Home made incubators and egg turners

[imthegrt1]

Great idea
I will try that on mine
See what happens
Il try 25 w to stay on cont.
And 40 on a switch worth a shot

 

[practic]

...

I would not use a CFL bulb, the CFL bulb takes much longer to heat up to full temp than an incandescent, thus your temp swing of 4 degrees.  I am working on an almost identical cooler. Main difference is that I used 2 bulbs, one of which stays on constant and one that comes off and on with the water heater thermostat. Not sure how much of a temp swing I will get as I still haven't gotten my fan or my digital thermometer.
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I would like to know how that works out for you. Please post.

 

[farnorth]

To get the temps right I eventually ended up using two 25W bulbs. One on each side of the Water Heater thermostat. They are set very close to the thermostat, one on each side. One is wired to be on constantly. The other goes off and on through the thermostat. Right now it is pretty stable at 100 degrees. Every now and then it will go as high as 101.5 and as low at 97 (I'm trying to get the therm adjusted little by little to eliminate the 97 degrees but I don't want to hit 102 degrees). I figure if it hits 97 for a few minutes once and a while that is not going to make much of a difference.

 

[farnorth]

Great idea
I will try that on mine
See what happens
Il try 25 w to stay on cont.
And 40 on a switch worth a shot

I tried a 25 with a 40 on the thermostate.......but it kept climbing too high (over 102 once in a while) so I settled on 2 25W bulbs one on continuous, one on thermostat and it's working pretty good.

 

[ThaJuicyJuice]

I might be crazy, but I would think that the thermostat should be close to the eggs and the heat source much further away. Using a PC fan, the circulated air will equalize temperatures inside the incubator. By putting the thermostat next to the heat source, you will getting fluctuated results. Wafer thermostats measure convective heat very well, water heater thermostats measure conductive heat and not convective heat well. Light creates convective and radiation heat. None of these thermostats measure radial heat well. Their elements will reach the threshold temperatures and turn on and shut off as desired, but when they are so close to the heat source (light bulb) they will not effectively respond to the additional method of heat transfer.

 

[dc3085]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, water heater t-stats are a waste of your time for an incubator. The lowest cost thermostat I would use is the GQF wafer shipped its under $25. It allows for less than a full degree of fluctuation vs the nearly 4 degrees thats a perfectly modified water heater thermostat allows. I'm super handy and have always worked in the trades, so I was sure I could make the water heater thermostat work well when I started building incubators. I couldn't, not even close to what a wafer or a electronic incubator thermostat would do. It doesn't take much to hatch some eggs but it takes the right equipment to get them to hatch well. Also like someone else said make sure the t-stat is spaced from the heat source and sits near the top of the eggs. Your incubator will have thermal zones and you need to make sure that the temp where the eggs are is correct.

 

[ThaJuicyJuice]

Agreed. Wafer is the way to go. Yet I cannot discredit the water heater thermostat because so many people use it and have used it with success. The stability in temperatures is not there, so therefore the effectiveness is determined by one's opinion: either consistent same temperature or non-fretters of range 98-102. You get what you pay for.

DC3085 what is your heating element in the fridge bator?

 

[dc3085]

There is a 200w wire element secured with ceramic posts to the back wall. You can kind of see it zig zagging in the back. Incubator warehouse sells parts for cabinet incubators so I order it from there just make sure you get the 110v one not the 220v if buy them. I forget how much it was but that whole bator (thermostat, element, 2 turning racks) was less than $160 shipped so I'd guess it was about $20.

If you're handy you can take apart an old toaster oven for the element or even use a dismantled stove top burner with dial set low and the t-stat wired inline(that one is what I would call an advanced technique in the world of redneck engineering). These were things I did before I found the wire elements so cheap but they do work. Thats another reason I use the fridge it has wiring for the cold controls run out the back that can used for all of your internal wiring needs.

The water heater thermostat will hatch eggs, just like in science class they get an egg to hatch in a cardboard box with a light bulb, but success will always be limited and the size of your incubator plays a big role for a water heater t-stat. It would be impossible to maintain something the size of that mini fridge for example because while the t-stat itself only allows a 4 degree variance, the balance of the air in the bator will slingshot between warm and cold causing further variance in the primary heat zone. None of this is factoring in that most of these get used in coolerbators which get the lids opened for egg turning, throwing them yet further out of whack.

Like I said it works, but it adds a lot of variables that I don't feel are worth the headache.

 

[farnorth]

I used a water heater thermostat because it was here laying around in a box of electrical junk and it works....so was free. If I ihad the money to spend I'd get something better and it most likely would be something that sat closer to the eggs.

But, the water heater therm doesn't have to be near the eggs because it isn't a kind of thermostat you set for a certain temp on the thermostat itself...it simply turns one way for cooler and one way for warmer.

What has to be in the area of the eggs is the thermometer I am setting it with. I make the adjustments according to the thermometer so basically it is being set for the temp where the eggs will sit.

When I move the bulbs further away from the thermostat I get much wider swings in temperature. This thermostat is not meant to measure air temps....it is meant to sit against a water heater in contact with it...so I think that's why the bulbs have to be closer to it.

Currently it is cycling off and on and keeping the area of the egg basket at a nearly perfect 100 to 100.2 degrees (depending on which of 4 thermometers you look at) I am using an incu-therm plus (with probe). the probe is in the egg area and I use the incu-therm for my main readings and the others to see if all areas of the rack where the eggs will sit are basically the same temp. I also have an accucheck which agrees with my incu-therm that it is 100 degrees in there.

I am using a large CPU fan to circulate the air.

Does anyone know if a house thermostat, like the dial type would work? they are pretty cheap and can actually be set for a specific temp.

 

[dc3085]

Residential thermostats have a top end set point of 90-95 degrees. It damages the set points rendering it useless if you try to modify it (been down that road). Honestly and it would be a lot of work, you'd need one out of an appliance like a toaster oven to have anything better than what you got, without ordering.

Again wasn't trying to pick on anyone and I know it can be made to work (being a redneck I also know all about using what you have), but you see the extra work involved moving bulbs around and such, also when you need to raise humidity by 10-15% and lower temp by a half degree for lockdown they make it difficult to make fine adjustments. If you don't have eggs in it yet practice getting it up to lockdown humidity with all the vents open if you haven't already.

A lot depends on how much you use it. I have to schedule my incubators cleanings because they never turn off 9 months of the year so I'm all about making them low hassle, if the temp is off someone bumped my t-stat dial or I have a mechanical failure.