saying we analyzed the output of the lights in the cage and were surprised at how warm not only the lamps were but the materials around the lamps were as well. Here are the results from our initial inspection of the lamps with the infrared camera:

An IR Fusion view of the lamps left to right: Night Heat Lamp, Basking Lamp, Red Heat Lamp, Basking Lamp, Night Heat Lamp.

Infrared view images of Lamps showing a range between 80 and 200° F

It's important to note that the infrared camera has a limit to how hot a temperature it can accurately meeter, this camera's limit is about 220° F.

Here is an image of the wood above the lamps showing the extreme heat that was building up underneath the plywood top of the cage:

An IR Fusion view of the ceiling of the cage before adding insulation. Screen material under the ceiling.

Temperatures were nearly exceeding 150° F which was unacceptable for consideration of fire mitigation. We clearly had to do something about the heat that was building up above the lights.

What we did was to add this bubble foil insulation that we cut down to size and stapled to roof of the cage. Any hardware store sells this material, it usually comes in a roll and can be kind of expensive if you only need a small section of material to insulate. But it's worth being able to sleep at night knowing the cage is protected from the buildup of heat.

Bubble foil insulation available at any hardware store.

Also check the packaging and see what temperature the foil is rated to withstand, in our case the foil could easily withstand up to 225° F.

As you can see below we cut several strips of material and stapled it to the top of the cage:

An view of the ceiling of the cage after adding insulation.

Our lamps are arranged in the following pattern 5 inches below the insulating material: Night Heat Lamp, Basking Lamp, Red Heat Lamp, Basking Lamp, Night Heat Lamp, behind that is a florescent full spectrum lamp.

After installing the insulation we rechecked the buildup of heat with the IR camera both above and below the top of the cage:

An IR Fusion view of the roof of the cage after adding insulation.

Top of the cage with the IR Fusion Mode to show a the top of the cage was averaging 100° F. 

The red and white hotspots show the heat of the insulation on top of the bubble foil material, exposing the plywood to a max of 122° F. This technique of using this bubble foil material effectively lowered the exposed heat to the plywood by about 30° F. You can note that in the images above this one before this material was added the wood was being exposed to temperatures of about 150° F.

An IR Fusion view of the roof of the cage after adding insulation.

On average the top of the cage is about 90° F, those hotspots are where we originally cut ventilation holes show that the top of the insulation reaches about 110-120° F

An IR Fusion view of the top insulating material of the cage.

Above is a view of the bottom of the insulation after the lights have been on a few minutes, the insulation not only reflects light down towards the lizards but does the same with heat as well.
We use the IR camera to inspect how well heat was reaching the bottom of the cage as well as whether or not it was allowing for a gradient of heat to allow the animals to move to different areas of the cage to cool off or warm up.

An IR Fusion view of the top of the cage.

We examined the upper area of the habitat and found that it can get up to around 100 degrees which is a good target for a warmer part of the habitat.

We also needed to check and see how the bottom of the cage held the heat as it was about 5 feet from the lamps at the top of the cage and one side of the cage was just a screen material that allowed heat to escape from the front of the cage.

An IR Fusion view of the bottom of the cage.

When we examined the bottom of the cage with the IR camera and we determined from these images that the bottom of the cage can reach about 70 or 80° F. Because the cage is near a window and the temperature in that area can get kind of cold we also learned that shaded parts of the cage and get as low as 50° F (which is too low we added some insulation to fix this).

We also have to consider the fact that the frilled dragon can climb and likes to hang off of branches so the entire cage is accessible to him, unfortunately the bearded dragon does not climb higher than a foot or so off the ground. We had to provide him with another source of heat if he wishes to be warmer. We added a rock heater underneath some of the bedding:

Standard heat rock available at any pet store.

After adding the heater we took this image to show how it improved the heat in an area of the cage:

Bottom of Cage Rock Heater underwent substrate.

The rock heater allow the bearded dragon to warm up in an area that is nearly 90° F which is much better for him.

We're continuing to work on this habitat, we're considering ways in with we can provide the bearded dragon more direct access to the basking lamps. Right now we're working on building a series of ramps he can climb to get closer to the lamps. When we make those changes we'll post about them. We considered lowering a basking lamp on a wire from the top of the cage, however we were concerned that fully could try to jump from his branch or from the screen and try to land on the top of a lamp, since those lamp fixtures can reach as high as 250° F we were convened that he could jump on them and burn himself, so rather than take the lamps to the lizards we'll have to engineer a way to bring the lizards to the lamps.

Now fluffy enjoys hanging on his branch or climbing the screen to bask in the heat.

Fluffy hanging by and basking on his branch.

Fluffy hanging on the screen about a foot above the floor of the cage, beau is behind him in green.

This image shows that fluffy's skin is about 85° F, while Bo the bearded dragon is about 80° F. The infrared cameras as a fascinating way to see how cold blooded animals react to temperature when they choose to bask or cool off.