Portable mini heater works great to control temperture in Incubator.

[PugFarmer]

Hi chickenators just thought I would pass this along to anyone building a home made Incubator
I have been using the self made cooler incubator with great success.I got the chicken bug real bad lol

Since I have gotten bitten by the chicken bug I have built a bigger
version of the Incubator using a wine cooler for a Incubator . So how was I going to heat it ? Light bulbs took up way to much space and I would not keep it at a constant temperature so by accident was searching on line for a heat source I kicked the heater beside my feet and Bingo! that may work? so i tried it out and yup it worked perfectly . mind you this heater you have to fiddle with the temperature control a bit so that's when i decided to add one of those cheaply made temperature controllers on e-Jay set the controller to 37c and set the manual temp selector to high and let the controller do the work.. I have a friend who is in the USA bringing me a 10$ heater to install in my hatcher and I will be off and running for next to nothing $$

 

[The Moonshiner]

Great minds think alike.
I was in the same boat. I picked up a stand up Pepsi cooler to make an incubator out of. While researching what to use for heat I came to the same conclusion. It seemed like it would work so I checked into them at Wal-Mart. Actually picked up the same heater as you got your friend bringing you.
It is small and looks cheap so I will be picking up a second just in case it breaks down I'll have a back up ready to go. And yes for $10 it won't be an issue to pick up a second that I may never use.
I haven't got the incubator together yet but have done some testing. That heater is 250 watts so it had no trouble getting temp to where needed in the cooler I have.
I'm going with a old wafer thermostat that I already have. At the moment I'm looking into a bit of rewiring so the fan will blow all the time. Not sure if that's the best way to go or not but hey I'm still planning.
I'll come back and post pics whenever I do get mine together and up and running.

 

[PugFarmer]

Great minds think alike.
I was in the same boat. I picked up a stand up Pepsi cooler to make an incubator out of. While researching what to use for heat I came to the same conclusion. It seemed like it would work so I checked into them at Wal-Mart. Actually picked up the same heater as you got your friend bringing you.
It is small and looks cheap so I will be picking up a second just in case it breaks down I'll have a back up ready to go. And yes for $10 it won't be an issue to pick up a second that I may never use.
I haven't got the incubator together yet but have done some testing. That heater is 250 watts so it had no trouble getting temp to where needed in the cooler I have.
I'm going with a old wafer thermostat that I already have. At the moment I'm looking into a bit of rewiring so the fa n will blow all the time. Not sure if that's the best way to go or not but hey I'm still planning.
I'll come back and post pics whenever I do get mine together and up and running.

That's what fans do blow 24/7 used the 2 that were mounted in the cooler and I put one small one facing up to move the heat up it's a bit hard to see but it works great !

 

[The Moonshiner]

Where did you put your ventilation holes and how big for your wine cooler bator?

 

[PugFarmer]

Where did you put your ventilation holes and how big for your wine cooler bator?

I never put any vent holes since i am still turning the eggs by hand its opened quite a lot so gets lots of ventilation and the size of the cooler is 19'' wide x 32'' tall and 21'' deep i have 4 racks i can use for eggs and I can fit as much as 54 eggs on a shelf for a total of 216 eggs what I use is 18 egg carton containers but 2 x18 and 12 fit better so 48 eggs per tray 192 eggs that's still a lot .what i like best about the incubator is that you can load different hatches eg shelf 1 hatch 1 shelf 2 hatch 2 but stagger when they will hatch like 2 weeks after hatch 1 and so on just got to get my hatcher ready now