dangers of heat lamps

[kl]

I have often worried about this and today, it almost caused a disaster. Because of trying to provide extra warm temperatures for one type of species while keeping others cooler, I built a small closet like room inside of my breeding room. I then squeezed 4 cages into it. I kept red glow lamps on at night and then normal white ones during the day. Part of this confusion helped me mistakenly forget to put a heat lamp back on the screen top after I moved it on top of a peice of wood while changing things around. I then went out for a couple hours. My wife smelled something while she was sleeping. She called the fire dept. who then found the problem in the basement. Needless to say, they were not thrilled with all these heat lamps going. My wife said there was some smoke in the reptile room that had risen to the ceiling so hopefully these animals which are in substrate at ground level did not have enough smoke inhalation to cause any problems. The room does have some ventilation as the windows were cracked open. When I got home about an hour and a half after the fire dept had come, there was no smoke I could see in the reptile room. They were all basking under heat lamps today as usual and I did not notice anything unusual in how they were acting so I'm hoping they are ok. Anyone have any thoughts on this? The burn hole was about 4 inches around and burned completely through as it was only 1/8 inch thick paper compressed type wood. Once it burnt through the wood there was nothing left to burn which maybe kept the smoke to a minimum. Only a few ashes were at on the bottom of the cage. I spent the afternoon washing down the walls and ceiling to help get the smell of smoke out. I don't have a sense of smell so I cannot tell if it's all out or not. I may get am air purifier tomorrow to get it fresh smelling (or as fresh as it can possibly get in a basement).

How does everyone else who have larger collections handle the heat lamp risks?




KL

[Linnea]

( you need to make sure you get a fire alarm. once you have thic cheap lifesaver, get a regular house insurance to cover burning costs.)

materials of the surrounding walls and everything. get rid of things flammable and dust collecting.

DUST IS THE ENEMY. a seemingly well-working electric apparature can turn into a ticking bomb if not cleaned properly and often. this is also the case with reptile rooms and lots of large bulbs. i try to make sure to dust twice a week, but i guess everyone has their own way of cleaning.

keep a track of temperature whenever you switch lamp brands/wattage. i even check every time i switch between brands i know.....since the bulbs are mass produced theres always an odd one every now and then. i guess its hard to check them all when you have a lot of herps? :/

get dimmers, this can help spare the rest of your lamps if an accident were to occur, and helps the lifelenght of the lamp by doing so (and keeps costs down etc). the dimmer i got has done miracles whenever the electricity went out as the bulb didnt automatically die.

i do not have a large collection to tend to, so this is really all info i can give you on this, and you probably already know it.

however

just to say it, its not the actual smell of fire that you should be worried about, its the air condition. reptiles and birds are super sensitive to bad air conditions (humans as well, but there is size difference)

an electric air purifier usually contains several active substances that can be very harmful for your lungs, its typically not mentioned anywhere. check the active substance in the air purifier youre buying. always check beforehand)

a regular air purifier, also contains airborne chemical substances that can cause allergies etc. for your own health and so on...id recommend finding another way to make it smell fresh. but i cant make you, since ive noticed theyre incredibly popular in other countries.

besides that the actual stench of smoke is in textile material and (unfortunately) often in the wall isolation. so once you get the air ventilated the smoke smell may still be there, not saying it actally will but chances are they are.

[Lea]

It'll sound daft, but make a list of say, five things to do before you leave the basement reptile room- make it big and bold, A4 (letter) sized should be enough. Make the "check heat lamps" last, behind, sensible and silly list items, such as " say good morning to skinks"' then "check water" and "check food" . You can even add in an "nb", such as "kiss skinks goodbye and turn off lights".

It may sound silly and we all know the things we need to do such as check the bowls, but a silly and amusing reminder can trigger the brain to remember, hopefully avoiding any potential accidents.

I would say, at least for the skinks, most of the time a fire alarm will give us a sign of any problems far too late. Their sensitive lungs will suffer smoke/ latent heat damage quickly, which will sadly be, mostly, irreversible and untreatable. I should say after this you will have had scare enough to keep on your toes and be vigilant.

It will be worth taking your animals to the vet, just to be sure though. Although we can't see it, if there is damage inside the lungs, problems can occur later on. The heat damage to the alveoli continues to burn and a "secondary event" can occur, hours later than the original insult occurs. In skinks, it will likely be shorter, probably in the first 6 hours, due to their size. This advice is probably past that time now, but keep an eye out for any unusual breathing, laboured breathing, snorting, gurgling or excessive sneezing.

