The incubator is made from one sheet of plywood. It's 1 inch at least. It does leak some heat on the top, I have plans to insulate the ceiling but have not yet. Otherwise, not too bad insulation-wise.
I do have some variation from the top to the bottom shelves. I set the probe on the middle and just kind adjust from there. I've found they can handle a bit of variation.
We started with digital thermostats. First was from Fall Harvest? Something like that. We went through 2 of those. Then they went out of business and I tried the Incubator Warehouse basic. I'm on my second or third one of those. I'm going to try the one Donna Rippy uses, I don't have a link to it right now but it's designed for brewers to use for their beer vats mostly. She says she's used the same one for 5 years, and that lady hatches a lot of chicks!
We want to use a digital because the temp varies so much in our house. We have no central heat/air. We have a wood stove and a swamp cooler. Temps can vary 30 degrees in a day. We don't stoke the fire all night, we let it die out, so the nights get pretty darn cool. If we had central air, I'd go with a bivalve thermostat, they seem pretty steady.
I have the one larger fan in the back. Not sure if you can see, but I have two of the smaller blue plastic computer fans mounted on the ceiling just inside the door, blowing down. Just trying to circulate as much air as possible. I also have a few quart jars of water acting as heat sinks to try to keep the temp more stable.
LG, you might try adding another fan? Having two blowing in different directions might stabilize the temps a bit. I also use 60 watt bulbs, or maybe 90. I do know the digital thermostat I'm using is very sensitive and doesn't have much of a range, so the lights wind up blinking on and off constantly. Goes through bulbs faster that way, not a great thing. I'm hoping the new thermostat will be a bit more steady.
Let me know if you have any other questions, I'm trying to cover everything.
About the cardio--I don't even have a referral done yet. Supposed to hear Monday. Around here, there's pretty much only one group for each specialty. So, not so much with the competition. You see The Cardiologists, The GI guys, The Pulmonology clinic, The Hematology/Oncology group, etc. There are several surgeons and orthos, they set up separate shops. But the other specialities, they must think there's safety in numbers or something. Less call time? Nicer offices? I'm sure there's good reasons. I will ask to be put on the cancellation list, though. And I may call my PCP and see if she can help me out a bit. I had a bit of a pity party today, it's been half on my mind to go to the ER. But I'm afraid of the two extremes...either they won't want to initiate therapy for me and waste my time, say follow up with your PCP and/or cardiologist, or they'll want to stick my butt in the hospital. I don't want either of those!
