Oh I very much agree. I'm going to post a photo of my brooder set up, cheap, easy to put together and lots of cool space and ventilation. I also don't know if it will be of any help hehe.clearly they love dumping their food but this has worked perfectly and I have t moved a thing in ages, dozens of chicks have gone through here, at 2-3 weeks the move to one on the ground that 2x the size. This keeps going to the cool side a bit. These guys are 2 days old. And I rarely move the heat lamp- they move further away if they're hot and it's cool over there. Temperature regulation can be really hard and those of us that have raised a lot of birds can usually look back on stories like this and their own and remember a lot of lessons learned. I'm glad you mentioned the tote maybe over heating! Those things don't have good ventilation :-/
I am sure it will be helpful to someone! If not several someones!