Humidity issue

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Incubating coturnix day 15 so raised the humidity from 45% to 68% but it won’t go over 57% on the machine reading and continues to pump water which overflows.

Added another hygrometer and there’s a difference of 15% - 20% between the readings.

Called brinsea and did some trouble shooting over the phone, they don’t trust my hygrometer but when I put a bowl of hot water in there as they suggested it quickly rose to 75% and stopped, they think this suggests that the sensor is working but to me it confirms a 20% calibration error with the machine as I’d expect it to max closer to 95% with a bowl of hot water in there.

I’ve managed to get it to stop flooding by setting it at 57% which I suspect is probably more likely 77% but if I’m right then they’ve been at 65% instead of 45% throughout the incubation.

Yesterday I put some music on and they all danced, today at least three are still moving.

Brinsea advised against using a second hygrometer due to unknown accuracy, hoping they can send another incubator next day delivery but still waiting to find out.

My second hygrometer only fits in there with it propped open slightly so I can’t really rely on that either. Any tips or advice from anyone would be good, in a bit of a panic.

@Nabiki

 

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Brinsea just rang me back and now I’m no longer panicked, infuriated would be a better description of my mood.

They’ve looked up the rh for my location from the met office and it’s apparently 50%, I have several hygrometers and it’s actually 45% here at the moment.

They believe that my issue is with the ambient humidity in my location, and that I shouldn’t expect an incubator with automatic humidity control to be capable of raising the humidity from 50% to 65%.

I said that surely that can’t be right as 50% rh is the expected norm in any house so he asked me to hold the line and then hung up.

I’ll be asking for a full refund regardless of the hatch rate and if necessary trying again with a different brand.

 

[Ital]

Ok so I managed to get it closed with my hygrometer inside and after leaving it to settle it was only 2% off between the two, it’s a cheap hygrometer so I guess the reading was fine and I’ve not been incubating them at the wrong humidity after all.

Then brinsea rang me back and apparently they got cut off and didn’t hang up the phone, they suggested increasing the surface area of the wick which I might have thought of myself if I wasn’t in a complete panic.

Rh in the room has dropped to 35% now and the incubator is happily maintaining 68% so problem solved.

Josh from brinsea spent ages on the phone with me and was super patient with me panicking so I’ve gone back to being really impressed with the company and their incubator which is actually really well designed and put together.

Here’s a pic of the wick in its current configuration, I’ll just set it up like this from the start in future as it works loads better.