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Heating, Cooling, Humidity Suppliers

Suppliers

Disclaimer: suppliers listed below are based on my personal experience only, and only at the time I built this enclosure (December 2002). Your mileage may vary, be a smart shopper.

Tikis - Design Toscano item #NG931189, "Tiki Gods", set of 2 Tikis. $125.00.

Heater - Honeywell model #HZ315 ceramic heater with builtin fan and thermostat. $20.00

Plastic Plants - I got a bunch of reasonably priced plastic plants from Big Apple Herpetological. $4.95 per vine-type plant from Natural Bush. Note that I do not recommend Big Apple's house brand of "UVB" mercury vapor lamp, as based on my measurements with my UVB meter it emits no UVB at useful ranges from the lamp. Sadly they have discontinued carrying their Tokay Grape Vine basking logs, but perhaps you can find the material elsewhere. It's recycled 100 year old roots of wine-grape plants.

Wireless Thermometer/Hygrometer - Partshelf.com. Base unit to display room temp/humidity and habitat remotes, Taylor Wireless Model 1428 Jumbo Display Indoor/Outdoor Thermometer & Hygrometer with one remote $38.57. Extra remotes Taylor 1429 $21.95 each. Partshelf.com was the cheapest supplier of these units I found and also shipped fast. The base unit and remotes have a nice Min/Max feature to record the highs and lows of humidity and temperature. You an reset it by pressing a button on the base unit. This makes it easy to check on temperature ranges when the weather changes.

Flourescent Lighting - 1, 4 tube, 4 foot unit with sheet metal box, bought at Orchard Supply Hardware (it came with a decorative wooden exterior frame with plastic diffuser, which isn't used in this application). You will also need a heavy power cord to wire this up as these units are normally installed by an electrician (but comes with good directions for the DIY person). Bulbs are 4' ZooMed ReptiSun 5.0/IguanaLite 5.0 which generate much-needed UVB to prevent Metabolic Bone Deficiency (MBD) disease in Iguanas.

Handheld UVB Meter - Solarmeter 6.2 from www.myiguana.com. you need one of these if you rely primarily on indoor lighting to keep your Iguana healthy. Not cheap, but it will save you vet bills in the long run and also keep you from being ripped off from unscrupulous Herp lighting manufacturers or ignorant store sales people. $179

Ultrasonic Humidifier - I went to sears and ordered a Kenmore Ultrasonic WhisperFlow 2.5 gallon unit. Don't buy one of these. On the one hand, it does a great job of generating ultra-fine "fog" just like those ultrasonic units you can buy from Herp pet stores. Even better, unlike the pet store units it has a builtin 2+ gallon water container with replaceable water hardness filter, a builtin humidistat with digital display, and a quiet fan to push the "fog" out a good distance instead of it just sort of burbling out like the pet store units. But on the other hand, the instructions do not explain the details of how it behaves with an external humidistat (which switches off power to the unit when the proper humidity is reached), and as best I can tell from using this piece of garbage, it loses its little electronic mind sometimes and just fogs the heck out of the enclosure continuously. One day I'll take it apart and just completely bypass the internal humidistat. Right now I'm running it off the Green Air humidistat. This prevents over-humidification, but seems to be somewhat ambivalent sometimes about under-humidifying. Don't get me wrong: I think a good ultrasonic humidifier with builtin fan and large reservoir is great: it's just that Kenmore hasn't impressed me. Perhaps an industrial/greenhouse unit might be better.

Heat exhaust fans - bought locally at a Hydroponics supply store. Shien Ya 5" muffin fan. Be sure you get the type that runs off 110 volt house current, and not the ones that run off 12 volts DC which are only used in computers. The fans you want have built in motors and come with a standard 2 prong detachable power cord, one per fan. Sorry but I can't find an online link, check your local phone book under Hydroponics. Don't forget that a fan this size running off wall power can really hurt if your fingers or your Igs body parts get stuck in there, so be absolutely sure you have it protected when you install it.

Plastic netting for door and vents - Internet XV-1170 aquaculture netting, 48" x 8 feet, with service charge and shipping, $29.64. Internet has a minimum size order so you either have to buy a lot more than you need, or pay a $10 surcharge on small orders. Paying the surcharge is cheaper for the amount I bought, but this is good netting and you could always order more and use it for other Ig-related purposes.

Thermo/humidi-stat control box - Green Air CT-DH-2 + CT-HH-1. Bought at a local hydroponics supply store which had to special order it from Green Air, $157.00. Ok, there are a couple problems with Green Air products in this application in my experience. First, the thermostat has a start range which is several degrees different from when it stops. So if it goes on at 105 degrees, it may not stop until you get down to about 95 degrees, which means it may trigger your heater to go off and the two units will start dueling to maintain the proper temperature. Second, in my unit the humidistat doesn't match the Taylor unit right next to it. This means that you need to dial in the humidity to match the external humidistat, since you can't trust the guage on the Green Air unit. Third, Green Air creates a wide variety of units for hydroponics which can go on or off when the temperature goes up or down. The precise behavior is denoted by the unit name: "CT" means Cooling Thermostat. "DH" means Dehumidifying Humidistat (which is NOT what you want) and "HH" means Humidifying Humidstat (which you DO want). So they assemble these units from parts when you special order a unique combination. But they do sloppy work. My instruction sheet had the "HH" designation hand scrawled on. Whats worse, the enclosure the unit comes in is silk screened for "Cooling" and "Dehumidify", but what the fools at Green Air did was scrape off the "De" when they made my unit an "HH". What those idiots forgot was that the dial has "Off" and "On" positions also silk screened on, but the behavior of these two positions on the dial are swapped between an "HH" and "DH". Because of these problems and the fact that these units are not cheap I have a hard time recommending them...but I couldn't find anything else in this price range that was an all in one controller, particularly one suited for a high humidity/temp greenhouse environment. I should have sent the unit back for correct labling and having the humidistat adjusted, but I needed it badly at the time to get my Pad up and running, so I live with the shortcomings.


All information on this site is © Robert Allen, All Rights Reserved, unless otherwise noted. Information here may be used freely as long as it materially benefits Iguanas and credit is given to this site and to the habitat design work of James W. Hatfield III, author of "Green Iguana, The Ultimate Owners Manual"..

Last changed on: August 15, 2004