Homemade incubator not holding heat

[Michellebrooke91]

I have a homemade incubator I bought from a guy. It was holding at 99.5 degrees… under the heat coils. I can get the top and very bottom of the incubator to the correct temps. However, the middle where the trays go is lower than the rest. We tried raising the temps to keep the middle warm. Top at 105, bottom at 107 and the middle was finally at 99. But I know this shouldnt be happening. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Dandichook]

My SO and I just got done fighting the same battle with our own homemade incubator, which seems to be constructed similarly to yours.

What we found helped:
Plywood and plexiglass are terrible insulators. Get some 3/4 inch styrofoam insulation (we got packs of it at home Depot as garage door insulation) and adhere it. We put ours on the inside using silicone caulk, but you may not have room, so you may want to install on the outside.

Where you can't fit the insulation, you can get rolls of foil bubble insulation, which are radiant barriers--better than no insulation, but much better used in addition to proper insulation on the inside of the Styrofoam. We secured ours in place with foil tape.

We then taped all remaining internal exposed plywood (with too little clearance for the foil bubble radiant barrier) with strips of the foil tape to act as radiant barrier.

We then made a window cover out of the bubble foil radiant barrier doubled over and taped at the edges and secure that over the window when we're not looking inside, mostly to help save power.

After doing this and making a few adjustments to the way our fan faced, we were able to get the difference between top and bottom to within 0.5-1 degree F of one another.

Good luck!