- Hey, good morning everybody.
Welcome to the blog.
How is the start of your day?
Let me know in the comments.
I was just taking a little bit of snooze here
in my iguana cage.
I tell ya, it's better than most apartments
that I've stayed in.
That's for darn sure.
The truth is, is that today we've got a lot of work to do
but it's a lot of kind of buttoning up loose ends.
We're gonna try to work on the alligator tank a little bit.
Again, gonna try to start the turtle enclosure
but a lot of things are gonna be done over the next few days
and we have again, just a lot of little buttoning up to do.
Also gonna send you back over to Lori and Noah
because they've got some stuff going on
including painting and stuff like that.
Regardless, two more days before we head back home
and hopefully everything's gonna be done
and tomorrow is the big day - the anaconda cage.
So let's just jump in because we have a lot to do.
Stuart asked me to actually grab this filter for him
so that we can start building the turtle pond.
Now these are actually Aquascape Biofalls,
so it's basically a filtration but also a waterfall
and basically it goes together to where the pond
is gonna be here and then this clips on the liner part here.
Sure we'll build a kind of rock type of situation
and rock this whole thing so you don't really even
see the filter but then all the bio filters
and stuff like that goes here.
It should be good so I have to just take this over to him
and hopefully this will be the start of the turtle pond.
It should be pretty awesome.
(dynamic music)
So this is a simulation of the wall that divides
the old Reptarium from the new Reptarium
because there's gonna be cages over here
and cages over here and we want the turtle ponds
to wrap around this so this is basically just
simulating so we can build the pond right around this.
(dynamic music)
We have a kind of outlay here on the floor
and what we're gonna do is use this board to actually
just bend to the shape that Stuart's gonna actually shoot
his stuff to actually make the form and start to
build the kind of shape of the pond and then build
out the rock work and all that type of stuff.
So that's a pretty simple way to build this pond.
That way it won't be super heavy 'cause it's not gonna be
a real like iron or glass structure, it's just gonna be
actually the polyurea and foam.
So we'll go ahead and cut these up and get this formed out
and start blowin' it.
(dynamic music)
I know it seems crazy to be building an entire pond
out of basically plywood or not even
like little tiny plywood but the fact is
this is gonna be foamed up, it's gonna be polyureic
and it's gonna be as solid as can be.
I know it seems crazy but this is how we're doing it.
I mean this stuff is like rock right here so,
it's you almost can think like pool liner, right,
where this is completely sealed right here
and then we'll actually foam, we'll put liner over it,
we'll start to build it out but this is the start
of the turtle pond and again, this is gonna be
the dividing line that separates the old Repatarium
from the new Reptarium.
This is the wall.
Cage on this side, cage on that side.
So, this is gonna be a really cool feature
and again, it's gonna be awesome 'cause there'll be turtles,
there'll be a waterfall right here.
It's gonna be really cool.
I can't wait to have this in.
It's gonna really connect the two buildings together
but I know it seems crazy that you can do this
but trust me it's gonna work.
- So I started my day painting the heat vents
that are gonna go in the ceiling, so
the ceiling's gonna be black but then when we ordered them
for some reason we got white instead of black
and I didn't think that was gonna look very good.
So the way to fix that is to paint them.
So I did that this morning.
I'm actually really happy the way it turned out
and I'm also happy because I've never done
spray paint before so after doing this I feel like
I have potential to be a graffiti artist.
(upbeat music)
- So we're gonna have Bioforms here in the turtle pond.
Big plastic box; we're gonna make that look like rock
and we're gonna be able to get to it.
We've got some plumbing there, we only need one line,
so we've got some plumbing that the pipe's gonna run
all the way around over here to the other side.
The pump will fit in down here so that will be sucking water
from here and putting it back over there and over (mumbles).
So that'll cycle the turtle pond.
The turtles are pretty messy.
They eat a lot.
They waste a lot.
So there's a bit of mess.
So this will help keep this recycled.
