Humid Room?

[jamest0o0]

Air Cleaner is a good idea, as for ventilation I have heard just use a ceiling fan. I stumbled upon all this today on reptile magazine, in a leaf tail article where the writer said he used screen for his leaf tails and raised room humidity to 70%. Then moved to the snake guys, who use the fully vented top racks, with high humidity rooms to have high humidity + better ventilation.

Not sure how much, or if air exchange, short of the opening of the door, 2 3 times a day would be needed, as its alot of air, and the room will be filled with bioactive vivs, and the wall that doesnt have vivs, will have a wall full of plants, IE the entire room will be filled with plants, floor to ceiling every wall.

If committed to this plan, I would obviously seal it 100% every inch. I'd have some sort of ventilation system with forced exhaust. And then a powerful air purifier. What I'd do is run the exhaust for about 5-10 minutes every hour or so to exchange all the air from the room. Then when that turns off, have the air purifier go on and the humidifier. That should help keep the room fresh. Something along those lines...

 

[snitz427]

Oh 65 is totally doable. My ambient house humidity can be 40-50 easily. I was thinking you were going much higher. The plants and substrate will bump up the localized humidity - I’d estimate by 10% or better.

Arcea palms (however spelled) are supposedly to expel very high amounts of moisture and increase humidity. Like.. nasa send them into space levels.

 

[cyberlocc]

Oh 65 is totally doable. My ambient house humidity can be 40-50 easily. I was thinking you were going much higher. The plants and substrate will bump up the localized humidity - I’d estimate by 10% or better.

Oh no, I want the in the cage humidity to be higher at night, to 85-100 like it would in the wild, but that would likely be covered by the soil and plants in the cages. The flat requirement for the geckos is 60% thats the ideal minimum, 24/7, with higher humidity at night.

Other than a few panthers, the other Chams will be Carpets and Minors, so they have about the same reqs as the Geckos, and the frogs I will put in glass vivs.

Arcea palms (however spelled) are supposedly to expel very high amounts of moisture and increase humidity. Like.. nasa send them into space levels.

Yep I tell people their wonder all the time . So for the Arceas, they will be in at least 60% of the cages, as well as having a couple of 6fters, for decoration .

 

[jamest0o0]

We run 2 dehumidifiers in our house, our bathroom upstairs gets so humid that mold started growing on the blinds and our floors are a little warped. Basement had mold too. I keep the humidity at 45% highest in my house to avoid any problems now. Us over on east side of the country have probably all experienced what water damage does lol, it sucks.

 

[cyberlocc]

If committed to this plan, I would obviously seal it 100% every inch. I'd have some sort of ventilation system with forced exhaust. And then a powerful air purifier. What I'd do is run the exhaust for about 5-10 minutes every hour or so to exchange all the air from the room. Then when that turns off, have the air purifier go on and the humidifier. That should help keep the room fresh. Something along those lines...

That does sound like a good plan, will check that out. Was thinking door venting, like a vent near the floor and a vent near the top, to help keep the temps stable too. Ceiling fan to move air and humidity around.


I want to cool and heat this room independently as well though, to keep temps super stable, something we dont do in the house (we use Swamp and Gas Furnace).


even doing all the modification I am getting out cheaper, than glass. So to perspective it, I threw the cages joshs sells into cart, plus the big ones in biodude (Shipping is high) were talking about 5k in Glass, wont get them all in the same shot, but over time thats high. If I used screen, that gets cut to about 1300 for screen cages.

 

[cyberlocc]

So just one wall, will be 18x 18x18x24s, at 200 dollars a piece, at 56 lbs each. Thats almost 3000lbs on the floor over a 9ft span, including dirt. When adding dirt my loose calc gave me 150 per cage. 300lbs per shelf, shelves 3 foot long, and 3 shelves stacked to the ceiling, thats 900 lbs per rack.

That $3600 for the glass, btw. Exoterra Screen Small/Tall (18x18x24) for 18 would be only $1100. (So my screen estimate was off, above, maybe my glass too hahaha, I did it middle of last night)

I would still need to find for sale, or buy soil bins that would fit, but there is no way they add enough to balance the pricing.

to combat mold on the walls, I would have to just use Mold resistant paint, and go from there, I am not really sure.

