Homemade cage question - building into existing walls next to a chimney

just wondering if you would be able to help me. I am currently in the process of moving house and want to know whether or not I can put a snake cage where I want to. The reason I ask you is that it would be using the side of a chimney breast as one of the walls, I would also want to use two other stone walls to form the second and third sides. Then all I would need to do was put some runners in to hold the glass, which would be sliding doors and form the front wall of the cage. Hope thats clear!! not sure how good the english was in that sentence.

I have been told by my local snake shop that it would not be suitable as it would be too close to the fire when it was on. But I felt the chimney breast in my currant house when the fire was alight, and the chimney breast was not at all hot and in my house to be the fire is a lot smaller (It is an open fronted log fire). I was thinking that I would put the hot end nearest to the chimney breast in case the fire did heat it up.

I will not be using the fire very often and even when I do it would only be for about 3 or 4 hours at a time which I wouldn't have thought would heat the chimney up much if at all.

My other worry is that the other two stone walls will be too cold! They are next too another house so they will not be exposed to the outside air. I would obviously use heat pads for the snakes or other heat resources as appropriate, I will not be using the heat from the fire to heat the cages (included that as my gf thought that that might be what you thought i meant, just wanted to say that isn't the case)

I am intending to keep corn snakes for the time being but would really like to move onto keeping some slightly more challenging species of snake and perhaps some simple lizards in the not so distant future! Dont know wether this would affect your reply.

Thank you very very much for taking the time to read my email, I am sorry if I have not explained it at all well and I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you again

Dom UK

Answer

I just give some thoughts on this. It's difficult, not having visuals and not knowing some of the constraints.

I would test the chimney first, but I suspect it woud be OK. By test, I mean put it on for a while and measure the surface temperature. My chimneys never get too hot but they have wood heaters and there is a significant gap between them and the flue/heater. That said, it is on 24/7 over the winter. It would get warm, but that would be a good thing and the snake can go to the cooler end of the cage if necessary.

The stone bothered me until I read that it backed onto another house. It probably woud get cold but if you have heat mats and basking lights in the cage, the air temperature of the cage woud probably be OK. I think that after a while (week or so) the stone itself would heat up a few degrees and once a bit warmer it is very good at retaining heat and would actually make a good heat bank, provided the cage was completely enclosed, as it is not a very good conductor of heat.

If it is still a concern, you might consider putting an insulating layer between the stone and the cage eg a layer of 12mm polystyrene and then an mdf board. This would provide a very good insulating layer between the stone and the cage. I'm not sure if you want the stone for appearance - it would probably look pretty cool, depending on the stone. It's unlikely the snake will snuggle up to the stone but a good basking light and a good heat mat would probably keep the cage at a suitable temperature. I think I would be checking the temperature at a few points in the cage to make sure once it was completed and before the snake was housed.

I would also probably try and make the cage able to be dismantled if possible, so that if you did have to make changes it would not involved major destruction of materials and coud be rebuilt with modifications reasonably easily. I know this sound painful but if you built it and it sucked, you would still have to take it apart, irregardless of whether it was made to dismantled or not (I hope that made sense).

You didn't say what the floor was made of and whether that would be up a bit or on the ground. If it is on the ground and the ground is slate or stone, I would think about putting timber or and insulating layer on th floor to reduce heat loss. Will the cage have a roof to keep heat in? Are you going to stack them - the higher up you go, the warmer it would get so that would influence where various reptiles might reside.

What sort of snake and lizard are you thinking of getting? It's a bit morish, this hobby - get one, want another and another and then another. I want another 2 or 3 but I can't afford it at the moment - plus the possible marital issues that it would entail.

This is a bit of a challenging project, so good luck.