Frothing at the mouth can also be a sign of pulmonary oedema where fluid fills the lungs. After trauma or injury to the lungs, pulmonary oedema is often referred to as "dry drowning", where literally, you could be standing in the desert and still have your lungs fill with fluid and the victim can effectively "drown".

They can't cough, but you might see odd retching/spasm like motions in the body as they try to clear the airway. Any mucus or sneeze-snot should be checked for blood and any discharge would be clear if healthy, but any excessive production should be investigated.

I hope you and your skinks are all in good health though and thank you for sharing your almost-tragic story. Thank goodness your wife woke up! She needs a medal for saving the house by the sound of things!

[kl]

I have done some research on the subject. I could not find much literature written by vets or other scientific sources probably because not much research has been done in this area. In people, literature says most make a full recovery unless the damage was severe and prolonged, especially if there were burning. The same is said about cats and dogs. Birds can be sensitive because they have air sacs and not lungs (I have a parrot in the room as well). In this case there was no high heat or burn related issues. The entire piece of material that burned was about 4 inches square though did cause quite a smell according to my wife even though it was not chemical or plastic material. My wife called the fire dept. because she could not tell where the smoke was coming from. The fire dept. saw some smoke but did not think it was enough to warrant using any fans to blow it out as they said it would disperse naturally. The skinks do not seem to show any adverse affects so far, 10 hours after it happened. Tonight they were still basking under the lamps. I'm watching for signs of respiratory distress like wheezing and opening of the mouths or anything that would show they have suffered some damage to the lungs causing them to have a hard time breathing. What little is written about pet related inhalation basically says watch for over the next couple days as sometimes damage can take a couple days to present itself. My wife described the smoke as a light haze near the ceiling and not a thick smoke. I do have working smoke detectors in the basement but they still did not go off, including the one upstairs. This one upstairs is so sensitive that it goes off whenever I cook anything in the oven. When I came home about 90 minutes after the fire dept came, I could not see any smoke. I'm still mad that this happened as it was strictly the result of being negligent. I place a heat lamp on a piece of wood when moving a cage and forgot to put it back on the screen top.

KL

[El Lobo]

I'm sorry that has happened and hope that none of the animals suffer any ill effects.

Our next door neighbour's house caught fire a couple of years ago and the only reason she escaped was because of smoke detectors. There are two types of smoke alarms - photoelectric and ionisation. Photoelectric smoke alarms are the best for detecting smouldering fires where there is more smoke than heat but many homes have both types fitted. The differences are explained here:

http://www.safetyrisk.com.au/2011/05/11 ... -detector/

[Linnea]

theres one more thing you can do to prevent fire from spreading easily from that room to another. that is, to reduce the burning material even further.

you know in old fashioned saunas (as we have a lot of here) where the open fire is placed in the middle? on the floor and walls around it there are solid blocks of fire resistant material (no chemical spray on it).

could be useful to have behind the terrariums and just underneath them? not sure about the mold risk behind these in case your basement is a bit humid, in which case mold would be even worse. im not good at building materials x.x

[Spindown]

i hate heat lamps. I burnt a nice big hole in my bedroom floor. Thank god for fire resistant carpet and padding. OMG did it stink though. I was gone so i had no idea it was happening.

[Alioop]

I had a similar scary situation happen just a few weeks ago. I have heat tape on the bottom of all three eastern's plastic tubs. All three are hooked up to a dimmer. For some reason (can't figure out why) the heat tape on one of the bins shorted out in a small (about 1" long) section. It stopped 'listening' to the dimmer and overheated. I was at work, but my bf smelled burning plastic and went to check it out. It had burned a hole in the plastic bottom of the tub and left a big charred mark on the wood that the tub sits on. Luckily my little skink was smart enough to stay away from the molten plastic and suffered no injury. Bf was a little freaked out and called me at work to yell at me!

He and I talk about fire safety often, even prior to this. We both worry about the high potential of the reptile set-ups to cause a fire. He has looked (a little bit) into smoke detectors that have a sprinkler attached. Has anyone else ever looked into this? You can get them for houses apparently. The only downside was that the ones we saw didn't just spray water, it was some kind of chemical mixture. So I guess it would be a matter of the lesser between two evils: fire/smoke vs. chemical spray. I don't know exactly what the substance is that it sprays, but I think I'd rather let my skinks take their chances with the spray and know that the fire would be put out.

