Trouble shooting farmers 4250 temp

[syndie]

I am looking for some help from some incubator experts! My farmers digital 4250 has a digital gauge that can be set, unfortunately my 2 thermometers on the inside are reading low temps. ( one is a mercury therm and the other is a tiny digital temp one)

When set the outside digital temp read 99.0 inside 97.0 and 96. When I set the outside gauge to 102.5 it reads 99.9 and 99 on the inside. Which would be better to follow the manufacturer, or the two congruent temps which are prob right?

 

[paneubert]

Even though it is a forced air, I still see temp swings like yours in mine. I have a thermometer at the extreme "low" end (so farthest from the heater) and it reads in the mid 90's while the built in reads 99 and a third that is just slightly to the right or left of the heater element will read above 100-101.

Where do you have the black wire probe of the built in sitting in relation to the actual heating element? Where are the other thermometers? Are they all about the same distance up, down, left, right from the heater element?

 

[syndie]

The prob hangs down to the turner pretty much under the heating element, the two inside therms are on either side of the heating element

 

[paneubert]

Mine always seems to end up a good distance from the heating element due to the length of the black wire. Like this photo. It is 4 rows down on the left, which is more than halfway, and the heater is more in the upper 1/3 region overall. I would suggest calibrating the mercury thermometer via the ice water method, assuming it goes down to 32 degrees. The digital will be harder since you cant submerge them, but you could maybe tape the built in probe to the small digital you have so that both are reading from the same place, then see if they read different from each other?