High Tech Bators

[Lensters]

Those are what I know as fog machines. Your price of $35 is pretty good but still too much for me. I'm sure if you used a fan you could vaporize the water particles before they settled on the floor.

Today I was offered a gift of a 75,000 egg Jamesway incubator/hatcher set that cost $84K new about 20 years ago.

My friend owns an older commercial hatchery that has been sitting idle for the last 16 months and is going to convert half of the hatchery into seed storage. So he has ten incubator/hatcher sets that he needs to sell or store. As part of the deal I had to run the numbers with him for my business plan. It would cost me about $20K to get it setup at my place and it burns about $2500 of electricity a week.

That isn't bad if you are cycling 25,000 eggs a week but I can't afford that many hatching eggs and I figured that the peak of the local market is around 300 chicks/week. I guess that I'm back to the plan of building my little 300 egg bator.

 

[kingmt]

Is it possible to downsize it? Maybe to around 7K eggs.

 

[Lensters]

Quote:
The answer is complicated but it is sort of possible. The incubators are sequential, they have three carts in them, each with the capacity of 25,000 eggs You shift the carts a space every 6 days. A new one with fresh eggs going in and the one coming out has it's load transferred to a hatcher cart. Not following this process screws up the system as the design required the heat generated from the further along eggs to help stabilize the temperatures. Not really a big deal if you keep about the same number of eggs in all the carts.

To improve efficiency the tunnel would have to downsized along with nearly every component in the system. The tunnels are aluminum framed with RFP walls. The structure would be trivial.

Downsizing the heating elements and number and size of fans would be pretty easy too, though some tricks would have to be played on the computer to get it to think it still had them all. Not too difficult.

Modifying the carts to make them smaller would be a serious PITA! They have some huge number of tippers arranged in a geometrical pattern that would amaze most mathematicians and they are all operated pneumatically. This would be the hardest part of the operation by far. My question about whether Jamesway built smaller carts was answered with "Well 50 years ago, but these are smaller than you can get for any of the current models." Also for airflow the geometric patterns have to be just right and I couldn't figure out where the repetition was in the pattern so as to speculate where the would need to be cut. I think that pneumatic pressures would also have to be decreased so that the tippers don't become scramblers, but I'm an electrical engineer, so the air flow and pneumatics are a little foreign to me. I have the basic concepts down but not enough that I'm comfortable at this level.

The big kicker came when I learned that the systems runs on 240V 2-phase power. That I can understand! For me to get that to my place and to setup an backup generator for it would cost me more than the cement pads and double walled construction for keeping the area at temp.

I never did look inside the humidifiers so I can't say what it would be like to downsize them or whether or not it would be needed.

My preferred solution was to modify a hatcher to be an incubator and use an external method of actuating the turners. However, that only gets it down to 25,000 eggs unless the carts are modified. Then it is questionable if the heaters could handle eggs that aren't producing a lot of their own heat.

Seems like a serious waste for those things to be sitting idle but I'm still a long way from figuring how to get such a small portion running. He has run the numbers for buying a couple of 8,000 egg incubator/hatchers like are used by the hatcheries we BYCers buy from, but the profit margins showed a payback over 20 years. He is 55 and has decided an early semi-retirement is more to his liking.

Len

 

[kingmt]

240V doesn't mean anything to me without knowing the watts required or at least the amps. Since you said $2.5K a week (I think) I would say that is huge. I would probably look more into building my own system using those parts. That is using to much power. It would eating about 10% of your investment in just electric.

 

[Lensters]

Quote:
The peak is 350 amps. The big problem is getting the second phase of power up the hill. I originally figured $12K for running another wire up from the highway lines and changing out the transformer. For giggles I called the power company to get an estimate. The transformer is $14K by itself. About $6K for running another wire up the road. And another $12K for replacing 700 feet of direct buried aluminum wire with three conductor copper in conduit. This doesn't count the cost of repairing the neighbor's driveway after they put a trench through it. I guess in the 70s they were allowed to direct bury their branch lines instead of putting them in conduit. With the installation jumping from $20K to more than $40K I'm not going to pursue the thought further.

