BROODER HEAT LAMP SAFETY REMINDER! Show us your SAFE set-up!

Tis the season for the hanging of the heat lamps to keep our new babies warm, so what better time to remind ourselves of the importance of heat-lamp safety? Please feel free to add your own suggestions and pictures of how you secure YOUR brooder lamps as a good, safe example for others to consider.

In the news this week is a sad reminder to us all of the potential consequences if we're not super-diligent:

http://www.wfsb.com/news/23146938/detail.html?treets=hart&taf=hart

Anybody have pics to share?

I don't have pics, but I would love to see some. I am about to set up the "nursery" for my chicks-to-be which will be arriving in a couple weeks. I would love to see what containers you are putting the chicks in and also how your light is set up. Please add pics!

My eggs won't hatch for another 14 days, so I don't have my brooder set up just yet, but I can show you my lamp set-up. I shudder to think what my first heat lamp set up looked like, knowing what I know now.

In the winter when I set up my brooder in the basement, I use an "eye" and screw it into a post in the open ceiling, then I attach the lamp to it in the same way I attached it to the "L" bracket below. These photos show my non-winter, garage brooder lamp set-up.

This photo shows the "L" bracket my husband mounted to a stud in the wall of our garage. He extended out from the wall to hang over the point where one end of the brooder box will be (attaching the additional piece with screws to the "L" bracket).

I like to attach the lamp with two tethers (a chain and the pink rope) so that if one fails, the other will keep the house from burning down. I attach the lamp by looping the chain and rope THROUGH the lamp's clamp.


This photo shows that I attached the chain to the "L" bracket with a blue carabiner clip. The pink carabiner clip is the way I adjust the height of the lamp. I brought the chain up around the top of the "L" bracket and attached the pink carabiner clip to the chain. When I need to raise or lower the lamp, I do so with the pink clip, moving it up or down the chain as needed.


This last picture just shows where I threaded the chain and rope through the clamp part of the lamp. I NEVER use the actual clamp (anymore) to secure the lamp. Too easy for it to fail.

I would not use the clamp part as the part to hang the light. I've had a few lamps where the clamp part of the clamp that attaches to the light fails at the joint where the ball is, thus having the lamp fall off from the clamp apparatus . I would use that wire hook holding the lamp to hang the light if you hang it like you have.

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I thought of that too, but that hook is pretty easy to pop out of the lamp shade. Might be a good idea to attach the clamp to the chain and the rope to the clamp end as I have it now. I don't want the rope too close to the heat of the lamp. Good point.

The hook part on mine is bent on the inside side of the shade so it can't come off.

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Pictures! Got pictures? Let's have 'em!

Heres my heat lamp set-up. Note that the chains are attached to the loop, not the clamp attachment. Also, the stands have wide legs and are balanced, not easily tippable. very easy to make, also.

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How did civilized folks get by before zip ties?!