My husband installed a fan, temps are circulating and holding great, BUUUTTT....

[ellieemae]

it vibrates the whole 'bator. I have a Hovabator 1602N and have done three successful hatches in it without a fan, but hatch rates were slightly under 50% (two shipped eggs, one local). I could tell that there were hot spots, though. So I got a little knee-jerk the other day and bid on some marans eggs even though I had no plans to hatch this winter. (but I miss my marans hen that was taken by a fox this spring, I know you all get it! Emotion! Chicken math!) Then I rounded it out with some Isbar eggs. I KNOW I can get a decent hatch just going still air like I have before, but I'd sure like to improve my percentage. So my husband said that he could tackle the fan thing. He did, but not ideally. He had trouble finding a 2 wire fan and what he ended up with is a 4" that he had to hang from long screws off of the top of the bator. I love what it's doing for the temp and it doesn't seem to be affecting humidity much, but it is noisy and it vibrates my incubator. Just a slight buzzing on the styrofoam if you put your hand on it, but it's there. The eggs need to go in today. They've been resting for 12 hours and I need to just decide whether I'm going to run this thing or not.

Thoughts? It feels like a real risk vs. benefit analysis.....a) the hot spots are worse or b) the vibration is worse. :/ I wish that I had had time to get the one from Incubator Warehouse but I just didn't. Like I said, spur-of-the-moment decision to hatch these littles.

 

[lazy gardener]

Sounds like that 4" fan is a bit big. ?: did it vibrate before he installed it? Did you test it before installation. If it didn't vibrate before installing, it sounds like it's just a bit off kilter, perhaps a bit crooked. Any way to install some rubber or foam gaskets between fan and incubator body? Or, without too much trouble, you could maybe step down to a smaller fan. (tough to commit the time to when you have eggs ready to go in!) Or you could put a piece of foam under the incubator to help insulate it against vibration noise. Is the vibration enough that you're concerned that it will compromise embryos or all of those delicate developing membranes/vascular system?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Perhaps some fiber or rubber washers on the screws.
You could go ahead and order the fan you want and install it when it comes. It couldn't take more than an hour. You can pull the eggs and wrap them together in a towel. A hen gets off the next every day.
If the vibration isn't too severe, I think that is better than hot and cold spots in the bator.

 

[ellieemae]

He solved it! Lucky stroke--he was able to come home for a long lunch and had some sort of military-grade high tensile line (very thin, like fishing line) that he fed through each corner hole in the fan, then up through the holes in the 'bator and looped through paper clips. Now a glass of water on top of the incubator doesn't even have any discernible movement. It's large in size but low in output, not too strong. That was our problem -- the only small fans we could find were 3 or 4 wire and/or too powerful. This 4" was on clearance at Radio Shack and was the right output and the right wiring configuration but the wrong physical size (we wanted 3").

BUT, I think that this is a fix! I'm going to let it cycle for a while, monitor temps and humidity...a little bit of a delay but I think worth it if I can get this running smoothly and know that I don't have any hot/cold spots.