The door is fully mounted and installed together with the double glazing. The door opens over the full length of the vivarium, providing entrance to the bottom section with the water containers, the vivarium itself and the light hood.
The door had to be made quite strong to hold the double glazing. I used this special feature to fully prevent fogging of the glass ( a well known problem for tropical vivaria ) and since it is build in a cold section of the house it prevents the cold draft from the front window better than single glazing. Third point is the energy consumption for heating, this will be largely reduced and the 1000 W heater installed will be rarely required due to the large amount of heating provided by the lighting.
The last reason is that my other vivarium is in the same room and only reaches 25 degrees celcius in the summer, but only 21 degrees Celcius in the winter months, which already created a lot of frog problems. Therefore this amount of attention for keeping it warm.
Ventilation slits are provided in the top in the light hood section were cool air is drawn in by the ventilators. A second ventilation slit is made in the bottom section were warm, humid air is blown out. Without this ventilation the temperatur inside becomes too high in the summer period. I have no winter experience yet but i trust the design to function better as the other vivarium.
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