Projects

[ColaCarbonaria]

Good morning, hope everyone is staying warm. I love th forum, I thought I was doing a good job w my tortoises and then I see all the practices and actions you guys are doing and it’s awesome, so it challenged me to step up my game a little bit! So I started by installing 3 power receptacles in the permanent outdoor tortoise pen I built this summer. These are for heating outdoor housing for everybody.

Started w empty breaker so that was easy



Fun w shovel.

Redfoot roadblock!



Change a breaker and.....

Bam.

Next step is to greenhouse this section of pen and use power to heat greenhouse and housing. (Getting th enclosure planted properly is really next step 1a,1b....) buuuuut we just a blast of arctic air and everybody is inside for th next week or so which leads me to th next project...

 

[Jimb]

Nice! So what are you using for the heating or are you just putting Basking & UVB lights in each box? Thanks again for posting this.

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

So now that everyone is inside I had an “enclosed”tortoise table I built 4 years ago that I thought was good but after seeing what you guys were doing I knew I could improve my design so I started w a basic box w lid and accessed everything from top, so I raised th roof and added a sliding glass front, some fresh uvb lighting and temp control and Everybody is happier!!







So I got a couple things done, still plenty to do, thanks for being here. Have a great day everybody.

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

Nice! So what are you using for the heating or are you just putting Basking & UVB lights in each box? Thanks again for posting this.

Thanks! Using che on Herpstat’s so they don’t overheat.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

This weekends it's going to get into the 50 degree range.
I'll even need to turn on MY outdoor heaters.
How much cooler is it supposed to be up there?

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

This weekends it's going to get into the 50 degree range.
I'll even need to turn on MY outdoor heaters.
How much cooler is it supposed to be up there?

It’s not coming out off th 30’s and 40’s till Sunday w rain mixed in, possible snow.... then back to 70’s by Friday so we got a rough week up here...

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Snow?
No kidding?

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

This weekends it's going to get into the 50 degree range.
I'll even need to turn on MY outdoor heaters.
How much cooler is it supposed to be up there?

I really should have named this thread “Projects for our Projects” and asked ppl to share what they had going on as well, at th very beginning of this bc that was my intention but this is first thread so rookie mistake. I know you don’t have to deal with cold like I do but I’m going to greenhouse a section and heat it experimentally to see what kind of temps I can keep. This is a pretty extreme cold snap for us, but we definitely have cooler weather to deal with than you do. But as they grow I’ve got to get them outdoors year round and greenhouse seems easiest but th unknown is how hard will it be to heat. Will a oil filled radiator style heater (or 2 for that matter) do an adequate job heating a 25’x10’ gh in some crummy weather??? So I’ll report back on that in time.

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

I know. Snow. Not often, but we’ll see....

 

[ZEROPILOT]

@Tom has designed and built some pretty fantastic, heated houses.
Myself. I've got low tech incandescent bulbs on timers in my two night houses (che are ready for this winter) and at 50 degrees, my group come indoors.....
And that's about 2 or 3 times or less every year.

 

[Anyfoot]

I'm struggling to open all the photos at the moment. But from what I can see it looks really cool.

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

This is what th inside of my heated houses looks like. I used 1” foam board insulation and covered that w th plastic wall/shelf covering that comes in 4x8. And of course made it high enough for che, one end opens as service door and has 2 tort entrance. That’s old pic before power receptacles installed and nobody out there tonight with the cold!! Total dimensions 48”x24”x30”h

I’m a pretty terrible carpenter but they get th job done!

 

[ColaCarbonaria]

So it’s amazing how many friends you have when you’re heading offshore and th yellowfin tuna are running, but when it comes time for this

All you got is crickets.[emoji849]. Ha
The last pole is still on th trailer in th driveway and cheese and effing crackers those things are heavy. Its only taken my sorry *** about week to get those moved. So that’ll be th border for raised veg garden. Started gathering some seeds for garden and some plants for th outdoor enclosure



So I ordered th Banana trees (Chinese yellow ornamental) and an Alma fig tree from nursery and I’m pretty excited about th Alma it was developed by Texas A&M U for th Southeast U.S. and is a continual cropper from June/July till first frost which I hope will be forage for everybody. Going to plant inside pen but close enough to wall that fruit falls on both sides. @Anyfoot thought of your tortoise building for this fig, everything I read is that container grown, root bound figs actually produce like crazy, so maybe that could work for you. Plan is to try and get an early spring crop of greens, then get th veggies going lil later. So going to plant fig now but I’ll keep th bananas in garage when freezes then plant them after last frost for a jump start.