Ok i looked at your wiring and the way it is hooked up now if you plug it in the red light should turn on and the heating element should turn on. It will never turn off because there is no thermostat.
Wiring the thermostat should be as easy as wiring a light switch. (assuming it is 120) It's job is to interrupt power to the unit.
I would go to the main power cord and cut ONE SIDE of its wires, peel the wires away from the uncut wire and hook 1 side of the cut wire to 1 screw of the thermostat and the other side of the cut wire to the other screw. DO NOT CUT BOTH WIRES OF THE POWER CORD. This should always be done UNPLUGGED. But im pretty sure everyone knows that.
Make sure you have the thermostat inside the incubator were the heat is so that it works and that you have plenty of cord to work with.
If you do it right you should have a working incubator
Here is what it should look like.
When it cuts the power it should also turn off the red light to let you know the heating element is off
Hope this helps
P.s. I have never used a hot water heater thermostat Let me know how it works
This is my first incubator but it didn't come with a thermostat. I went on ebay and found that one, it said universal thermostat can be used in incubators lol
I'm sorry you got scammed that's a hot water stat some company is trying to sell as incu-stats for more money you can buy at lowes for 8 dollars,but not to worry I use those in my incubators and they work good but you have to make a slight modification,first you need to drill two small holes1/8" in the back then wire one side to the power and the other to the heating element and face the back side toward the element,you will have to adjust it until you reach correct temp,but once that's done they are very accurate and will hold a steady temp,if you have any questions you can pm me good luck!
ok so that is not a home made incubator. i believe from the looks of the lid it is a lg but not 100% sure. its either a little giant or a hovabator still air incubator and yes it did come with a thermostat.... but bad news is it is only have the thermostat. it is a wafer style thermostat but are missing the wafer part. pictures one and 2 are of the half of the thermostat so u are missing parts.
ok so i am hoping that the image is bigger when i actually post this. but this is a wafer thermostat. this is what your incubator has and you can see the couple parts you are missing. you can buy a complete new wafer thermostat from incubatorwarehouse.com for $22 plus a bit of change if you dont mind me asking what you paid for this because you can buy a brand new one for just under $50 for the whole incubator. but anyways back to the thermostat like i said you can see that you do have half of this shown in pictures 1 and 2 the heating element is the square tubular thing (best way i can think to describe it lol) but you do have a 99% complete incubator you can either buy the replacement parts for the wafer thermostat or just to make sure it is a good you can buy a new one.
Looks like it has the hardware where a gqf wafer style thermostat goes and has been replaced with a hot water thermostat. Go to amazon or ebay and look at a pic, soesn't it looklike the part that holds the wafer? If so i'd put it back to the wafer style. I am having much better temp holding with the gqf. I modified a hot water thermostat but it still had a 5-7 degee variance. Good luck with it.
Did u drill the holes in the back and face it toward the heat source at least 2" away,because I've been using them for a few years and they work great I have zero temp difference holds steady at 99*