Home-made incubator v2.0 - advice and suggestions?

[suchafunkymonkey]

Hi all.

I've made some improvements to my home-made incubator (forced air -3rd image, backup thermometer + humdity display) - see pics and I'm looking for suggestions/improvements before I set some more eggs to hopefully hatch this time round.

On my last attempt, the humidity was all wrong. So I bought a humidity "controller" from ebay which turned out to be a humidity sensore switch and can't control the humidity by itself - only switch on a mains-powered device. Does anyone know of anything that I could use with that?

I plan on using egg trays this time and using a wedge to tilt the whole incubator rather than turn the eggs. This will hopefully help me control the humdity better Anything I should be wary of/take special notice?

The temperature is still controlled by a thermostat which seemed to work pretty well last time.

I usually fill the water tray with marbles and the incubator was only warming up when I took the photo so don't worry about the temperature reading!

 

[quintinp]

What type of thermostat are you using? If you could get some pictures of the temperature control of the incubator.

Check out my pages, I have a cooler bator, and Fridge incubator.

 

[Arielle]

I'm curious about the combination of marbles and water. Are the marbles a heat sink, or do they assist with humidity?

I usually dry incubate and track humidity to prevent it from staying low like 25% for very long and know if it's creeping up to 50% because of several rainy days. The real test is the proper development of the air cell and moisture loss at 12-16%, depending on source.

 

[suchafunkymonkey]

Quote:
It's a digital controller (on top to the incubator in pic one). There's a probe in the middle of the incubator (pic 2). It's set to 37.8 with a 0.3C tolerance.

 

[suchafunkymonkey]

Quote:
The marbles are there to stop the peeps falling in and drowning in the shallow tray.

The normal humidity with the light on is around 45%, but I don't seem to be able to increase this with trays of water which is why I'm tryng to add a humifier and controller.

 

[Flawedatdesign]

Well I used a similar type of set up my second to last hatch. My humidity was a fight. I figured out that the wood was taking in most of the moisture so I had to seal the inside of the bator. I painted the inside with a latex paint. If it's holding temps I wouldn't change the set up to much.

 

[suchafunkymonkey]

ok. I've lined the inside of the incubator with bubble wrap to try and limit the amount of moisture the wood can absorb. I've stuck a new bulb in and once its at temperature, I'll stick some eggs in and see how this lot goes.

 

[Flawedatdesign]

Did the plastic help with the humidity?

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

You can use your humidity sensor to turn on a aquariam air pump with the air stone in your tray of water. That will raise the humidity.