# Hedgehog Room Ventilation?



## IowaMisty (Sep 21, 2009)

We recently converted a bedroom into a hedgehog & sugar glider room. The room is in our finished basement. It has a window, so they have proper night/day cycles. We have a space heater in the room to keep it warm enough. We are having trouble keeping the room from becoming stinky though. It helps if we open the window during the day & use a small fan to blow some air out the window. But we can't do that as much now that it's getting colder outside. We recently purchased a air purifier that uses water instead of filters. Click here to see the water purifier. It came with a few scents we could put in the water to help clean the air or scent it. I do like the new air purifier, but often times it's just not enough to fight the smell. We do spot clean our cages & do a full cleaning regularly.

For those of you who have quite a few hedgehogs (&/or other animals) all in one room, what are you doing to keep the smell down?

Misty


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## Nancy (Aug 22, 2008)

With many animals in one room it is just about impossible to totally eliminate smell. When all cages and wheels are cleaned at once, the smell is gone but usually we can't/don't do every cage every day. 

Some air purifiers work well. I think it was Brenda Sandoval that had one that she found worked great. I can't remember what kind it was. 

When I downsized my hedgies into a smaller room I tried a couple of purifiers but found the draft from them always seemed to blow on someones cage. Also they were quite loud.


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## IowaMisty (Sep 21, 2009)

I can just see a USDA inspector popping in on a day where we haven't JUST cleaned cages & writing us up for poor ventilation. It seems like it gets stinky soooooooo fast.

Anyone know of a killer air purifier or something? We had an Oreck air purifier in the room before we got the water air purifier, but it didn't seem to be helping. My husband also even tried putting coals on top of the Oreck. I'm allergic to the animals too, so every time I walk in the room & the smell hits my nose, my allergies go bonkers. And our bedroom is right on top of this room & I'm starting to wonder if the reason my allergies are worse lately is because some of the fumes are getting up into our room via the air ducts or something.

Misty


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## Puffers315 (Apr 19, 2010)

What about a couple of bathroom style vents in the ceiling? You find them in hardware stores, usually its a plastic vent cover with a 5 inch of larger vinyl tube, put them in the ceiling and then run them to the outside. That way its only exchanging the air inside the room and not bringing in the cooler outside air.

On a side note, do your little hedgies got a regulated light or do you depend just on the sunlight from the window?


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## tie-dye hedgie (Dec 19, 2009)

The brand "Hunter" makes some very nice ones, called "hepa-filters." They are high quality and purify very well. However, as Nancy said, I would be worried about the cold air blowing strong drafts on the hedgies.


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## nikki (Aug 28, 2008)

Hi Misty, my hedgie room is a redone bathroom...it was actually a bathroom/hot tub room before we moved in. This worked great to renovate for the hedgies because it had a water supply and a bathroom exhaust fan already in place. I find if I run the fan for a half hour or so, it takes all the smell out but doesn't drop the temp in the room. I would love to have it on a timer but I'm still working on my hubby for that...lol.


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## IowaMisty (Sep 21, 2009)

Wow, somehow I missed these responses. Sorry about that. And thanks for your input. We did buy a water air purifier & it didn't really do the job. So then we got a stand-up air purifier & that was working pretty well, but recently it has started sounding like it's dying & it's not keeping the room as stink-free any more. We should be able to start opening windows again now that the weather is nicer some days, so maybe that will help. I don't know. It gets really bad in there. I'll have to think about the idea of making a vent that blows the stink right outside. I wonder how much work that would be for my husband. We are actually hoping not to have to stay in this house more than 5 years, so I don't know if we want to do anything to it that new buyers would consider weird. And of course I'm wondering how we would ever sell the house with a room full of animals in it. I don't know what we'll do when we want to sell. What do other people do? It's not like you can just move them to a storage facility. In the past, when we didn't have so many animals, we would just pack them into the car on open house days.

Misty


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