 

[CasqueAbove]

When they said like a bathroom, I think that is the idea. I would do it with those kind of materials.
What I can say is that is basically what I have. What I have found is that I don’t need to keep the room as high humidity.
Just it being even 40%. I can keep her planted area 60% easy. So this allows me to let the room dry out during the day , but can still keep her area correct.

My setup was done because of the room. By luck I noticed that it naturally kept pretty good parameters for Chams. I had always wanted a chameleon, so I set up around this. With the addition of fogger and mister, It is easy to balance humidity,

Given this, I don’t see why you couldn’t do it.

 

[snitz427]

With that kind of weight in a short area you should also check your beams underneath. For example it’s recommended we reinforce our beams due to a large gun safe. We didnt ... but we do have a cracked beam in the basement!

What about making a magnetic cover for the racks? Something that will cover the whole shebang… You could hang that over the racks in the evening so it locks in/bumps up humidity, without affecting the whole room.

 

[cyberlocc]

With that kind of weight in a short area you should also check your beams underneath. For example it’s recommended we reinforce our beams due to a large gun safe. We didnt ... but we do have a cracked beam in the basement!

What about making a magnetic cover for the racks? Something that will cover the whole shebang… You could hang that over the racks in the evening so it locks in/bumps up humidity, without affecting the whole room.

I would still need the high day humidity. The minimums dont waiver.

As for the night, like James said misting at night will likely solve that particular issue. The geckos are supposed to be misted at night anyway, dont see an issue adding a mid night misting for the chams too, to up humidity. Alot of their rain, is at night over there anyway.


Thats only the weight for glass, if I go screen you can cut that almost in half. However from what I have noticed, my Exoterras, do stay cooler than ambient vs my large wood and glass cage with lots of venting. So cooling down the glass is easier (as is retaining the heat areas for chams)

So that may also become a factor, that should be brought into play.

As to the floor, old house, its not made as cheap as stuff these days. My floor are 2x6 joists with steel I beams below them, cross ways, with 1.5 inch plywood, then we currently have .5 inch oak hardwood in the room, that I will just layer on top of. So it should hold the weight* doesn't mean it will, but I think it should.

 

[Goose502]

I have seen dart frog people maintain giant collections in their homes. But these are all home made individual vivariums. And usually in a basement or garage setting(slab floor). I’ve done repairs in rental units in the past, there’s no amount of killz or mildex in paint to prevent mold and eventually rot behind the walls. Even a sealed room would risk black mold taking root. Keeping the glass cages provides any humidity you want, and whatever humidity exhausts out is diluted to a “mold safe” level in the room with ventilation to further dilute. But then you run the expense of glass, and issues of weight, maybe cheaper just to build an out building that’s designed for this kind of thing?

 

[Carlton]

As someone who created a defacto "humid room" believe me it will cause trouble with the house structure...and not JUST in the one room. I had 4 free range melleri in a spare bedroom for a couple of years. Flooded that room with humidity. I not only had moldy closets, mildewed carpet, smells, electrical problems, and ice damaged windows, sashes and sills (cold dry climate which was why the room had to be kept so saturated), but the contrast between the damp room and the adjacent drier rooms resulted in trouble with the drywall of the adjacent rooms and the attic crawlspace above that room. I owned the house. When I ended up changing jobs, sold the house and the buyer had it inspected, they found more trouble than I ever expected. Damage I paid to fix. The climate was too extreme to have active exterior venting to keep the levels balanced throughout the house. The entire house can be affected by poor moisture control even in a bathroom.

Unless you purposely build a structure with materials that are either resistant or isolated from the moisture from the beginning, be cautious. Obviously someone could do a major retrofit before creating a humid room, but consider what it would take to undo all that work if you plan on selling the house later. Something that specialized is going to reduce the potential pool of buyers if/when you try to sell it. Don't say you'll never move...you probably will.

 

[PabloTheCham]

just guessing, you could maybe seal the room kind of like dexter does with plastic.