Hot water incubator

[ReapingWillow]

Hi everyone, I’ve seen incubators in foreign countries that involve using a thermostat and some kind of water heater to keep a bag of hot water at the optimal incubation temperature. The eggs sit directly on the bag. Has anyone made any of these themselves? Or knows of a brand that makes incubators like this? I think I’d like to make an incubator like this myself but it’s hard to do research on this as hot water incubator brings up nothing hah.

 

[quintinp02]

Sounds like some of the reptile incubators I’ve seen. They usually have an aquarium heater that heats a tub of water and the reptile eggs are nestled in perlite inside of a plastic Tupperware container that is just floating in the temperature controlled warm water.
Sounds like a neat project. Perhaps if you used flexwatt heat tape wired to a thermostat that had a probe, you could put the probe between 2 gallon bags of water that were resting on the heat tape. Most digital thermostats have a <1 degree temperature variance so you could make it so the water bags stayed at a constant 99 degrees. Making sure the bags of water stayed sealed would be my only concern. Using one of those kitchen bag sealers you could Fill up a bag of water and then permanently seal it. Your eggs could all rest on top of the top bag of water.

that’s an idea, they’d need to be hand turned but the concept seems like a more natural way of incubating eggs versus hot air chambers which most incubators are.

 

[Mellowmalt]

There is no aquarium heater that goes up to 102F. You could theoretically use a 500 watt immersive kettle heater, hook that up to a thermostat. Warm up a plastic tub like that with another smaller tub that floats on topof the water. Few air holes in the smaller tub that will hold the eggs.

Should work just fine but not much easier or cheaper but it should hold temps very steady

The only downside I can see is that although water holds temps steady, it does not readily give off heat, when you open an incubator the incubator runs at full power for 5 mins afterwards to get temps back up quickly.

In a water incubator if you were to open the incubator (for tunring eggs for example) then the heat would all escape and it would take the water much longer than 5 mins to heat the small tub to the right temp again.

 

[ReapingWillow]

Sounds like some of the reptile incubators I’ve seen. They usually have an aquarium heater that heats a tub of water and the reptile eggs are nestled in perlite inside of a plastic Tupperware container that is just floating in the temperature controlled warm water.
Sounds like a neat project. Perhaps if you used flexwatt heat tape wired to a thermostat that had a probe, you could put the probe between 2 gallon bags of water that were resting on the heat tape. Most digital thermostats have a <1 degree temperature variance so you could make it so the water bags stayed at a constant 99 degrees. Making sure the bags of water stayed sealed would be my only concern. Using one of those kitchen bag sealers you could Fill up a bag of water and then permanently seal it. Your eggs could all rest on top of the top bag of water.

that’s an idea, they’d need to be hand turned but the concept seems like a more natural way of incubating eggs versus hot air chambers which most incubators are.

Yes. My biggest problem was coming up with what heats them. I don’t mind hand turning as I already do in my own homemade. The pictures attached are an incubator in this style that I’ve seen most recently. I will definitely explore the heat tape and see if it will do the job.

 

[quintinp02]

Yes. My biggest problem was coming up with what heats them. I don’t mind hand turning as I already do in my own homemade. The pictures attached are an incubator in this style that I’ve seen most recently. I will definitely explore the heat tape and see if it will do the job.

Check out that flex watt heat tape it’s pretty low wattage and it doesn’t get so hot that it melts anything.