It was brought to my attention that Luke Skywalker's tort house wouldn't offer him a cool enough retreat during our warm/hot SoCal weather.
The thread to see his house is here:
http://tortoiseforum.org/threads/new-outdoor-cdt-house.90294/#post-841444
So, I spent the morning building him a burrow.
Now he has cool place to hang out when it's hot out.
I decided to make his burrow into the side of a brick planter. It's 7' long and about 2' wide. Since I don't have cement skills (yet), the bricks are just stacked on top of each other.
To start, I removed the bricks on one side of the planter and dug a trench 3' in.
Next I screwed together a plywood frame. I left a few inches on each side so dirt could insulate it all the way around.
Made a top of plywood
Then covered the wood with painters plastic
3"-4" of dirt piled up on top then I covered the whole area with decorative bark
The opening to the burrow faces a covered area where the BBQ sits. Unless you stand in the corner by the BBQ, you can't tell it's there.
The clearance is about 9" and remember it's 3' long
And he fits in there just swell
Walking in to check it out...(well hobbling in. I took his wheel off so it doesn't clog with dirt)
I know this burrow is far from perfect. It's not even that pretty and I like my turtle stuff to be pretty :shy:
But using nothing but scraps and what I thought was an ugly brick planter to begin with....at least now he has an "underground" retreat to cool off in. He doesn't care what it looks like, as long as it works.
The temps outside are in the 90's today. At noon I used my temp gun to check the concrete- 115F and the entrance to his new burrow- 66F. Now that 4 hours have passed since it finished I should go temp it again. But I'm fairly confident that this will work for us, for him.
..I'll keep ya posted
After hard work on a hot day, what better way to relax than watching a Desert tort play in the sprinkler and drink from a puddle??
The thread to see his house is here:
http://tortoiseforum.org/threads/new-outdoor-cdt-house.90294/#post-841444
So, I spent the morning building him a burrow.
Now he has cool place to hang out when it's hot out.I decided to make his burrow into the side of a brick planter. It's 7' long and about 2' wide. Since I don't have cement skills (yet), the bricks are just stacked on top of each other.
To start, I removed the bricks on one side of the planter and dug a trench 3' in.
Next I screwed together a plywood frame. I left a few inches on each side so dirt could insulate it all the way around.
Made a top of plywood
Then covered the wood with painters plastic
3"-4" of dirt piled up on top then I covered the whole area with decorative bark
The opening to the burrow faces a covered area where the BBQ sits. Unless you stand in the corner by the BBQ, you can't tell it's there.
The clearance is about 9" and remember it's 3' long
And he fits in there just swell
Walking in to check it out...(well hobbling in. I took his wheel off so it doesn't clog with dirt)
I know this burrow is far from perfect. It's not even that pretty and I like my turtle stuff to be pretty :shy:
But using nothing but scraps and what I thought was an ugly brick planter to begin with.
...at least now he has an "underground" retreat to cool off in. He doesn't care what it looks like, as long as it works. The temps outside are in the 90's today. At noon I used my temp gun to check the concrete- 115F and the entrance to his new burrow- 66F. Now that 4 hours have passed since it finished I should go temp it again. But I'm fairly confident that this will work for us, for him.
..I'll keep ya posted
After hard work on a hot day, what better way to relax than watching a Desert tort play in the sprinkler and drink from a puddle??
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