Resurrected: Whooop! It's finally started (again). My 'Scorpion Shed' project.

Well, I have finally started. I have spent the afternoon clearing out the crap in my 'new' (it's not actually new lol, like I could afford a £2500 chalet thing for my garden lol) shed. I have painted the outside and began treating the wood inside today.

Next up tomorrow is getting rid of some rotten wood, sorting the roof out and hopefully getting the flooring down. I hope it is as nice as it was today weatherwise lol.

Here's a few pics I took today. Please excuse the bad light and bad shorts lol (forgot to bring down some old clothes so had to borrow mi dads).
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The shed

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My Dad owns to much rubbish. Here is just a small collection of crap I pulled out of the shed lol.

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The bird inspecting my work. This pic makes the room look so small lol.

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Eeek. Me and my bad shorts treating the wooden floor. The wood on the floor has really warped and bent over time which is quite annoying. I was planning on just putting lino on top but now I am wondering if there is anything I can use underneath to level it out abit. Any builders or anything on here lol??

Anyway, plenty more hours of work yet before I can even think about moving my scorps in here. I'll keep updating this thread as I go along just in case anyone is interested lol.

Callum [i]

That is awesome. I'm in the process of turning my closet into a scorp room ha ha. This makes me want a shed somethin' fierce. I wish I could help with the floor, but I am pretty useless with anything other than a bike, drumsticks, spray paint, or a barbeque... lol.

That's awesome man, I'm a 'Do it yourself-er' too but nothing like this so I can't help

Keep the updates coming

Just get a sheet of Plywood same size as the floor, cut some off it so It'll fit through the door and screw it down on the floor. That'll level it up.
Oh yeah, they are bad shorts.

how are you going to heat/power it callum? i like hat. there is a perfect little shed in my garden.. that i could live in and turn my room into animal world

At the moment I am undecided. I have sourced some decent shelving so was thinking about just getting a load of long heat mats/ heat strips for each level of the shelf.
This will obviously definately work to heat each enclosure individually but the other option is to heat the shed. I haven't a clue how I would go about heating the entire shed and how cost effective it would be though lol.
Again if anyone has got any advice please feel free to offer it lol.

we was thinking about using the shed in the garden for our inverts but instead ive just finished moving my youngest daughter out of her room into her sisters to share hehehe got a free room now only small about 2 meter squared though

You have made your kids share so that your scorps can have their own room lol?? Oh you cruel person haha lol. I would probably do exactly the same though lol.

Yer the sheds only small at 10' x 6' but it sure beats my 5' x 7' bedroom lol.

i think the heat mat idea is good. it might worth calling local zoos and things like that to see how they heat lots of vivs.

Yer, when I volunteered in the Herpotology department at Durrell Wildlife Trust in Jersey most of the behind the scenes rooms were heated with a proper computer controlled air con system. That would be awesome to have on my little shed but unfortunately way out of my budget lol.
That has reminded me though, some of the exhibit enclosures were part heated by fan heaters that could work. Hmmm, what to do lol?

Callum B wrote:

You have made your kids share so that your scorps can have their own room lol?? Oh you cruel person haha lol. I would probably do exactly the same though lol.

Yer the sheds only small at 10' x 6' but it sure beats my 5' x 7' bedroom lol.

they are only 3+5 it will be fun for them to share, i grew up never having my own room lol had to share with 2 sisters that was only bad once you get to our teens really lol, i didnt really move her just for that reason lol, she seems to be having night terrors atm and wakes up about 5 times through the night screaming (which is annoying... *yawn* so im always tired) kinds hoping she will feel more comforted being in a room with someone else.

i would find a way of heating the whole room if your keeping things that all need the same kind of temps, gotta be easierthan heating individually surely, maybe use heat matts to as a back up, it gets mega cold in winter, what sort of power supply do you have to the shed?

i would do that use some kind of heater to heat the whole shed then if any need it a tad warmer stick a matt on them too

I'll stick to a room full of scorpions for now lol. I don't think I could handle screaming kids at 3 a.m. yet lol.
ATM the power supply is rubbish i.e. two dodgy plugs fitted by some unqualified bodge job bloke who used to rip of my Grandparents lol. That is all going to be sorted over the next few weeks though and lots of plug sockets and a proper fuse box will be fitted that won't explode/die/set on fire the second I use more than a 25w bulb lol.
Yer, I probably am going to have to heat the room anyway. If we have a repeat of last winter even with heat mats the air temp alone will make keeping the enclosures warm very difficult. If I can keep the inside of the shed 15c or above throughout the year (this is average temp. of my bedroom) the heat mats should be efficient at heating the enclosures.

