Heating storage cabinet

As I have no space that is of adequate temperature to store fermenting buckets and beer that has just been bottled and is maturing, I am going to build am insulated box that will hold 2-3 buckets and appx. 100 bottles of beer. Has anyone here ever done anything like this? One idea I had was to heat it with a few 100 watt incandescent light bulbs, controlled by a thermostat. I would probably wire the thermostat in series so it would turn the bulb on and off as needed to keep the box at temperature. I would imagine that those would keep the box heated nicely, especially because my basement is 60 degrees, so maintaining around 70 shouldn't be a problem. My only concern is obviously the light emitted from the bulbs. Will this hurt the fermenting beer? If so, can I use a heatlamp of some kind that doesn't emit UV light? Thanks for your suggestions.

 

I'm thinking of doing something similar as well. From what I've read here, a lot of people have used those ceramic heat lamps that are normally used for reptile habitats. They won't spoil the beer, are less of a fire hazard than a space heater, and can provide sufficient heat for the fermentation chamber.

 

I use my mostly unused basement bathroom as a heated fermentation area now. My basement is typically around 64-65°F which is great for ale, but some brews I want to raise the finishing temp up to 80°F to kick up the attenuation (Think quad, saison, barleywine, brett). I use a small honeywell 1500W space heater to heat the room. I hooked it up to a kill-a-watt... costs around $1 a day @ $.0206/KwH to heat that room 15F over ambient.

You could build a small insulated box, put a similar space heater in there and probably save yourself a few bucks. They have built in thermostats so its an easy install. There is no problem with light either. The duration is too short to justify me making a fermentation box. It may be worth it if you dont have a room you can close and heat... and want to hook up a cooling source at some point to reduce temps.

 

I have a cabinet sort of like what your talking about. I have one purple heat bulb (walmart 5 bucks) hooked up to a baseboard heater thermostat (lowes 19 bucks) that maintains a 63 degree temp constantly in my unheated 32 degree garage no problem.