Ok, it looks like a lot of you have made homemade Bators. What is yours like? If it's something I can do for Cheap, and Not to hard....
For those of you with Homemade Bators, what are your hatchrates like? Did you buy a auto turner? Or hand turn? If you hand turn, how many times a day?
Sorry, I've been busy getting ready for a trip! Mine is a cheap cooler, with a hardware cloth base/protector from the light bulb and I used an electric water heater thermostat and computer fan. The whole setup still cost around $35, maybe more? If you can find one on Craigslist, you can probably get a nicer hovebator (sp?) for $40, and save yourself the trouble. I had to make it, I am that kind of person, see if I can make it and get it to work, LOL. But seriously, you might do better to purchase a used one!
Basically, I made mine like this one:
I then added the fan (made it go at an angle to have better air circulation, as I see a lot of people put them right against the side or lid of the incubator) and added the thermostat. If you can get the temp just right with the right size bulb, that's great, but you'll have a lot of flux with the temperature of your house if it's not maintained a constant temperature (like my house is made of paper, if it's hot outside, it's hot inside, if it's cold outside, it's cold inside, LOL) This makes it hard to maintain, and why I used the thermostat. But the thermostat still requires a lot of monitoring. You really need to mess with it a few days to see what you need to do to maintain the temp. I had to adjust it pretty much every 4 hours, and did it at night too, so that's a big pain in the butt for most people, but kinda fits into my insomniac lifestyle, LOL
Oh, I also used a more square shaped cooler and I put my water trays (two sushi plates) under the light bulb in order to make more space for my eggs. Also, I now think a side window would be better, as I could set the digital thermostat vertically then and have even more space for eggs. But it all worked out in the end ;P
