Thermostat Q in Homemade Incubator

[jessica.anne]

Ok...so I have everything set up in my cooler-bator except the thermostat. It's holding at 99.5-100.5 and has been for 48 hours, however, I'd like to add a thermostat just to save myself some stress.
Can I use a Honeywell thermostat? Hubby has one laying around that had been for a job but he ended up not using it. This isn't some cheap model, he paid around $50.00 for it, but I'm not sure if all thermostats are the same as far as using them in an incubator? He can't answer my questions because he has no idea how incubators work...so can I use this thermostat or not?

 

[midget_farms]

Great question! The easy answer is "yes" - any thermostat should work just fine - the difficult question though is what is the duty cycle on the thermostat.... how accurate is it and how many degrees below or above the set point will it allow the temp before switching on or off?

An expensive thermo like that one should have a very good sensitivity & is probably programable.

You would like it to hold w/i 1 degree, but there are pleny who have great luck with some that vary as much as 2 degrees above & below the set point.

 

[quintinp]

I bet it would work, I use the wafer thermostat in mine, and they are about 30 dollars for the whole thermostat assembly, and this thermostat has been used for at least a hundred years by now, and it has always worked well for others.

 

[cmom]

Depends on the thermostat. Some have a temp swing of +/- 1ºF to +/- 6ºF

 

[jessica.anne]

Thank you for your responses!!
I've been Googling all day about this particular thermostat some today, but couldn't find a definitive answer. But based on what you all have to say I'm thinking I'm going to have Hubby wire it in and see how it goes. It's programmable, but I'm sure that until we actually have it in place and run tests that we won't know how effective it is. It's all trial and error, right? I'm just so excited to get my homemade incubator working!! It's more satisfying for me to know that I was successful with something that I made versus a store bought bator!!