Accurite VS Mercury

[farmerchuck]

I bought an ACU*RITE wired digital thermometer / humidity meter at Walmart tonite. It has a probe attached to the meter by a wire. I figured this would be Ideal because I can read the meter and reset the memory without having to remove anything from the incubator.
It's been in for 3 hours now. It's reading a steady 51% humidity (yeah ) but only 95 degrees or so. I have 2 of the mercury style thermometers in the bator that came with them from miller. They are both reading 99.5 on the nose.
I removed the probe from the bator and placed it under my brooder heat lamp....soared to 114.7 !!! The Acurite is obviously working but I don't trust the temp number. I had good success in the past with just the miller thermometers but wanted to monitor humidity this time.
Anyone had any issues with the Acurite thermometers ???

 

[speckledhen]

They've never been off by much. I have two of that model. Remember that the probe only reads temp, not humidity and the entire unit has to be in the bator to read humidity. Those thermos that come with the bators are not mercury, they're alcohol, not anywhere near as accurate as mercury. The probe on the Acurite does best when inside a water weasel or completely stationary inside the bator, not dangling, I've found.

 

[turnerstar31]

last i knew mercury was not allowed to be used in thermometers.

 

[twigg]

Nah .... you can still get mercury thermometers, but they are expensive and harder to find.

Walmart and co no longer carry them probably because the alcohol ones are perfectly good for normal use, and don't carry either the HazMat problems, or the product liability worries.

A well calibrated digital is far more versatile tho. Easy way to calibrate is to get one or two of the $8, fast response medical thermometers from the store. Warm a ball of modelling clay in the incubator, them take it's temp with your probe AND the med thermometers. These are usually accurate to within 0.2F, and are in just the range we need.