[bumbleyjoe]

One viv you dont really notice, its when you start adding more and more reps to your collection that it starts to be a problem. Especialy when you first move out of your parents house and realise that the rent you had been paying them for the past few years really basically only covered the cost of the reps and now you have to pay it all yourself!:blush::whistling2:

 

[bumbleyjoe]

Bear in mind that (if my memory serves me correctly) the higher the wattage of an electrical device, the more it usually costs. I stand open to correction here (years since I did physics) but certainly heat mats appears to be low wattage devices, and I don't think ordinary bulbs on timers use much power either. I'm not sure about UV lights running off their transformers, but again I don't think it's that much. Maybe if you were keeping a load of Uromastyx at their favoured baking levels of heat with several UV lights then you might notice it.

The sort of devices that use up a lot of power are (I think) things like room heaters. Theoretically if you left an electric kettle on for hours you would probably also notice that on your bill (assuming of course it didn't burn out after the water had boiled dry). I saw the power surge from one of these knock down a load of PCs after it overloaded the fuse on that particular circuit - most embarrassing as I was the one who had plugged it in to make a cup of tea. :lol2:

Lol, i blew up a kettle once, it rattled round like crazy and then went bang! scared the life out of me and made a terrible smell!:lol2:

To reassure you, at one point I was running about ten vivaria, mostly with UV and certainly all using heat mats and bulbs, and even then I did not get any nasty shocks on my electricity bill - which isn't to say of course that it wouldn't have been lower without any of the animals. But the point is that they don't incur massive running costs in terms of energy.

I guess it depends on what you keep, If you have 10 vivs all on low wattage heat mats and uv tubes (again low wattage) then you wont notice it much. But If those 10 vivs all have 150watt Heat bulbs and a uv tube the you are obviously going to notice it a hell of a lot more. It all depends on the reptiles you keep, the requirements they have and the equipment you use.

But If its just one viv (even if it had high wattage equipment in it) you wouldnt really notice it on the bill!