Help! Homemade incubator with thermostat problem

[Ron Miller]

Just finished making my first incubator. It is an old styrofoam meat cooler 37hx23deepx27wide. with a 34 watt light bulb as heat source, and a hot water heater thermostat. Has a fan blower out of an old air purifier. Heats up fine and shuts off at 99.5 or 100, Problem is it stays off until temp drops to about 93 ( at least 25 minutes) then comes back on. My questions are: Why doesn't it come back on before 93 deg, and why does it stay off so long? I know it's all in the thermostat but what do I need to do? Won't this be bad for the eggs ( chicks)? HELP!! can anyone help me???

 

[inkypinky]

Im using a water heater thermostat as well and it definately worried me to see the temp go above then below my desired setting, but Im at day 12 on my batch and they are developing just fine, my shut off temp is about 102.5 and then will drop to 95 or so before kicking back on- i found info on the web explaining that because the thermostat is for water- the same principal will apply to the inside of the egg- its staying about the right temp iside due to the liquid changing temps much slower than the surrounding air- kinda made sense to me- but yeah- I was seriously FREAKING out when I started it up and put my eggs in and it went nuts- i figured the eggs would never start and were probably ruined getting such fluccuations -...hope that kinda helps-

 

[kenazzo2000]

i had that problem so i bought a digital thermostat for my homemade incubator and now its working just fine

 

[MissDeb]

You can move your thermostat closer to your heat source. I have mine sitting in the cooler-bator backwards so the plate faces the light bulb...I only
have a 2 degree fluctuation now...
Kennazo, where did you find a digital Thermostat that didn't need that special plate to be wired? We also couldn't find any
that went over 90 degrees?