We cover this with rock and then this is what goes over
in between the old part of the zoo
to the new part of the zoo.
So we're gonna create another little outlet here
so we'll have another waterfall coming off here
for the turtles; they'll be able to bask as well.
So, still a bit more work to do but the plumbing
is most important and then we can cover most of that.
(dynamic music)
- After I don't even know how many hours,
I got all of the primer done
for the Reptarium,
all the walls here, all the way down there.
(sighs)
There's a lot.
And the party room, all of this is all primed
so now I can go ahead and get the colored paint
and go ahead and paint all the walls that need to be painted
and we'll be ready for the following day,
the ceiling to be installed.
- All right, so you can see kind of the idea.
Again, this is gonna be the wall here.
It's kind of all rocked out.
Obviously got to do a lot of fixturing up with this.
The next thing to do is to put the waterfall in
right here which is actually the Biofilter and the waterfall
and then of course some ledges for the turtles
and stuff like that.
It's pretty quickly turned into something
that's pretty awesome.
(dynamic music)
- I want to really sort of thank you in some ways,
because of your zoo, you've sort of pushed me to make these
a little bit more portable.
We could have built all this on site, okay?
It's great that you didn't.
You came down, you helped build the cages
and what we've done really as you said the other day,
we went from a, you know the happy homeowner's size cage,
to a cage on steroids.
- [Host] Yes.
- [Guest] You know these panels, because we have
the equipment in here, we've secured them
but all that can be done onsite with a lot less
big heavy equipment than we have done.
My equipment just makes it quicker, okay,
but onsite you can do that anyway.
(ascending whistle)
- Yeah, we've done some of that at the Reptarium.
(descending whistle)
When you come up you do a lot of that onsite.
- Yup, yup and then you took over.
All the seaming you guys did anyway.
- [Host] The learning curve is super quick,
yeah, it really is.
- [Host] Right, right, right.
- And it's amazing, it's a little bit artistic
but the seams just disappear.
- When I grab the foam gun and I'm working on this,
I've gotta make sure that I get this level,
so we'll do that.
Also we can't have any water running over the sides
so this is gonna have a lot more decorations and cover.
The more rock covering around this the waterfall
and then later on we're gonna have to make this wall
in the actual zoo look good too but we'll do that onsite.
(dynamic music)
- [Guest] We have the ability to use plants.
Now you have the ability to use moss that we're promoting.
You have vines.
You have different rocks that you can actually just attach
to cover your seams but also you can just do the seaming
with the same rock dust that we use to make it
to cover it anyway.
So it got easier since that.
I've been doing this 22 years.
I've been making habitats for that
but I hadn't made them portable of this size.
- Yeah.
- Now the fact that we've got this one over here,
it's 10 and a half feet long, eight foot tall.
The average one we've got here is six by six by five,
or four, and the fact is that most of them
probably weigh three to 500 pounds.
A pellet jack, a couple of guys, can push it through
and put it in to place.
All this has to be seamed onsite with whatever.
We've got lots of different decorations to do that
so that's what we'll do.
We'll place all this again like we did last time
and just raise these off the ground a little bit,
seam all of that, and then voila, it's up to you
to put your bedding in there,
your water bowls or feed bowls or what have you.
In some of the cases like this one up here,
I think could be great if you made one or two of these
with live plants.
- Oh, absolutely, yeah.
- And then you know cut the holes.
This is new to me I don't know why it's taken me 20 years
to think about this but this is all secured
all the way around so you just come in and cut your holes
in here and there wherever you want.
- Put your dirt.
- Fill it with soil, put a few little weep holes
in the bottom and then just you know the humidity
that you're gonna get created in here,
this'll become a rainforest
and the moss will grow itself in here.
- You can currently see that the pond
is definitely coming together.
We got some ridges over here.
Of course we'll have some ledges for the turtles
to actually get up on but they're just kind of skimming out
the rest of it with rock so that
it looks uniform all over.
It's absolutely gonna look amazing when it's done.
