Help! Janoel 12 temp going too high...

[Jay Cartay]

Hi all,

This is my first time using this incubator and my first attempt at hatching eggs ever.

I have two issues at the moment. 1). My incubator is flashing "H" on the LCD display. What does this mean? I've not seen anyone else mention it.

2). I've set the temperature as 37.5 but it's stuck on 38.2/3. It's in a cool ish room but ambient temperature here in the UK today is just below 30 degrees.

Am I doing something wrong or do I have a faulty unit? I've added 100ml of water in the bottom.

 

[sourland]

Have you done an on line search or contacted the company to trouble shoot ?

 

[Jay Cartay]

Yes I've searched lots. For some reason the H thing isn't mentioned anywhere. I've now worked out that it's because the temp is higher than the one it's set at.

Is the fan inside just too puny to cope with a high ambient temp? What do people in hot countries do??

 

[Jay Cartay]

So the ambient temp in the room the incubator is in right now is showing 23.8 degrees. The incubator is set to 37.5 but is climbing back to 38.3 after me taking the lid off.

Is this unit faulty or am I doing something wrong?

 

[Jay Cartay]

OK so it also appears that this unit is reading the temperature 5 degrees out from the little reptile thermometer I've got. I really daren't put the eggs in here now. The temp is being taken from approximately the same place.

 

[Trisseh]

Have you calibrated your additional thermometer? And remember to take the measurement at the top level of the eggs as well. I have 2 of these incubators and I completely ignore the number that it says on the machine itself and just adjust it to it reading correctly on my additional calibrated thermometer. The manual is pretty terrible but you can change the “high” limit in the settings. It doesn’t do anything though, if it is reading high, so if you don’t care about the flashing, just ignore it and set it to match your calibrated thermometer. Lol.
if you’re using the turner the temp will change somewhat on your add’l therm because the fan is not the best. I’ve found the most success in removing the turner, using only the “hatching” tray and hand turning the eggs.

 

[Trisseh]

oh, and it also will change based on the humidity in there. The temp usually reads lower when the humidity is higher and vice versa.

 

[Jay Cartay]

oh, and it also will change based on the humidity in there. The temp usually reads lower when the humidity is higher and vice versa.

Thank you so if the humidity makes the temp lower, just turn it up on the unit until the other thermometer is happy?

I haven't calibrated the other one, no. I don't know if you can! What I do have, are a set of little humidity meters/thermometers arriving tomorrow so I can put one of those in and then see which two are reading similar I guess?

 

[Trisseh]

You really need an accurate thermometer or you’re just guessing. And that’s not a good way to hatch - you might not have anything hatch if it’s too far off!

This article may help you. Even if you can’t adjust the reading, if you know how far off it is you calculate the difference and adjust accordingly.

I have found that the temp increases a bit when the humidity drops. So if I have it set and it’s reading 37.5, with say a RH of 40%, and it drops to 20%, the temp increases by 0.3-0.5 degrees. It’s important to test and learn your incubator prior to setting eggs but if you already have them in there you’ll have to play with it and hope they do ok.

I did the exact same thing with the first batch of eggs I got cuz I was so excited. None of them hatched because the temp was never stable and was bouncing all over.

 

[Jay Cartay]

This is a nightmare. I've put the new thermometer/hygrometer in. It's about 1 degree off my other thermometer but near enough that I think the incubator temp is the one that's wrong.

So I can't up the temp on the incubator above 39.5. It'll still only be 34 degrees if the other thermometers are correct.