[kl]

It is an issue. Go online and research it. Look what happened to Andrew and Pro Exotics. How safe is it to keep on 20 to 25 heat lamps in one room. This has had me thinking. I am sensitive to this stuff because I own a business which insures houses and my book of business has seen 6 major fires in just the past 3 yrs in which average damage was over $350,000 per house. I think I am going to build a small shed like building in my back yard and have it professionally insulated and wired with a thermostat like in our houses and keep my breeders there. I can just simply get the desired temperatures by turning up the heat rather than using higher wattage bulbs. Heat lamps would still be necessary for basking but if the room temps were already in the 80's, I could get away with low wattage bulbs which should not be as risky. My brother and father in law are carpenters so hopefully I can convince them to do this. I've got a large yard so space is not an issue.

With regards to my lizards, all my vet said was that any problems that would occur probably would show up within 3 to 4 days. I had a parrot in the room and he said that animal would have showed injury within the 1st 24 hrs because they are very sensitive to smoke damage. He said with reptiles it was less likely because they are low lying where the smoke would not have been as dangerous. Several of them were still brumating inside wooden hide boxes within they're cages. These cages were next to a partially open window. None of my animals are high up off the ground. 4 others were inside of a closet like space within the room with a blanket covering the entrance to keep it warmer than the whole room. The lizard that was actually in the cage that had the burned wood right on top of it is a 2010 Blotched. I would think he'd have gotten the worst of it. My wife said the smoke was light though my daughter said it was thick upstairs from the actual room. All I know is when I came home 90 minutes after all this I could see no smoke so it dispersed quickly once the heat lamp doing the burning was shut off. Here's a picture of the wood that burned. I'm just thankful my wife has a great sense of smell since it woke her up on the 2nd floor of the house. She's the type of person that can smell wood burning a mile away.

KL

[Katrina]

Great thread. Thanks for posting this so others can be more aware of the dangers. I'm sorry this happened to you, hopefully no one was harmed at all.

Fire is one of my biggest worries with having reptiles. We do a similar idea as your reptile shed one - because we are in Canada and running the furnace for a lot of the year anyway, we set it so that the house stays about 70 F / 21 C. Then we just use 50 watt heat lamps with dimmers, but with the size of enclosures even if the dimmers failed it still wouldn't get hot enough to cause a fire and they have plenty of room to move away. I'm still worried with all the timers, power bars, extension chords etc in the room that something might go wrong. We have made sure we everything is rated for more power than will be going through it, hopefully that is enough.

Andrew's fire was enough incentive for us to finally buy the fire extinguisher that we had been meaning to purchase forever. Now we have them in the kitchen and reptile room, but it isn't much good if we aren't home to use it.

[mark_w]

Wow Kim that is a real worry and a huge scare for you I'm sure. I am now worried too!

If I think about it I start to wonder, with having so many heat sources on for so many years, how many times have I been lucky in not having a fire related problem. A few years ago I fitted a couple of smoke detectors inside and outside of my old reptile room. For my skinks I use the standard wooden construction vivariums with sliding glass doors. Well, they are not really made of wood, it is laminated chipboard, otherwise known as melamine or conti board - don't know if you have this in the US? There are shallow wooden rails on the front, top and bottom and I have air vents in the bottom rail at the front, and in the back 'wall' at the top, to get some through flow of air. Heating is via a halogen or standard reflector bulb screwed into a ceramic (heat proof) fitting which is mounted in the ceiling. This is rigged to a thermostat to avoid overheating and keep the temps where I want them. Maybe this is safer? At least I can't touch/move the lamp. If the bulb blows, nothing happens although occasionally I need to replace the fuse in the plug at this time. But, I also have open plan tortoise table type enclosures with 'clamp lamps'. In these I keep Cuora, Terrapene and Kinixys species. Even if my regular vivariums are safer, there is still risk associated with having all these heat sources in a confined space, in my case a couple of basement rooms. I did have all the wiring done by an electrician when I set these new rooms up but I am wondering how hard it is to install a sprinkler system? In the first instance I guess having a decent fire extinguisher in there would be a start...

Hope your animals are all okay,
Mark.

