Need plans for a diy humidity pail for a cabinet incubator

[crazzzymike13]

I have an old sportsman incubator that a friend gave me. It works great but I need 2 things. I need a new drive motor for the turner. The gears in it broke and I can't get a new one yet because they are about 60.00 dollars. Then I also need a humidity pail to keep up with my humidity. I figured while I'm waiting to get the drive motor I could make a humidity pail but I need some ideas. Any ideas? Thank you for your time.

 

[Joshw]

I have humidity pails on my gqf incubators, and I can tell you, all they are is a 1/4 npt fitting on a 5 gal bucket that hooks to a 1/4 npt fitting
on a plastic pan that goes in the incubator. The magic is in a small plastic float valve that shuts the water off at a certain level. The problem is, by the time you buy the bulkhead fittings for the bucket and the pan, and the float valve, you are only a few dollars less than if you had bought it all put together. The cheapest place I have found parts for GQF incubators is Cutler Supply. They are normally a few dollars less than ordering straight from GQF and the shipping is much faster. The problem with both places is that they eat you up on shipping so you are better off waiting and making one big order.

 

[crazzzymike13]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

 

[Joshw]

No problem. Do you know you don't have to have the humidity pail to use your incubator? You can set any old pan in the top shelf of the incubator and fill it with water. You have to check it every couple of days, but you will still get chicks. Don't get me wrong the buckets are nice. You can go through a whole hatch without adding water but if I didn't have them, I wouldn't let it stop me from hatching. Also you might want to check this out on your drive motor. It didn't help me, I had to replace the drive motor and timer motors.https://www.gqfmfg.com/pdf/Cabinet Turner Supplemental.pdf