I love it.
I love the way it's turning out.
Again, with some of these ledges for the turtles,
I can just kind of envision the waterfall going.
You got turtles that are up on the top right there.
I mean, this is going to be a really cool transition
from the old Reptarium to the new Reptarium.
- I'm almost done.
I got this big wall done.
I got the other side wall.
I've got one more room - the massage room
that has to get painted and then after that
I think I can be done for the day.
This wall here, you might wonder why only the top part
is painted, because this wall is gonna have the rock on it.
So I just needed the top covered so whatever little bit
might peak out above the rock will not be white
but the rest of that that you see
is going to be covered with rock so yeah,
I'm just gonna try to...
So I'm going to knock out this massage room
and then I'll catch up with you when I'm done.
(dynamic music)
- All right, so everything that needs to be painted
is painted.
The next step is ceiling installation.
- I don't understand how anyone would want to do it
the old school way of like cement and all that arduous work,
plus the permanent.
Like you said, yeah, it's a few hundred pounds,
but let's say I wanted to redo a wall,
I just take this out, move it around,
redo anything I want to do.
I mean, it's silly that, you know and it's not just
certainly zoos, but even like advanced collectors.
I mean someone that wants just a badass reptile room
that's all natural rock, you could do this.
- [Guest] Yup.
- [Host] And whether you do it here and ship it
or ship you the panels and them do it,
you know it's not that hard.
The learning curve is pretty good.
You need a little bit of art, obviously you're better
than anyone else, but at the same time,
anyone with just a little skill can make
a really incredible enclosure with yours.
- We've had guys that turned their bedroom into caves
and then they have a section they created in their bedroom
where it becomes, I kid you not,
a guy with an alligator in his room and what not.
- (chuckles) Oh my gosh.
- But it is just carrying our big panels in
and you screw it on to the wall, you build yourself
a pond obviously and you decorate all around that
and you build your proper environment so they can't get out.
The point is it's really versatile,
it's really fun and easy to work with.
There's hundreds and hundreds of different models.
I basically make stuff when I'm happy and I make stuff
when I'm sad so I just keep making stuff all the time.
- Yes.
And listen, I'm telling you what guys, dead serious,
the Reptarium wouldn't have happened
and this expansion wouldn't even be thought of
if it wasn't for the fact that I met you.
- Right.
- Because I had this idea of cutting foam and doing it.
It would have never happened.
So you've facilitated this and really anyone
that just wants a really incredible enclosure -
small, large, whatever the case is, it's a no-brainer.
You got to go to Universal Rocks.
- So the foam, I mean if I show you guys the first stuff
I did, it's not that creative, it's not that good.
So as you get better and better.
So if you had tackled the habitats with your foam
when carving it, probably what you would have found
is the first one was atrocious.
- Yeah.
- The last one was okay but still not great.
The advantage of what we're doing is
we go and take molds from trees
- Actual rocks.
- Molds from rocks and then you just turn that and bend that
and turn it in to something if you need it to be different
than just what you've molded so that is really hard.
I learned how to make cement rocks.
I paid a guy to teach me many years ago
and it's really difficult to do a high level cement rock,
artificial rock
and this way you get the high level,
and the years of all the durability and the lightweight
and all the rest.
- In your 30 years of experience doing it.
- Right!
(laughs)
- Exactly, yeah, yeah.
(whooshing)
- The turtle pond is pretty much done,
just a few more ledges and stuff like that for the turtles
to actually be able to come out.
This is obviously the main Biofall, waterfall here.
There's gonna be another waterfall here
so the kids can come and not only see them
but they can feed them and stuff like that.
It's gonna be absolutely incredible.
I couldn't be more happy with the way
this one turned out for sure.
Wow!
When it's all fixed out you got to remember
there's gonna be a big timber here where the
actual opening is for the next Reptarium.
Oh my God, this is awesome guys.
I couldn't be more happy with this one.
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Have a wonderful day.
Remember you better be kind to someone.
I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.