If your interested, he is hoping to sell them for about $10K each. You could probably swing a deal and buy one and have it shipped to you for $10K.

Len

 

[kingmt]

Quote:
The peak is 350 amps. The big problem is getting the second phase of power up the hill. I originally figured $12K for running another wire up from the highway lines and changing out the transformer. For giggles I called the power company to get an estimate. The transformer is $14K by itself. About $6K for running another wire up the road. And another $12K for replacing 700 feet of direct buried aluminum wire with three conductor copper in conduit. This doesn't count the cost of repairing the neighbor's driveway after they put a trench through it. I guess in the 70s they were allowed to direct bury their branch lines instead of putting them in conduit. With the installation jumping from $20K to more than $40K I'm not going to pursue the thought further.

If your interested, he is hoping to sell them for about $10K each. You could probably swing a deal and buy one and have it shipped to you for $10K.

Len

That just doesn't add up. Your talking about 100K watts.

That would be three phase not two & you would need your own substation. You should already have two phase in your house. It is probably hooked to your hot water tank, range, dryer, heating, & cooling systems (unless you use gas). You can make 3 phase run on 2 phase but 100w on just a incubator. I could build it for $10K including the building & it would not require that much power. I can't even see where three phase would be needed. If you was running large conveyors I might see them in use there to run those motors but no where else.

 

[Lensters]

Quote:
Your right, 110V = 1 phase, 220V = 2 phase (180 shift, inverted at transformer), 240V = 3 phase (120 shift, all must be brought in). I took power my sophomore year, back in 1989. I've done digital design my entire career.

Yep, 100KW sounds about right. It is only that high for a few hours while the eggs initially heat up. Think six big, 240V fans pushing, the same pulling on the far side and all that air being heated to 100 degrees (from as low as 0 degrees) before it makes a 30 some foot trip down the tunnel past 75,000 eggs. Out at the hatchery where he has 20 of these, there is a small substation. It supplies power to the hatchery, the five houses for the owners and managers and the seed cleaning mill next door. His backup generator is a beast of a diesel engine hooked to winding that are more than six feet in diameter and probably eight feet long.

 

[kingmt]

Quote:
We have learned power a little different. 110v & 120v are the same thing the person saying to 110v is referring to the minimum amount of voltage & 120v is the max normally running around 118v-119v so with the second phase you get 220v-240v normally between 236v-238v. When you add the third Phase it goes a little crazy & you get around 380v. Doesn't make since to me but then again I never messed with industrial electric much.

If it was me I would build a room that is insulated to about R30 & put a radiant heat in side. I would use use water to heat with. I would build a track to roll the carts on which would be built like those food carts that you roll back in the fridge. I would build a turner for each unit & make conductors for them to contact (no plugs) all the way through the bator.

 

[Lensters]

Quote:
Radiant doesn't work well as its effect drops off exponentially as a function of distance from the source. That is why incubators have a heat shield for the heating element and use convection. It would be especially bad when you have forced air cooling going at the same time. Remember that you still have to get rid of the ammonia for all those eggs.

Now that points out something that I hadn't considered! If we are going to do partial loads of eggs we could probably turn off a proportional number of fans as long as block the air flow around the empties. That in turn would cut down the amount of heat and humidification that are computer controlled. Thank you for the stimulating debate. I think we found the key for being able to run partial loads. It seems so obvious now! It's still too expensive for me to install but he can do some runs for people who have been requesting them.

Len

 

[kingmt]

Quote:
What we are using is radiant heat & then circulating the air to get rid of the hot spots. I am thinking along the lines of heating on all four sides (top, bottom, & adjacent walls) if not all 6 sides. I would still use a air circulation.

Mabey I should explain what is in my head: The plan is to plumb the ceiling, floor, & walls with recirculated heated water. It would still be heating the air.from all sides & should even out the heat.

Edit: Were we debating?