How to increase the humidity for my homemade incubator

[kulangi]

Hi,
I am planning to put some hatching eggs in my incubator next week and I having problem raising the humidity from 39% in my home made incubator cooler. My incubator is made up of chest cooler that is divided in two section. The first section is where I put the light, water, thermostat and the fan. The other section is where I place hatching eggs over three rows of trays. I have been trying to use different ways to increase the humidity level to 50% degree but have not been successful. If I close all the air passage on my incubator then I get lots of condensations over the glass which results in not seeing the eggs.
I'd appreciate your help in the matter.

 

[quintinp]

if you want more humidity, than you need more surface area being water, such as using a wide pan, instead of a little bowl of water

 

[Desert Rooster]

or you can use a large sponge

 

[quintinp]

like a large sponge soaked in water

 

[kulangi]

Thanks for all your advise. Does it matter where I put the large soaked Sponge?

 

[quintinp]

not to close to the light, just far enough away from eggs

 

[tigerrrrrrrlilly]

when adding water use hot not cold, it keeps it more steady. add more or less to increase or decrease the humidity after it's been steady for a few hours. I wouldn't plug up holes. I also use a homemade bator. I put a shallow bowl of water on the bottom. If it doesn't hold enough to get the humidity up to where you need it, get a bigger bowl/pan or something shallow and replace it. Add hot water, wait a few hours to figure out how much higher/lower you need, and repeat until you get it corrected. mark your bowl with a fill line once you get it where you want it. add some extra at lockdown.

 

[gumbii]

how big and where did you put the vent holes...?


i have a fridgebator, and i made two huge holes on top... two pieces of 1/2" PVC sticking out of the top... it doesn't hold humidity as well as i would like, but it's okay... i just have to replace the water in the small dish daily to keep it at 45%... i also have the small dish/cup whatever under one of the fans, blowing hot air into the water... it evaporates it faster... during lock down i plan to put a huge dish on the bottom... like they said, it's all about surface area...

 

[kulangi]

The vent holes are 1/2 inch holes that I made for three row trays. There is also two vents on side of the cooler. I have small dish/cup under the light so I can not put bigger cup because of the light. Can I put the sponge or wet towel underneath the egg trays?


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[jaegerbabe]

We have a homemade incubator and this is our 2nd yr. using it. We put an old pot directly under the heat lamp, line the whole insed w/ aluminum foil and have a fan that blows it into the other attached box where the eggs are. We have a very successful hatch rate doing this