[kl]

In my case, the basement floor is cement, all the cages are away from the walls, and there's not a lot of combustible potential in the event a cage caught fire though you never can tell. My biggest worry now is potential damage to the animals. I have about 25 animals in that room, mostly blue tongues and egernia. The room is 26 feet by 12 ft and it's an above ground basement with large windows like what you'd have upstairs. Today, I took that piece of wood and lit it on fire (outside of course) to see how much smoke it generated. Surprisingly, it produced a lot of pure white smoke, especially once the flame went out and it was left smoldering. The material is compressed heavy cardboard like material which burns very fast. My guess is that it produced a lot of white smoke in that room until it burnt through. The domed light seemed to have captured a lot of the carbon and the light bulb was blackened but there was no residue on any walls even near the light. The vets obviously can't provide any exact info other than to say watch how they act over the next couple of days. They claim the bird in the room should be the first to show symptoms if the smoke was that bad plus his cage is high off the ground. I have had this bird since 1992 (which shows I'm getting old). They said the air intake from lizards would be much less because they have much slower respiratory systems. A vet friend of mine who also maintains a large collection of reptiles (including blotched) and teaches at a vet school said that lung tissue will regenerate unless damage was severe but of course nobody can promise anything. From what I understand, damage to the lungs could cause secondary infection and pneumonia in the few days after if the damage was significant. I also called Dr. Stahl in Virginia. He's considered to be about the best reptile vet in the USA. They said about the same thing. It's now been over 48 hrs so hopefully the next few days go by without any signs of problems. I know one thing. I have to replace those smoke detectors. Nice units. They go off as soon as I cook anything in the oven but get a bunch of smoke in the house due to a fire and they don't go off. That's comforting! Even the one in the basement 2 feet from the room did not go off.

KL

[Katrina]

I have to replace those smoke detectors. Nice units. They go off as soon as I cook anything in the oven but get a bunch of smoke in the house due to a fire and they don't go off. That's comforting! Even the one in the basement 2 feet from the room did not go off.
KL

Really?? Wow. We have the same kind - the ones that alert you whenever a male is attempting to use the oven. That is scary to hear that they didn't go off that time. Please let us know what you end up going with when you replace them, I might want to change ours out as well...

[Alioop]

Apparently (according to my bf) there are sprinkler systems sold at hydroponic supply stores. (No, we don't grow weed). He said they're basically fire extinguishers that mount to the ceiling and, instead of having a trigger to set them off, they go off when they detect smoke.

[Jeff]

I hate to high-jack this thread, but it does bring up an opportunity to address an important topic.

My house has a smoke detector in every room, and a sprinkler system that covers every square inch. Even so, I have NO expectation that this would save my skinks if I had a fire in my reptile room. I am happy to have these things, but the truth is - it is MUCH better to prevent a fire than to hope that you can deal with it when it happens.

All of us have probably made mistakes at some point that could have been disastrous. Those things are hard to eliminate completely, but there are a lot of hazzards that that can easily avoided. Some of the things to consider as your collection grows are:

-Are all of your bulbs or other heating/lighting items equal or lower wattage than the fixtures they are in?
-Are all of the cords/extension cords rated high enough to handle everything plugged into them?
-Are you overloading any of your wall outlets?
-Are you using every heating/lighting product as directed? (this includes proper ventilation)
-Do you inspect everything periodically to make sure it is in good condition annd working properly?

The more enclosures you maintain, the more important these things become. It is all very simple to stay on top of, we just need to be diligent enough to do it. If we pay close attention to all of these things, electrical fires will be few and far between. I hate hearing about animals being lost in fires. I hope close calls like Kim had will help all of us remember to double check our own setups (I know! Kim's setup was not a problem!), but his fire is a good reason for all of us to look at ours.

[jasjmm27]

Another thing to remember...happened to me...is that sometimes when the lights are off, that doesn't mean they are "safe" either...I placed a light that was off on the carpet in my reptile closet since I had just moved the occupants of the closet to a different location.

I came back the next evening, very luckily, to a house that was still standing and a carpet that had a bulb sized burn hole in it...the light was off when I put it on the ground and I did NOT disconnect it from the timer...it worked as expected and turned on the next morning to lay on the carpet ALL DAY...

Another thing to keep in the back of your mind...

[critterguy]

Probably the safest thing to do is to go with lower wattage heating and not rely so much on thermostats to control them.