It's finally that time, I'll be starting construction on the enclosure and stand for my female boa, Janna, this weekend. She was a rescue and is currently in the process of recovering. Her current enclosure is "usable" but hardly appealing or appropriate (glass/wood trimmed display case). I'm going to harvest the glass from her enclosure for other projects including this one to save some money.
This enclosure has gone through multiple transformations over the design process. Ultimately I have come up with an enclosure that measures 6'Wx2'Hx3'D. The framing is simple and will be made with 2x2 pine, 3/8 plywood and 3/4 appearance boards for the front trim and access doors. Initially I will only be building one enclosure, but the plan is to build another to sit on top (as the image shows).
On the inside I will be using foam board to build and carve her environment. I would post a picture of the sketch I made, but it's horrible and I'm pretty sure you'd have to be inside my head to understand it. The ultimate goal is to have a multiple leveled basking area under the RHP on the right side. A 2'x2' pool roughly in the middle for water and soaking if wanted, depth is currently undetermined. Then for a hide I want to make a hallowed out tree stump with a section you can remove for access. I'm not sure how I want to build the branch or tree from the basking area to above the hide quite yet. I most likely will just use a piece of drift wood. All the foam will have multiple layers of tile grout with the final layers dyed different colors (brown, green, gray).
I would really LOVE to do a running water setup with these enclosures. My intention is to have a 10 gallon sump tank (per enclosure) in the base to filter the water. I've thought long and hard about how to make a drainage system that cannot be blocked or clogged. Ultimately what I came up with was using a standard stainless drain with a valve to control flow. If she were to block the main drain in some fashion, there will be 2 overflow channels that will tee in post valve to stop from any flooding.
Tips, comments, suggestions are greatly appreciated. I will be posting update pictures with commentary as I go. The build is going to take me roughly 8 weeks as I only really have weekends to work on them. I posted a price sheet for the build. The only things currently not listed are lighting, plumbing (if I do running water) and substrate. I think I will end up just doing ecoearth, but I'm not sure. I hope you all enjoy.
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