Another I'm building an incubator thread.

[RepoBob]

I'm building an incubator, any help comments or critizims are welcome.
Basically using MissPrisey's idea, but changed a few things to accomidate parts I had on hand.

Basically this is the inner shell. As you can see, it made of wood. It has a 1 1/2 x 2" skeleton, with a wood flooring interior and exterior. Sandwiched in the voids you see will be 2" Pink Foam Board.

This is looking down into the bottom of the unit. There are 2 fixtures, don't know what wattage bulb yet. The black thing is a fan set about an inch above the floor and the wall. The white thing is a humidistat.

I used a piece of egg crate flourescent light cover for my shelf.The white shape hanging from the egg crate is a metal refelctor. It is between the bulbs and eggs to act as a heat sink. The fan blows above and below this to help keep a more constant temp, at least I hope so. The red thing is my thermostat. Its from some machine a buddy got it from where he works. They replaced a tank and were throwing the therm out. I hope it is sensative enough. It has a probe which I will put in a water wesel on the egg shelf.

Do I have all my bases covered. Thanks to Miss Prissy for the overall idea.

I want to place my eggs in cartons big end up, and raise one side the the other every 8 hrs or so.

 

[speckledhen]

Hi, Bob. Your big thing will be how sensitive that thermostat is, what kind of swing it has. If you can tweak it in small enough increments and figure out your bulb wattage that works best with it, you have a nice design. A humidistat? Getting fancy here, LOL. Where did you get that? How does it work? Does it measure or control humidity? Where does your water go? Pardon my ignorance on that one. I like the use of the fluorescent fixture grid for your shelf. If you also hatch in it, just put that rubbery holey shelf liner on top of it and that should work fine. Good idea putting in the foam board insulation.

 

[RepoBob]

Hi Cynthia
Yea, thats exactly what I thought about the therm. I'm hoping I can find the right balance. If not plan B is a wafer and c is a water heater therm. As far as the humidistat it controls humidity as a termostat controls heat. You set it then it turns off and on whatever device you want as the humidity changes. A friend grew mushrooms. They have to be in 85% humidity and one point in their growing cycle. He has since given up on mushrooms and a while back he was cleaning his garage. Well, I'm a scrounger. His wife gave me a half dozen cinimon rolls for taking so much of his junk. Works well because he know that if I haven't used it he can always have it back. Its about an $85 piece of equipment. Wouldn't have used it if I had to buy it. I plan for it to turn on an aquarium pump which will be feeding air stones in my water resivour to help bring up the humidity. I plan on having a water resevour on either end next to the lights.
Good idea on the shelf liner, thanks. I think I have some of that laying around. I'll have to look.

Thanks,
Bob

 

[speckledhen]

Cool about the humidistat! About the thermostat, I tried a water heater one and never could regulate it into a good range, so I just went back to the old wafer one in my Fridge-a-Bator hatcher. It works perfectly. The only problem is that we heat with wood and the metal lever out in the cold room transfers cold to the thermostat, so at night, when the house temp falls, the temp in the hatcher goes a tad higher than it does during the day. I never could figure out why till it dawned on my what was happening. After that, I covered the lever with something to insulate it from the room temps and it helped alot.
Update us on your progress with the bator. It looks good!

 

[RepoBob]

Thats what I've been reading here. It seems some people get them to work OK and some don't. Maybe its the day they are made on lol.

Bob

 

[MissPrissy]

That looks awesome.

What I tell everyone who asks (and I get email every day) you have to play the combinationof the thermostat and heat source. Every incubator I have built has needed a different wattage of light bulb and if you looked at the thermostats you will also see they are no where near the same setting. All the pieces and parts are moved around differently. It takes some experiementing to get them to work and hummmm consistantly.

 

[RepoBob]

Thank You MissPrissy. It seems like that is the hard part. Building them is easy its the tweeking and modifications that are what makes or breaks the bator.

 

[MissPrissy]

BTW, did I tell I love the title of this thread? I do! LOL

 

[speckledhen]

That made me chuckle, too.

 

[RepoBob]

Gladly trade entertainment for knowledge. If I could get the combined knowledge you two have, I'll tap dance.