Should I worry about my heat lamp and my cardboard box?

[FreakyChickenLuver]

Will it catch it on fire. It's not laying on it, its about half an inch to an inch away from the edge. Should I be worrying?

 

[98 gt]

just be smart, then no problems

 

[98 gt]

does cardboard feel overly warm/hot??? maybe moving it towards the center just a bit may help...

 

[IN-farmgirl]

Make sure it will not slip or fall. Leave it on for an hour and feel to see how hot the cardboard is. It IS worth worrying about...you should always monitor a heat lamp when it is around anything that can catch on fire.

 

[greenslope]

I need to say yes worry
I did all that i thought i needed when the temps got cold afew weeks back and put in a light. I found my coop fully involved at 9pm and there was no hope to get my sons checkens out. I was lucky that he was at his mothers house that night. And was not home to hear them all screeming as i ran out the door.
We can only assume that one of the birds hit the light and it broke and that started the fire. And with the hay and shavings it took no time to go up and be a total loss. 8 fire men two trucks the service truck and two cops to get it out and clean it up. And then there was the smell... i got sick to say the least. But I did what i needed to keep my birds worm when temps hit -9 and -10 for 5 and 6 days and I will have a heat eliment in my new coop but it will be radiant and not a light.
do more to protect your birds and look into other heat eliments then a light it will be better for you and them.

 

[IN-farmgirl]

Quote:
How horrible! I'm sooo sorry for you!

 

[moduckman]

How big is the box? In the house I place my birds in a #1 washtub with a heat lamp attached. After the bird is good and dry and doing well I take them to the brooder.

 

[amcstay]

My husband constantly worried about our heat lamp so after the first week we turned it off at night when we went to bed at 10 or so (the were in a small bathroom) and then we put the chicks in a sunny window when we left for work in a small room. Of course we do live in the tropics so it is much warmer here.... But I would worry a bit, unless of course you are home all day with them and can watch the lamp.

 

[patandchickens]

An inch or two is MUCH too close.

The little instruction pamphlet that came with my heatlamp says "no closer than 18" to combustible materials". Cardboard is a supremely combustible material. And frankly I'm not real comfortable with 18" even, having been around livestock enough to see and know of a LOT of barn fires started by heat lamps.

Move it further away. And/or substitute lower wattage bulb. If this requires you to use two lamps, or a larger box because of the 'circle of heat' getting larger, so be it. Make sure the lamp is suspended in two TOTALLY INDEPENDANT ways -- attached to different parts of the lamp, with different chains, attached to different independant parts of your ceiling or whatnot. That way if one fails the other will likely catch the lamp. Don't just rely on those two wires across the front to prevent a fire if the lamp falls.

And set up a smoke detector on the ceiling where the lamp is, unless it's somewhere super dusty like a coop where you'll just get a million false alarms.

Really. Heat lamps CAN set things on fire, and they DON'T need to be touching 'em!

Good luck, have fun, be careful,

Pat

 

[Sissy]

I used a cardboard box
with a piece of metal wire over the top kept the lamp from
falling in and the cats out
but I only used a 40 watt blub ,
if they are in the house that should do fine,
for their first 3 weeks then into the out door coop
with a 60 blub or 125 watt heat lamp.depending on ur weather.