incubator ideas! post your ideas for home made incubators, whether they work or not~

[mossypath]

It’s kind of silly but now I keep looking at my 2 pottery kilns thinking.

 

[kellyn]

Thanks for your input.

My thought was this little thing gets so hot so fast that by the time the thermostat reads the increase in heat to cut it off, the amount of heat coming off the coils is going to take a while to mix with all of the air in the bater. Won’t slowing the heat sources and the use of baffles help disperse the heat more evenly?

A PC fan or two will definately help circulae the heat around. And to everyone else that wants to build turners, my neighbors built a nice looking deck for their pool and had a bunch of scrap lumber that was (gasp!) Just the right length for my incubator turners! 'Course my dad had to cut them in half length-wise, but so far, so good. The wood is pressure treated, is that an issue? I'm a bit worried, because I heard the chemicals are rather harsh.

 

[mohillbilly]

Thanks for your input.

My thought was this little thing gets so hot so fast that by the time the thermostat reads the increase in heat to cut it off, the amount of heat coming off the coils is going to take a while to mix with all of the air in the bater. Won’t slowing the heat sources and the use of baffles help disperse the heat more evenly?

you hook your fan to the thermostat so it comes on when the heat does and blows it around

 

[mohillbilly]

A PC fan or two will definately help circulae the heat around.
And to everyone else that wants to build turners, my neighbors built a nice looking deck for their pool and had a bunch of scrap lumber that was (gasp!) Just the right length for my incubator turners! 'Course my dad had to cut them in half length-wise, but so far, so good.
The wood is pressure treated, is that an issue? I'm a bit worried, because I heard the chemicals are rather harsh.

you don't want pressure treated inside your incubator will kill your chicks before they can hatch

 

[DroolBubbles]

Pop corn doesn't pop until it reaches several hundred degrees and the popper generates this without recirculating air. If you put that thing in any sort of confined area I think you will be looking at a very serious fire hazard, with or without any sort of amperage control on it. I am all about hacking old parts but I don't think this one is a good idea. Just my thoughts though.

 

[woodprairie]

I have built a fridge incubator. No eggs in it yet. Coming in about 3-4 days. Holds temp very well. I will get thermal mass in there like you recommend. But I am still worried about the ventilation. There is no ice door like on Confederate_Money's. I have drilled 8 1/4" holes in the bottom and I think the best place to drill the exit holes will be up in the top of the door. Also there they can be covered by fridge magnets if not needed.
The Little giant has 5 1/8" holes in the bottom: best I can figure .06 sq" total opening. In the top two 1/2" holes or .39 sq". That would be for 41 chicken eggs or 12 goose eggs.

The Fridgeobator will hold 48 goose or turkey eggs or 4 times the LG. I have eight 1/4" holes in the bottom of mine for 0.39 sq" and probably need to add more at the top, If I use the same ratio, I should need 32 holes. That is a lot of holes. About 1 per inch all along the top of the door.

What do you think? Thank you for your time. Megan

 

[3forfree]

I use my fridge bator for seed starting. I leave the temps as they were for incubating, put my seeds in my special dirt, and in a few days I have seedlings. Been doing this for 2 years now and it works great. The site doesn't let me post pics, everytime I try it says an error has occured and I should try later. I'll put up a pic sometime.

 

[gwendalynn28]

This is my homemade incubator. I need to take updated pictures. I've made a few very small changes. The fan know hangs from two pieces of clothes hanger that I bent and broke for this purpose. I also changed the hardware cloth out to a much finer mesh because this one was too big. I also went to the Goodwill and found an old school deviled egg carrier with a wide flat top and turned that into my humidity tray underneath the wire. The humidity tray is full of cut up old sponges so that when lockdown begins, I can get the humidity up where it needs to be. This incubator works very well. The cooler is a medical grade shipping container so its about 3 inch thick styrofoam which seems to really help keep the temps stable with only a 25 watt light bulb. On the right hand side and the back are ventilation holes poked all in it with a meat thermometer! I have one large hole, about 2 inches long by half inch wide for helping with the circulated air. It has two panes of glass for the viewing window for better insulation too! This incubator only cost me $17 to build. The only drawback is that it only holds 12 standard sized eggs. Try to find a "used" shipping container to save money too. Alot of people sell these on craigslist for like $5!

 

[quintinp]

This is my homemade incubator. I need to take updated pictures. I've made a few very small changes. The fan know hangs from two pieces of clothes hanger that I bent and broke for this purpose. I also changed the hardware cloth out to a much finer mesh because this one was too big. I also went to the Goodwill and found an old school deviled egg carrier with a wide flat top and turned that into my humidity tray underneath the wire. The humidity tray is full of cut up old sponges so that when lockdown begins, I can get the humidity up where it needs to be. This incubator works very well. The cooler is a medical grade shipping container so its about 3 inch thick styrofoam which seems to really help keep the temps stable with only a 25 watt light bulb. On the right hand side and the back are ventilation holes poked all in it with a meat thermometer! I have one large hole, about 2 inches long by half inch wide for helping with the circulated air. It has two panes of glass for the viewing window for better insulation too! This incubator only cost me $17 to build. The only drawback is that it only holds 12 standard sized eggs. Try to find a "used" shipping container to save money too. Alot of people sell these on craigslist for like $5!

Very cool! Are your temperatures good. If they aren't 99-100 I would like to help.

Not trying to offend, but I don't want you to try and hatch something and nothing end up hatching, and you no longer wanting to try and incubate eggs anymore.

Like I said, I would enjoy helping you. But if your temperatures are where you want them to be, I wouldn't want to push you to fix what isn't broken.

 

[gwendalynn28]

The temperature holds very well. Its always between 99-100 degrees. Occasionally I did have temps spike to 102 degrees but I had to move the incubator. It was in direct sunlight late in the evening and it took me a couple of days to figure out what was happening. I didn't need to mess with the thermostat, I needed to move the incubator. I've had a really nice success rate with this incubator. Right now I have 12 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte eggs from my own flock. This is the first hatch in this incubator from my own birds. I've always hatched shipped eggs in it and had about 50% hatch rate. The last hatch was only 2 of 15 eggs but they were shipped from Washington on the West Coast and I live in North Carolina near the east coast. I think the shipment took its toll on the eggs and they were roughly handled. Plus, on the second night of lock down the humidity dropped below 50%. That was my mistake though which is why I changed the water pan under the wire. This one is much bigger with many cut up sponges in it. Its been very easy to control humidity since changing out the humidity tray!!! I'm very happy with it and I want to try to build a larger model. I have quite a larger cooler I found that is also medical grade but I'm doing some research first. My first attempt failed. I need to find a better heat source for such a larger area or simply different placement and higher wattage bulb. I'm going to use an actual wafer thermostat too instead of the cheap water heater thermostat I am using now. It is not sensitive enough to maintain such a tight range of temperature.