Ha if the cops do one of those aerial heat survey things they do to see houses that are giving off unusually high amounts of heat normally coz they are growing illegal things they will be knocking in your door to check it out make Sure your not growing cannabis Lolz

Well that would be a hell of a lot more profitable than keeping scorpions lol (well, before the police found out anyway lol). In fact, I am sure I read that the police had actually come knocking on a guy who had a heated reptile shed in his garden on another forum.

It happens all the time over here too. I just read an article about how the police raided some ladies house that had a heat lamp shining on her guinea pigs! lol our tax dollars at work serving the public and keeping those drug dealing fuzzies off the streets.

Haha really? Bet they was surprised that it was inverts and not drugs

Nice one mate, i'm interested in seeing your progress on this. Surely every shed has to have a few spiders though

Yeah expect a visit from the police in the winter lol

Hmm I have a shed

police came here a couple of times years ago cause of "Hot Roof" but I invited them in, took them upstairs and they were fine. 1 even bought a Chile Rose off me a few weeks later for His Son.

By far the most economic and safest way to heat the shed is use LOADS of insulation (Kingspan is the best stuff, thicker the better) and an oil filled radiator. Get a decent one with thermostat built into it and that should be fine. You can also rig it into a second thermostat as a double safety.
Heat mats dont work for loads of tanks cause you need loads of electric points, loads of mats= lots of cable and a lot of thermostats.
The heat cables used in gardening are good but a bit fiddly and they dictate the room's layout to some extent.
I much prefer the 1 big heater situation.

I have looked into kingspan and I don't think I can afford it. I have permission to nick a load of 2.5cm polystyrene sheets from work free of charge. My plan is to fix one layer directly onto the walls then put a layer of greenhouse insulation (it's basically slightly better quality/tougher bubble wrap) on top then fix another layer of polystyrene on top of this. I am then going to cover the walls with something that reflects heat. Either the stuff you put behind radiators or a load of tinfoil lol. Finally, I will cover it with 6mm plywood to make it all look tidy.
This is the best method I can come up with that will fit into my budget lol. If anyone thinks I should do things differently please shout out lol.

Oil filled radiator sounds perfect. My only worry is how much it will cost to run????

Finally, is it feasible to use one thermostat to control a few heatmats i.e. instead of plugging the mat into the stat use an adaptor and plug a few mats into that? I'm sure I read on the boxes of the stats I have now this shouldn't be done but I thought I would check anyway lol.

Sorry Jamie but there will be no spiders in the shed. I'm not overly fussed about keeping them and even if I was the gf wouldn't be having none of it lol

Well from that picture the wood floor doesnt look like a subfloor, meaning it doesnt look like the walls are sitting on it. If you pry those up you should expose the subfloor, get 1/2'' or 3/4'' ply wood and heavily staple it or screw it down to the subfloor then put your lino down.

If you put plywood on warped/warping wood it'll screw up the flooring that is put on top of the plywood eventually no matter the amount of screwing and/or stapling.

Nice shed though, looks solidly built.
<--Carpenter by trade.

*edit*
Or if you want that wood type floor look just level it off by screwing the warped parts or chipping the parts sticking up off then use hardwood floor lacquer. Might look alot better than just putting down lino.

Hi chrome,
underneath the flooring there is lengths of wood raising it off the badly laid concrete slabs that the shed sits on. The walls of the shed sit directly on to the slabs which over time have had mud and crap pile up next to them. This has meant that parts of the walls have been kept very damp for a long time and water has soaked into the wood on the floor and bent and warped it. Rather annoying lol.
I am in two minds as to whether I just lay lino on top of the existing floor and just accept it is never going to be perfectly level or, lay some polystyrene down and then put plywood on top. The idea is that the softness of the styrene will level out any of the kinks in the existing floor and keep the ply and lino above flat. Don't know if this will work lol. What do you think?

It's been a while since I have posted on this thread so I thought I would update it lol.
I have scrapped my plan of polystyrene sheets as my worked turned a bit funny about giving it me (the boss came back from holiday lol) and it would have been a faff/messy to fit plus a fire hazard lol. Instead I have decided to use 50mm Celotex, a layer of greenhouse insulation and maybe a thin layer of wool insulation if I can get hold of some cheaply. I think I am going to use a double layer of Celotex for the roof and then the whole lot will be covered by a 6mm layer of MDF or plywood.

The greenhouse insulation is up and the Celotex should be arriving any day now. I will get some more pics up when I have made a bit more progress lol.

And like I said, it's not going to be finished before the BTS lol. I never do anything on time lol. My sister is charging me £10 to store anything I buy at the show in her room!!! But it's my only option until the shed is finished lol. F***in sisters lol

Wooop,
My insulation has arrived!! All £180 worth of it left on the front of the house as my Dad wasn't in!! Very lucky it was still there considering the area the house is in lol.
It's going top be a busy day tomorrow lol

Nice! Enjoy the build. There's nothing more satisfying than creating something with your own hands. I so wish I had a shed!