Joining two enclosures together

[shortstuff61]

Hi everyone.

I've heard of people merging two melamine enclosures together (side by side, or one on top of the other) by either just cutting a hole or fitting a proper door with a latch. Was wondering what success (and failures if any) people have had with this. Photos of your masterpieces would be great too!

I have a couple of growing Olive Pythons that I'd like to provide an enclosure upgrade for. I was thinking it might be less hassle and more cost effective to merge some enclosures rather than sell some 4ft enclosures and buy new 6-8ft ones.

I'm actually not much of a DIY person, and if I'm likely to upgrade their enclosures again in another 2-3 years it might not be the best option to cut holes in any of the walls, so I might just end up buying some bigger enclosures but I would still be keen to hear how people have gone with this idea.

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Virides]

The only failure you can have is if you completely remove the walls which are to be joined together. This means the structural intergrity of the enclosure is lost, so as you have mentioned, using a hole/door way works. The door as I see it would suit having one snake, so you can cut it off from one side or the other for cleaning or management of other things. Where as the hole is a little more straight forward. The only advice with the hole is, make sure u leave about 25mm on the top and front; and you can have it flush on the rear and bottom to the other sides, so that there is support between each enclosure. Glueing these and screwing each panel into the other will also help (ie, Screw from enc A to B and from enc B to A - opposing fixings).

 

[shortstuff61]

I see. Thanks a lot for that, it's especially good coming from someone in the know. I am suprised that there aren't a few people on here with some joined enclosures in use. I've seen at least 2-3 joined enclosures for sale over the last 12 months!

 

[mattG]

I joined a few enclosures last week for my bhps.
They were already side by side so just a couple of screws & cut a hole in each, same size hole as the vents i use incase I want to make them 2 again, now they have a hot & a cool side. It's not rocket surgery

 

[reptilife]

I bought an old bank of 3 malamine enclosures (upright) from Roy Pales.
They were only 2 foot wide so I drilled a hole in the floor of the top enclosure so my snakes could access the middle enclosure, and I drilled a hole in the floor of the middle enclosure so the snakes could access the bottom enclosure.

I wired a heat-lamp into the middle enclosure and run it quite hot, while the top enclosure gets radiant heat from the heat lamp beneath it and tends to be a few degrees cooler providing a good heat variant. The bottom enclosure receives no heat except for minimal warmth through the floor of the enclosure above, so usually remains about room temperature. This seems to provide a gradient from about 20deg through to about 32deg.
They have a hide in each enclosure with a water bowl in the top enclosure.
I find they use the top enclosure (27deg) the most.
I have been keeping Childreni in there which are obviously content... they are mating on and off for weeks now.

Originally I was using fake turf with holes cut to coincide with the enclosures access holes, but when I decided to switch to Kitty Litter this proved a problem. The litter would fall straight through the holes to the level beneath.
I solved this by cutting some plastic cups across the middle and removing the base. I pushed these into the holes as a tight fit. The cups are about an inch above the level of the malamine which allows an inch of kitty litter before it begins to fall through.
All sounds a little 'complicated' but it really wasn't. The snakes are really happy with their 'block of flats' and it's easy to maintain.
Guests here love watching the snakes stretch up to access the unit above, and slither down through the holes to get below.
I did put a perch across the lower two units to aid the snakes in reaching the access holes.

Here's a pic. Excuse the state of it... It wasn't in use at the time.