INDOOR Underground Housing

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Livingstone

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Hey Tom,

Fantastic job, but I have to ask, how do you get them out of the bottom when you need to bath them??? And are you anticipating having to add water to the underground mixture?

DeanS said:
If I were doing this...and I'm not;), I'd drill very small holes in the bottom of each PVC pipe...and have a feeder opening at the surface...this way you could pour just enough water from different locations to ensure subterranean moisture. Very ingenious thinking Tom!

Dean asked the latter question and I didn't read an answer (I might have missed it).

Thanks.
 

Tom

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Livingstone said:
Hey Tom,
Fantastic job, but I have to ask, how do you get them out of the bottom when you need to bath them??? And are you anticipating having to add water to the underground mixture?
Dean asked the latter question and I didn't read an answer (I might have missed it).
Thanks.

I can reach my arm pretty far in there from either side, so I can get to them if need be. My plan is to catch them above ground when I need them.

I don't anticipate needing to add water much down there. The top is mostly covered and there is not much evaporation. If I do need to water it. I can run water down the sides or just dump some down there with a cup or hose.
 

Tom

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I sold them. Somebody needed them and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. They were all using the underground portion, but only occasionally. With my next round of babies, I'm going to try doing it with only half of an upper deck.
 

Arizona Sulcata

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I like this idea. My only beef with it is lack of UV rays however like I said, overall I like it. Do you keep any food or water below or is that strictly at the top level? Also how are the temps down below? I could imagine it would be rather cold, how do you keep temps up? Id love to give this a try!
 

Tom

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They still went out for sunshine nearly every day. I seldom bother with artificial UV in my indoor enclosures. Just don't need it when they get so much real sunshine all year.

No food or water down below. All of that is above ground.

The whole room is heated to 80 all the time. It creeps up to 90 in the summer, but never below 80. The temp down below was usually 1 or 2 degrees cooler than ambient.

I would love to see someone else give this a go. This or something similar. I really think that something like this is going to work very well for raising smooth healthy babies. I'll always be tweaking and trying to improve upon the idea.
 

Arizona Sulcata

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Sounds great. I'll just have to figure out a heat solution for mine. I don't have a room that stays that warm. I'm sure I'll figure something out though, thanks again.
 

Tom

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Please do. Modify the design to suit you. And please show lots of pics to inspire the rest of us. Somebody somebody is going to stumble onto the perfect baby set up and I hope they share it. At the very least I pick up all sorts of helpful tidbits from everyone else's designs. maybe there isn't a one size fits all perfect set up, but the more we learn the better.
 
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