It's getting cold here at night (30-50F-and my apologies to those for whom these temps are a mild spring day) and I'd like to rig up a heater for an enclosure my sister has for her outside cats.
I have a small electric heater (ceramic, fan) and I'd like to get a t-stat setup that would allow the heater to come on when the enclosure gets cold, then shut off if it gets too warm. At the same time I'd like to have this setup on a timer that would keep it off during the day, say from 10am to 6 pm)
Electric heaters usualy have settings that consume 6-900 and 1500 watts, 1500 watts might cost me near $100 to run a month. Consider a small heating pad a pharmacy has, they might take 30-60 watts. The cats can sleep on it and stay plenty warm since the heat will rise around them. Put a piece of foam rubber under the pad so you dont loose the heat.
That assumes it runs and is actually heating 24/7. He's only going to run it
A - at night
B - only enough to warm up an enclosure for the cats. If that's a washing machine size enclosure, the heater won't be running most of the time even if it's uninsulated.
I've done similar and used just one of the small 1200 watt heaters that comes with a thermostat and a safety switch in the bottom to cut it off if it tip over. The only problem is that the thermostat is typically not calibrated and could be moved by a cat.
The line voltage thermostat is the next solution I was looking at using. I only need the settup when I'm away for a few days and I leave the cat in the garage with a box settup. You can get the thermostat at HD, online, Ebay, etc.
Location is unknown, but if 30-50 is close to the worst range, just providing an enclosure of reasonable size to accomodate the cats, small opening, insulation underneath and around, bedding inside, out of the wind, etc, might be all that's needed. Several cats will keep each other warm to some extent. If it can get to 15, then it's another story.
That might be a better solution too, especially if it's not the 15F environment.
I don't like the idea of pets on top of electricity... particularly not pets with sharp claws :-)
We run a 250W heat lamp in the back porch for the dogs and cats at night
- it stays quite toasty under it / nearby, even though the rest of the room that they're in will cool down to about 40F (and it's got down to
-26F outside some nights recently). Cost is somewhere between $5 and $10 per month to just leave it running each night.
I'm not sure if there's a good way of running two though, such that one's normally running, but if it fails the other will kick in - that would be handy to avoid frozen critters :-)
Possible. The rate here is 18¢. At 1500 watts, that is 27¢ an hour. If you ran the heater on high for 12 hours a day, the cost would be about $100 a month.
My guess, though, is that the enclosure can be heated with far less wattage and less hours per day. In any case, the heating pad idea is probably a better one.
A couple of cats in a small enclosure shouldnt need any heat at those temps. Ours snuggle up in their cat condo down to the teens. The secret is to not ave a lot of airspace they have to warm up.
I've had a feral cat living around my place for years. Temps here will get down below -35 deg. That's minus 35 deg. The cat not only survives it thrives. Plus 30 deg to an outside cat is tropical. If it will make you feel better build an insulated enclosure with a entrance protecting the interior from the wind. The cats will be happy and you can find something of worth to be concerned about.
I found a cat near dead on log, took him home and he went in the basement. After over a week of feeding him like a king, getting him fat, I got him out and I built him a house, but he would not use it even in a winter of -20f and 25 -35 mph winds on a lake, even with it full of food. The next summers he was always around to say Hi but never came within 50ft
Ours here in northern MN is about 8.5c/kWH for regular supply and 4.5c/ kWH for the load-controlled devices (which our 14kW of electric baseboard heat is hooked up to)
Plus "transportation" or delivery cost plus connection fee - which if you only use a little makes the price per kwh significantly higher - and if you use a lot, the rate goes up.
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