Lowest-wattage incubator available?

[critterranch]

little giants are 40 watts with out a turner or fan. if that helps.

 

[critterranch]

little giants are 40 watts with out a turner or fan. if that helps.

 

[muddstopper]

The best incubator without using electricity would have to be a Broody. On grid, off grid, in a house or in the woods, broodies get er done.

On the other hand, I like to think of things on a much bigger scale than a single hen and prefer to hatch according to my time table and not just when a hen decides to go broody. Since said bigger scale, let me throw this at you. First you build a solar heat collector, its nothing more than some garden hose circulating water under a pane of glass in full sun. Even in Alaska, temps in this kind of collector have gotten up 130*F. You circulate this warm water into a well insulated water tank of seveal hundred gallon capacity. Water can be made to circulate from the collector to the storage tank by natural convection, but in case you cant get the convection current just right, or you decide you want to use some of this excess heat to warm your house, you can buy a small low voltage water pump and connect it to a small solar cell to force the water to move around. Now since you have all this really cheap heat source, the next step would to build a incubator that you could circulate some of this hot water thru. Build the cabinet and line the interior walls with some flex tubing, a low voltage water pump connected to a thermostat, pulling hot water from your water storage tank. You can also use one of those low voltage robotic gear motors to turn your egg trays, again getting power from your solar panels, a few LED lights so you can see what your are doing and you now have a very reliable, off the grid incubator..

OK,OK, I know this might be a little extreme, but you did ask for ideals.

 

[tracecom]

Quote:
You can not defy laws of physics. Heat is a result of power used. Power in electricity equals Volts X Amps.

Voltage or amperage alone has nothing to do with how much heat is dissipated, power a FUNCTION of voltage AND amperage (Ohms law).

Single 5W bulb is not going to power any bator unless it is a 3 egg little bator set in a very hot room of temperature close to incubating temperature.

Cant never could...

This incubator used a house thermostat, a 1157 bulb an socket(using the dim element), a pc fan, a cooler an a NesQuick box. It pulled just under 5 watts when the is light on.

1157 incandescent bulbs usually draw 27 or 28 watts, most of which is converted to heat. This amount of heat is sufficient for a small well-insulated incubator. I am currently heating a Omaha Steaks foam cooler (1 1/2 inch thick walls) with 36 watts and maintaining temperature from 99.7 to 100.0 degrees with only a 25% duty cycle on the heater, so it certainly could be done with 28 watts.

My suggestion to alpinefarm would be to develop a system which runs entirely off 12vdc, power it from a lead acid battery, and recharge the battery with power from the solar cells. My 36 watt system would effectively draw only 9 watts (25% times 36 watts) from a battery. A computer fan would pull another watt or two.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

A 1157 comes in lots of wattages. You can get anywhere between a 5 watt an a 50 watt bright element an anywhere between 3 watt an 10 watt low element. What I used was a bulb that had a 3 watt low an a 5 watt high. The high element along with the fan would overload my 5 watt power supply so I could only run the 3 watt low side. It worked so great with 3 watts.

 

[Arielle]

Some thoughts, based on building an energy efficient house that uses a wood stove for heat. Temps fluctuate in the house, but is moderated by heavy insulation.

1. Use a well insulated housing, like a cooler.

2. Ditto on heat sinks like rocks or bricks. We use this theory as a large brick wall and pad that the wood stove sits on. It heats up when the stove is burning during the night and lets of heat when the stove is closed down for the night.

3. Mobility--using sunlight thru a window to supplement and move it around. Maybe someone can chime in on moving eggs around like this. If the eggs are turned regularly, pwrhaps moving the whole set up would be OK.

4. DOes a still air system loose less heat? I would think it would. Though the moving air keep a more constant heat through out the incubator. Control the air loss (heat loss), not eliminate it, reduce it to a reasonable level.

5. We use our dogs on very cold nights to sleep with us. Big bodies put out a lot of heat--we joke about 2 dog nights, a 4 dog night, etc.

My point, can you put dogs or other large body in a small room overnight to reduce heat loss over night when the temperatures are dropping in the house. 5-7 am is the coldest time in our house.

6. Size is important too. THe larger the incubator, the more heat sinks possible therefore more less fluctuation. Too big is a problem, too; it'a a balancing act.


THese are ideas as food for thought; maybe they will prompt other ideas as well.

I'd love to be off the grid too!

 

[silkiechicken]

If you have a 1000W incubator or a 10W incubator, they will use the same total electricity to heat a certain box to x temp. I would not worry so much about the lowest wattage incubator, but rather an incubator that is SUPER insulated. Wrap it in towels, panel it with Styrofoam, and use an auto turner so you don't lose heat by needing to open it. Of course, do allow for some air flow to the inside.