What do you guys do when your power goes out for a long period of time?
Generators or UPS (uninterrupted power supply) like used on computer server rooms. I had a power outage here and my babies got cold. Had to put my ball python under my shirt to keep him warm. We humans were cold too. I don’t have very many but it still was a problem that I need to resolve if it happens again.
Generator big enough to run a space heater for your reptile room.
If you don’t have a generator then hand warmers, warm water bottles, pillow cases with body heat etc. This post might help a bit as well - Emergency Winter Preparedness
You can buy a generator from harbor freight from less than the cost of a snake!!! Solid investment! They aren’t the nicest or fanciest but they work and if you only use it once or twice you don’t really need the Ferrari model. They also make propane heaters with safety features that are designed to be used indoors.
If I use a generator. I will have to move my reptiles from my bedroom to the living room or dining room. We only have one outside outlet that would probably work to plug the generator into to provide electricity to just one of those rooms. I think my friend said his 3000W generator supplied power to his refrigerator, some lights and tv. Maybe a few outlets to charge phones or something. Then he had the propane heater that ran off of a 40 gal tank.
Which is what he let us use until the power came back on. Which was about 8pm last night.
Before this storm I bought a bunch of 40hr heat packs, and I also have the option to take everybody into work because they never lose power.
I will look for some of those heat packs. All I had were the small hot hand packs. They didn’t last long enough and were not big enough either.
Thanks
Where are you located and how many do you need?
You can use an outdoor extension cord with a generator. The last time our power went out I ran cords to the Fridge/freezer to keep the frozen rats going, and our Wi-Fi.(we loose power during hurricane season in the summer) our house was running around 70 to 80. Vet told me not to feed and everyone was fine for about a week, even my monitor and Tegu. I would think a space heater, I like the oil filled ones, could keep a small room that warm. I agree one can get a really inexpensive generator, we found we did better with a name brand. The cheap one was a nightmare to keep running.
Good luck.
#SouthTexasProblems
Going on day 4 of no power. I’m very lucky to have friends with larger collections and family with spare outlets. So after about of day sitting in our car with the heater on with no end in sight we went that route.
But in real time yeah it’s a scary situation when you have animals that rely so heavily on temperature control. Especially down here where we never worry about how cold it is. Luckily we have containers that make it easy enough to move all our animals. Definitely made me realize that I need a plan for these situations
I live in Manchester Tennessee. Where do you order those from?
I had to come back to work tonight. It is snowing like crazy. Probably at 3 inches already.
As of right now we have power at the house. The ice storm had broken down so many trees on the power lines it took them a long time to get everthing off of them. I hope it doesn’t go out again while I am at work. My brother will not put Tiberius in under his shirt to keep him warm. Lol
I ordered mine from Amazon and they were pretty affordable, the brand name is Uni Heat and they should last for ~40 hours. Definitely a good thing to keep on hand.
We’re going on four days of power outages and sub zero temperatures, and now most of the city is without water due to frozen pipes I still have power because I’m on the same grid as the med center, but most people are not as lucky. It’s an absolute disaster down here
Thanks for the info. That is good you still have power. I have a cousin that lives in San Antonio TX. She has been without electricity. She was cooking on a small gas hot plate the other day. She posted it on FB.
I don’t know anything about generators…Do they happen to make small portable types for apartments/condos? I was thinking about this same issue a while back…Power going out for days would worry the hell out of me.
I was going to see about a UPS, uninterrupted power supply, like that is used in server rooms to keep computers running. I haven’t had a chance to research them. Looked it up once last night briefly. Some of them are expensive.
I use UPS at work for running mass spectrometers and their related supportive equipment. Mind you they are all drawing lots of volts and the UPS is generally plugged into its own dedicated 30a circuit, but I normally see 20-30 minutes worth of power out of a unit with 24 “motorcycle-style” batteries with the overall UPS weighing in around 250lbs. It’s enough time, with the electrical draw from the mass spec system and associated components, to stop sample injections and properly shut down the instrument.
Given much of our needs, electrically though, I’d like to assume a decent unit would buy significantly longer use if properly maintained. Definitely something I’m going to be exploring in the near future as I too am one of the affected Texans in this thread. Thankfully much of my collection is tied up in brumating colubrids, but I do have some subtropical to tropical species that concern me.
Yes, one can get small generators but they must be outside. They run on gasoline and it would be dangerous to run in a garage or indoors. I run ours out on the sidewalk.
There is a type of propane heater one can get to use in a tent. It has a nitrogen sensor and will shut off if tipped. Use a barbeque sized tank and it runs pretty long. It had a name like tent buddy, camping buddy…I’ll see if I can find more info.
This is what our friend brought us to use until our power came back on. It helped but we would have to get a bigger heater for our house. This would be good for an apartment.
That’s what I was thinking of, just couldn’t remember the name.
