Unexpected heat wave

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yuraha

New member
Joined
Jan 10, 2017
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3
Hello everyone, i am a proud father of a boy for about 4 months now, and a sudden heat wave got to where i live this past 4 days, going to almost 82-84 degrees! sadly my home can't have a normal AC installed, so while i look for a portable one to buy would one of those "diy air conditioners" made using a bucket, Styrofoam and a fan near his cage work?

I'm so worried these past days i didn't even go to work, meaning i can't get the money to buy a decent ac if this goes one :(
 
Wow what an emergency. Yeah get an AC unit as soon as possible. I have seen some of those bucket conditioners I think it would be worth a try to get something going as soon as possible. Remember nothing that relies on perspiration to cool like a fan will work because chinchillas do not sweat. It needs to be some sort of active cooling like the ice in the bucket being blown through with the fan. Try to act quickly they have a winter coat that can't be taken off.

A garnet rock can work too, granet stays under room temperature and they can lay on it to cool off but not enough to deal with 80 plus degrees
 
Any of those dyi air conditioners will work in a pinch so long as it causes the air temp in the room to drop and you don't have the fan blowing at or on the cage. As said chins can't sweat, so a fan will only blow warm air around, and if you blow air at the chin it will get sick. The other problem with using those dyi ones with the bucket of ice and a fan is that you are going to be raising the humidity in the room, not only should chins stay in temps below 70-75 F but also they need to be kept in below 50% humidity.

Other ideas for temp fixes, like for a day, is using bottles of frozen water wrapped in fleece (so the chin doesn't get wet and can't chew the bottle) and put them around inside the cage. You will basically need to switch them out every couple hours for solid frozen ones. You can also in addition to the wrapped ice bottles, you can freeze stone tiles to put in the cage for the chin to sit on, but once again those will need to be changed out when they warm up, so every half hour to an hour maybe. Nothing other then an ac is really going to work long term.

Do you have any friends or family that have ac that you can take the chin to until the heat wave is over or until you get an ac? I don't know about down there, but some vets offices have ac and can board animals too.
 
my chin is on a wooden vivarium i made out of a huge closet, and during the day he always sleeps and the hidey on the floor. So if i had bucket with some frozen water bottles, could i direct it to blow to the uppermost area(where he doesn't go during day)? so the vivarium would still get a bit of fresh air?...assuming it works okay-ish enough.

Sadly here in Brazil eletronics have taxes up to 200%(yes, 200%) and even a used ac from 10 years ago costs more than 500 US dollars, converting. so i have to save quite a lot more than necessary to be able to buy an ac.
 
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