My new Brinsea Maxi II Advanced Incubator just arrived Saturday.
I plugged it up and ran it for 24 hours without eggs in it, to see how it would work.
I have two Mini Advanced (7 egg) incubators, and have had alot of success with them. But everytime you need to add water, it means taking the lid off. This creates a big problem during hatchdown.
So, I finally decided to take the plunge, and buy a new Maxi II Advanced, since it has an external bay that you can use to fill the water wells without opening the incubator. Or, at least that is how things are supposed to work.
After running the thing for about 60 hours, I have found that the external watering feature is totally useless.
Oh, you can add water to it. I added distilled water to the external watering bay, up to the point where they told you to. A little bit of the water filtered through the small pipe and into the water holding reservoir inside. But only a very small amount. The rest of the water just sat inside the external watering bay.
So I added more water to see what would happen. The weight of the water in the external bay forced some more water through the pipe and into the internal water reservoir, but even doing that, I could never get the one side of the water reservoir that the pipe feeds into to fill up. It should have filled up when I added the first water, but it didn't fill completely up even when I filled the external watering bay to overflowing.
And there is no way to water from the outside of the incubator, and get water into the second part of the water reservoir -- the part that you fill only during hatchdown.
So, the bottom line is that I am STILL going to have to open the incubator everytime I want to add water to it. But this incubator will be much harder to open - especially for my wife who has small hands - because of the large size of the incubator's lid. And because you cannot see the waterwell from the outside, you are forced to pretty much take the entire lid off just to add water -- which means humidity and temps will drop big time everytime water must be added. Not to mention the fact that the large size of the incubator cover makes it impossible to lift the lid with one hand and add water with the other. Lifting the lid is a two handed job, and then a third hand is needed to actually pour the water into the water resevoir.
I'm forced to put my eggs into this thing, with serious doubts as to whether I can get a successful hatch out of it. (I need to hatch right now, because my only Delaware rooster was killed last week by a stray dog).
Do any of you have suggestions on how to handle this situation?
Thanks in advance.
I plugged it up and ran it for 24 hours without eggs in it, to see how it would work.
I have two Mini Advanced (7 egg) incubators, and have had alot of success with them. But everytime you need to add water, it means taking the lid off. This creates a big problem during hatchdown.
So, I finally decided to take the plunge, and buy a new Maxi II Advanced, since it has an external bay that you can use to fill the water wells without opening the incubator. Or, at least that is how things are supposed to work.
After running the thing for about 60 hours, I have found that the external watering feature is totally useless.
Oh, you can add water to it. I added distilled water to the external watering bay, up to the point where they told you to. A little bit of the water filtered through the small pipe and into the water holding reservoir inside. But only a very small amount. The rest of the water just sat inside the external watering bay.
So I added more water to see what would happen. The weight of the water in the external bay forced some more water through the pipe and into the internal water reservoir, but even doing that, I could never get the one side of the water reservoir that the pipe feeds into to fill up. It should have filled up when I added the first water, but it didn't fill completely up even when I filled the external watering bay to overflowing.
And there is no way to water from the outside of the incubator, and get water into the second part of the water reservoir -- the part that you fill only during hatchdown.
So, the bottom line is that I am STILL going to have to open the incubator everytime I want to add water to it. But this incubator will be much harder to open - especially for my wife who has small hands - because of the large size of the incubator's lid. And because you cannot see the waterwell from the outside, you are forced to pretty much take the entire lid off just to add water -- which means humidity and temps will drop big time everytime water must be added. Not to mention the fact that the large size of the incubator cover makes it impossible to lift the lid with one hand and add water with the other. Lifting the lid is a two handed job, and then a third hand is needed to actually pour the water into the water resevoir.
I'm forced to put my eggs into this thing, with serious doubts as to whether I can get a successful hatch out of it. (I need to hatch right now, because my only Delaware rooster was killed last week by a stray dog).
Do any of you have suggestions on how to handle this situation?
Thanks in advance.
