I can only imagine the rolling eyes... "Tom is at it again..."
It gets very hot here in the summertime. Every day is near 100 and sometimes its over 110. In winter, most nights are in the 30s and occasionally we dip into the 20s. For fossorial species like sulcatas, Desert Tortoises, and in this case Russians, going underground offers an ideal escape from temperature extremes.
Sooooooo, I've been mentally designing this contraption for a long time and finally got it built and installed. Its not pretty, but the entire thing was built with recycled wood and scraps from other building projects.
Here is the hole I dug for it to drop into:
Here is the box itself. Its about 21" tall and there is welded wire closing off the bottom.
Here I have filled the inside with the native dirt and topped it off with the coir that used to be in their inside enclosure. The bottom of the door is about 8" from the bottom of the box where the wire is, so they have plenty of room to dig in if they wish, but they can't go too far because of the wire on the bottom. I've attached the lid and done the weather stripping by this point too.
Here is the door/tunnel from tortoise perspective before the rain cover went on and everything is buried.
After burial:
Here is the shade/rain cover that covers the tunnel entrance to keep the rain out. This is a critical part of the whole operation for obvious reasons. When I install these things I check the level-ness of it all and make sure rain run-off will run downhill and not back into the tunnel entrance.
Here is the underside of it:
Here I have some dirt on it now:
Here is a view showing how the underground shelter sits within the rest of the enclosure:
And of course we have to show the torties using the new facilities:
Hope you enjoyed my little tour. Comments and questions welcome.
It gets very hot here in the summertime. Every day is near 100 and sometimes its over 110. In winter, most nights are in the 30s and occasionally we dip into the 20s. For fossorial species like sulcatas, Desert Tortoises, and in this case Russians, going underground offers an ideal escape from temperature extremes.
Sooooooo, I've been mentally designing this contraption for a long time and finally got it built and installed. Its not pretty, but the entire thing was built with recycled wood and scraps from other building projects.
Here is the hole I dug for it to drop into:
Here is the box itself. Its about 21" tall and there is welded wire closing off the bottom.
Here I have filled the inside with the native dirt and topped it off with the coir that used to be in their inside enclosure. The bottom of the door is about 8" from the bottom of the box where the wire is, so they have plenty of room to dig in if they wish, but they can't go too far because of the wire on the bottom. I've attached the lid and done the weather stripping by this point too.
Here is the door/tunnel from tortoise perspective before the rain cover went on and everything is buried.
After burial:
Here is the shade/rain cover that covers the tunnel entrance to keep the rain out. This is a critical part of the whole operation for obvious reasons. When I install these things I check the level-ness of it all and make sure rain run-off will run downhill and not back into the tunnel entrance.
Here is the underside of it:
Here I have some dirt on it now:
Here is a view showing how the underground shelter sits within the rest of the enclosure:
And of course we have to show the torties using the new facilities:
Hope you enjoyed my little tour. Comments and questions welcome.