UPDATED with new pictures OLD INCUBATOR???

[HallFamilyFarm]

Must admit, the water heat source suprised me. Figured the kerosene, but not the water. Bet if you cleaned this up and made it workable it would sell for over a $1000.00 on ebay. If I had it, I would keep it and use it. Good luck on restoring this awesome piece of history.

 

[bahamas]

So are you al;l gona use it nto hatch something. Please do. Pics must be suplied immediatgely.

 

[Davaroo]

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Im with slywoody on this one - water heating has many benefits, but I'm only aware of it being used in old brooder houses, not for a relatively small incubator like this one. That is pretty neat.

Redwood is very dense, yet the cells of the wood are like tiny air balloons. It was the wood of choice for incubators, back in the day. It both insulates and aids in humidity retention, as you suggest.

Should you restore it? I'd say, "Hmmmm, depends." It already has some 'tinker-shop' repairs, is in less-than-pristine condition and is missing operational parts. Should you be able to restore it to original, operational status, well it might fetch some money. But as it sits, I'd think it's more of a curiosity.

Paradoxically, once you begin restoring and replacing parts you tend to diminish it's collector value, if any exists. Again its a no-name, "quasi-industrial" incubator, not a genuine Chippendale secretary or anything like that. Interest in such things is probably minimal.
Were it me I'd check around first: ebay, auctioneers etc. If there were no significant collectible value, I'd clean it up, update it in as low-impact a fashion as possible, i.e. keeping it as original as I could - and use it.

The water heating method allows for very gentle and thorough, radiant heating, as opposed to draft heating. The old kerosene bators most often used air drawn through a flame heated chamber, which surrounded the wick and flame. This was a simple convection process and was effective, if somewhat tricky to regulate. This is a clever variation on that, which allows for a more consistent application of heat throughout the chamber.

It would be very cool to get the kerosene burner working, and this would require no electricity. It also requires thrice daily attention and both regulation and replacement of the wick and burner as needed. These matters could be insurmountable, as you are most likely on your own here. There aren't likely to be many suppliers of parts for something like this,** so I would imagine electricity would be your friend here. I think filling the system with water and fixing whatever leaks appear then using heat trace tape would be one option. Ditto a thermostatically regulated heater in the water tank itself, with forced fan air circulation in either case. You are on the right track, there.

As for the trays, the frame and 1/4" wire mesh sort is the ticket. They would not go all the way to the ends, however, having a 2-2.5" gap between the front and rear of the chamber. As the chicks hatch, they move around and eventually make their way to these edges - where they fall to the bottom for drying out and collection. No pics sorry, but not a difficult proposition, either.

 

[Buck Creek Chickens]

your unknown tube is probably a pressure release valve for the hot water

 

[Slywoody]

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I agree.......

 

[babsbag]

Pressure release was DH's other thought. When we actually take the tube off then maybe that will give us another clue. I hope to get this working in one way or another, but probably not until next season as we have a barn and garage to build first. I will start working on it this summer when the weather gets nicer and I can leave it without worrying about rain, (In CA where I live we can almost guarantee no rain from the end of May until the end of October) the thing is just too big to move around. I want to lightly sand it and oil it, but I want to use something that won't put off any fumes when it gets warm. Obviously I want oil the inside. If there are any wood refinshers or craftsmen that have suggestions I would like to hear them.

I saw a new kerosene one for sale on Lehman's website. They say it has a thermostat that will keep it at 103, so I guess it can be done, no idea how that works. There was a picture of the burner and it looks just like a regular kerosene lamp. The funny thing is, the place that I got this was having a yard sale and 2 of the lamps were there with no globes. I wonder if one went with the incubator

I wish I had looked more closely, but at the time I had no idea what I was looking for.

I intend to keep it, I never bought it as an investment. I like old things, especially if I can get them to work. And if I can't it will still make a nice table in my sunroom. I don't think that I will use kerosene as the heat source as it is too labor intensive, but if I could find an old burner for it I would get it, just to try and make it original.

There is a book in the library in Australia on the Electrification of Kerosene Heated Incubators. I wish I could get my hands on a copy of that book. I am really curious about the content.

But for now I am going to build an incubator and try my hand at hatching some mutt bantams. Wish me luck.

 

[Madcap621]

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There weren't any pipes, no. I am trying to get it back from my sister [who thinks I have "lost it" in my dottage! I will be in NW AR this summer/fall so will take pix if nothing else. His also has egg shells - between the glass panes - I love them! I had to have the dry rotted legs replaced, but other than that, did nothing but clean it and use tongue oil.

Your bator is wonderful!!

 

[Davaroo]

The lamps for these incubators are basically the same as for a lantern. Maybe you can call or go back and see if the ones there are still available?

 

[babsbag]

I talked to the lady today and she said that they didn't sell either lamp at their garage sale and that they will keep them both for me. So now another 2 hour drive to go and get them. She also said that there is another metal cabinet that they haven't even opened up yet and who knows what we might find in that. They are getting ready to sell his mother's house so they are going through everything. I wish they would find the trays somewhere.

I talked to DH again tonight about our mystery tube and he said that even though he had thought it was a pressure relief valve he said that after thinking about this some more he doesn't think that is what it is as this is an open system. There is the "filler" can on top that does not have any kind of cover or cap on it so that would release any pressure. He is still thinking that it was for a thermometer of some kind.

Can anyone tell me how the thermostat on the new kerosene incubators work? They don't turn the flame off, but they somehow control the flow of water...I think. If I understand how they work that might help me understand how to put a thermostat on this old one.

 

[Davaroo]

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In the olden days, thermostats would have been of the gas tube or bimetallic type. These use temperature to create a physical movement.

In the case of the gas tube, a physical principle described by Charles' law (also known as the law of volumes) says that gasses tend to expand when heated. So when a gas is sealed in a tube and exposed to heat, the gas and the tube, by default, will expand. So if you make the chamber a long coiled tube, for example, it will create movement around an axis as it heats. The alternative to the actual tube expanding is the have one end of the sealed gas tube contact a piston or other such movable seal and so translate the gaseous expansion itself into linear movement. This type of thermostat is seen in the common and reliable wafer thermostat.

In bimetallic movement, two dissimilar metals are used to convert a temperature change into mechanical displacement. Two strips of different metals, usually steel and copper/brass are joined together throughout their length by riveting, brazing or welding. The two metals expand at different rates as they are heated, forcing the flat strip to bend one way if heated, and in the opposite direction if cooled below its normal temperature. The metal with the higher coefficient of thermal expansion is on the outer side of the curve when the strip is heated and on the inner side when cooled. This sort are seen in inexpensive household thermostats.

The saving grace of these two is, again, they don't require electricity. In either case the movement resulting from expansion would be used to operate either a regulating control valve in the water piping or more likely, the flame damper in the lamp. You could probably find a gas tube regulator by calling around to work shops that specialize in HVAC systems, so that is one possibility.
On the electric side, I can also see control being done with a thermocouple activated thermostat/controller, with the thermocouple attached within or on the piping.
Probably the simplest, though, is a hybrid: Ahe good old-fashioned wafer switch, placed in the chamber.

This would be used to control a heater within the water tank. It has some inherent inefficiencies, but with some experimentation, you should be able to get it to reliably function... providing you have no leaks in the piping!