Thermostat trouble

[jwatts]

Boy you hit the nail on the head with bi metal thermos. As soon as I put a wafer thermo in my troubles seemed to be over. You can't beat the wafer stats. Nice micro adjustments too.

 

[wantedman66]

I do the exact same thing as cannedman and it works perfect and for $8 you can't go wrong the key is drilling the holes it makes it more sensitive to heat,I've seen them on eBay some company is calling them incubator stats and trying to sell them for $15.

 

[m35a2siek]

I don't know if anyone else on this forum has tried this yet, but I set up my home made bator utilizing the thermostat portion of a fish tank heater. The thermostat for the fish tank heater is inside the glass tube, so even if the fish tank water is 75-85 deg. the air inside the tube is much warmer, so the thermostat operates accurately around the 100 deg point.






The temp does drop quickley when the door gets opened, and I noticed it's time to refill the water to bring the humidity back up.
When operating in steady state conditions, the aquarium heater thermostat does work great.

 

[jwatts]

Nice, great pics to boot also. I noticed it took a while after i put water in my incu for the temp and humidity to come up. What do most of you guys run, humidity wise when your incubating? I ran mine with nothing and i was getting 10% i added a small jar with about 8 oz. of water and it is now at 22%

 

[wantedman66]

I've seen the tank heaters on other sites but never tried it,and jwatts I use a shallow dish with a tube going into it with a funnel connected to it to fill it this way I don't have to open it.

 

[bairo]

I don't know if anyone else on this forum has tried this yet, but I set up my home made bator utilizing the thermostat portion of a fish tank heater. The thermostat for the fish tank heater is inside the glass tube, so even if the fish tank water is 75-85 deg. the air inside the tube is much warmer, so the thermostat operates accurately around the 100 deg point.






The temp does drop quickley when the door gets opened, and I noticed it's time to refill the water to bring the humidity back up.
When operating in steady state conditions, the aquarium heater thermostat does work great.

Very interesting!!! Thanks for the info, I may have to try it in one of several old cooler bators I have.

 

[bairo]

Jwatts;

I suggested earlier that you stick with a standard wafer thermostat because I see this is the first time for you building an incubator. I did not mean to take away from the posts about water heater thermos though when I mentioned to stay away from bi-metal. The fact is that water heater thermos can work just fine with a bit of tinkering. My very first (and the next 3) cooler bators were using water heater thermos and I can hold +/- 1 degree or less. But they take some fooling around with and some experimentation with the placement to the light bulb and the fan both.
For around 20 dollars for a decent wafer thermo, I see no reason to fool with the water heater thermos really though unless you just feel like playing around with experimentation.

As far as the humidity question goes; I dont worry about it as long as it stays above 25% until day 18 or 19. At day 19 I try hard to get it about as high as I can. Sort of a modified way of following the dry hatch method. You can google "dry hatch for chickens" for more info. Humidity can be slow to get up, especially if you use cold water when you fill your jar. The water must come up to the surrounding temp in order to release moisture with any kind of effeciency. So when you add water try and have it a few degrees above the incubation temp. You can also put a small sponge in your water jar with a bit sticking out above the water level...this will act like a wick.

You might want to look into heat sinks as well to help stabilize the temp when you open the door/lid. Most people use un-opened water bottles, I use bricks that line the bottom of my bators.

 

[m35a2siek]

Just to keep everyone updated on my experimental incubator using a fish tank thermostat, I wanted to make sure it was holding +/- .5 degrees before I stocked it with eggs. Now it's doing it's job. currently on day 7, and all of the eggs look good when candling. I am using 3 thermometers to monitor the temperature. One is an indoor/outdoor thermometer/ hydrometer, which seems to give a close reading, the outdoor probe is mounted at the egg rack height on the back of the incubator. The other is a fish tank floating thermometer. Basically a thermometer placed inside a glass tube, which I set in the egg carton in an empty hole. And the third is a Fluke Multimeter with a temperature probe which I also set the probe right next to the eggs. The meter reads out in tenths of a degree, good for watching trends in temperature and more accurate than the $12 indoor/outdoor household unit.

The fish tank heater thermostat that I am using functions in a similar manner to the "wafer thermostat" other people have been using. Great luck so far!!!

 

[wantedman66]

Ya those are good ideas,I know what your saying about the wafer stats but I like experimenting with different ideas that's why I prefer water heater stats I figure if you have a good thing why change it especially after getting 100% hatch,but I like to take heaters apart and screw around and come up with new things that work

 

[wantedman66]

Nice job on the incubator and is long as it works that's all that matters,keep us posted on your hatch.I'm incubating 10 Icelandic eggs right now and on day 6 and there all developing good