Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just finished building my new incubator. I patterned it after the one from www.albinochondros.com

Its pretty much an exact replica. Its super sweet. Pretty proud of it. It better work too. The sucker cost me the better part of $270 to put together not counting the cost of the Helix thermostat which was given to me ($100 value) and I got the cooler for only $12 on clearence. Most places wanted $60.
But this should be a pretty reliable Incubator for a long time. If space permitted I would have just made one out of a stand up freezer which wouldve been alot cheaper. This thing will be easy to move around and can still hold quite a few eggs. Its great for my purposes anyway.

Thanks for looking.
Brendan

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Without INTEGRITY and HONESTY what else have you!
Brendan Saffron

Nice job! All you need are some windows in the top. Can the fans handle the humidity?
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

I was wondering the same thing about the humidity affecting the wiring and fans?
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Jaremy Douglas

I sure hope so.
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Without INTEGRITY and HONESTY what else have you!
Brendan Saffron

I built the same type of thing (with just a slightly larger cooler), with a couple of differences. First, I used 11" heat tape instead of the heat rope. Second, I have one small fan on the bottom, and finally, I use large shoebox sized rubbermaids as egg boxes, with a modified no-sub method. It works great. I have never had a problem with the heat affecting the fan. The humidity inside the incubator is not too high....most of the humidity stays in the egg boxes.

all you need is windows on the roof. and will the fans be able to take the heat and humidity. make sure you run it at least for a week or 2 to polish any rough edges AND how did you counteract or disable the built in thermostat of the heatwire??

thats just str8 up awesome and perfect for a power outage you can just drive to a relative or friends house and plug it up there I LIKE IT. YOU GOT MY VOTE.

Windows would be cool. Not sure if Ill do that or not.

I dont recall there being a built in thermostat in the heat rope. The rope does comes without a plug of which I just went to Home Depot and bought an extension cord that was also plugless and wired them together. Which is good by the way because if the cable did have a plug I wouldve had to cut it anyway to feed it through the drain port on the cooler.
But thats the only oddity about the rope I can think of. That and the sucky fact that it was almost $40.
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Without INTEGRITY and HONESTY what else have you!
Brendan Saffron

Thats a great looking unit you got there, if you don't mind me asking, where did you get that easyheat cable your using?

it looks like the ones they sell at home depot or lowes in the plumbing section but I could be wrong

I just folled the link that Damon provided.

Here it is if your interested.
http://www.morelectric.com/hb.htm

Its a very industrial rope. I suppose I couldve bought the heat rope that Big Apple Herps sells for cheaper but I forgot about them until after the matter.
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Without INTEGRITY and HONESTY what else have you!
Brendan Saffron

If you open the incubator up once a week and more often near the end do you really need the fans?
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Thank you,
Dave

couldnt you just remove the lid and replace it with a sheet of glass? that way you can see inside. make sense?
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Thank you,
Dave

Glass is a very poor insulator, unless you use layered glass, but then you are looking at a significant increase in cost. A small opening cut in the lid and sealed, allowing you to see inside (such as humidity gage, would be all you need, as the temp is shown on the helix thermostat (unless you want a second thermometer inside to ensure the Helix is working or in the case of a power failure and you want to know how much the temps drop.

Awesome incubator, by the way. I plan on making a similar cooler based incubator this summer, to get ready for cornsnake eggs next year. (still too early for me to breed my ball python, she's not even two years old yet and not up to weight..and well, I have no male yet LOL)
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PHLdyPayne

Fans are used primarily for circulating air so that heat is evenly distributed throughout the incubator.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

I understand that. i was asking becuase i know alot of people don't use them and by lifting the lid lets fresh air in. (I dont know it all i promise im just asking and trying to get facts straight for when i build mine). By opening the lid once a week and more often towards te end of incubation will doing this be suficient enough of is a fan really recomended?
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Thank you,
Dave

It is not so much about letting fresh air in, but more about moving the air within the incubator to prevent temerature stratification. You don't want the top shelf of eggs to be 94F(too high) while the bootom shelf is 84F(too low). Its more about keeping the temps constant and stable within the incubation area. Fans will allow the entire incubation area to be a consistant stable temperature.

Will

You are semi accurate. Dont feel discouraged. You have normal questions.
Opening the lid every so often is indeed an adequate method for allowing gas exchange. However, I placed the aquarium air pump in the center water pan(via Damons example) as an automatic means for introducing osygen into the incubator on a costant basis, elminating the necessity for occasional opening of the incubator to achieve the same results. The air pump is also supposed to help raise the humidity.
The fans are important because they mix the air and humidity which help to provide even thermal (temperature) distribution.

The thing with fans in an incubator is that you dont ever want an air current blowing directly over eggs as this will be a factor in drying them out. The plaement of fans depends on the size of the enlosure and the location of the heat source.

Typically heat rises right? So if you have a tall enclosure you will probably want to place fans facing perpendicular to each other in a vertical fashion (one at the top and one on the bottom). My fans are located horizontally because my enclosure is shallower and the fans are placed in between the heated water pans and the egg boxes to circulate the rising heated air to avoid hot spots. This allows the temparature in the egg boxes to rise evenly.

I rambled but I hope this is helpfull.
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Without INTEGRITY and HONESTY what else have you!
Brendan Saffron

Im not super experianced so Im trusting Damons knowlege and troublshooting. Heres a quote from his instructions to the design that I replicated.

" The egg boxes sit on styrene egg crate positioned atop a PVC frame that separates it from the stainless steel water pans. It's important that there's a separation between the boxes and the water in order to aid in air flow beneath the egg boxes and to eliminate the presence of hot spots in the incubator. On the underside of the egg crate are fastened two 12V 40mm X 40mm X 20mm CPU fans. I zip tie them to the egg crate and position them to create air flow parallel to the egg crate's surface. They each move approximately 7 cubic feet of air per minute and between the two of them, manage to completely homogenize the air in the incubator... in regard to both temperature and humidity."
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Without INTEGRITY and HONESTY what else have you!
Brendan Saffron

to that incubator that looks so good I almost want to get rid of the coke cooler I got and build one of those hahahaha

seems viable to me....
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Thank you,
Dave

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Charles Glaspie

Tanstaafl:
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".
An acronym created by my favorite author Robert A. Heinlein.

thats a new one for me

Ahh...sorry.
Kinda like calling shotgun/?

in other words...i've been wanting one of those coke coolers
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Charles Glaspie

Tanstaafl:
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".
An acronym created by my favorite author Robert A. Heinlein.

Nice~ I built one from the same set of plans this year. Here are a couple issues I've come up with so far for you to watch out for.

The metal pans I bought rusted imediatly. I replaced them with glass. Then the humidity was SO high that I was litterly getting enough condensation on the roof to count as rain (It was actually leaking out the sides of the lid and dripping down the cooler too!) so I disconected the air bubbler. Helped a little, but not enough~ so I replaced the open air water containers with bottled water bottles (arrowhead brand is a nice fit). This has solved the extra humidity problem, and stopped the worry about water from condensation on my fan and electrical connections. I modified the egg boxes themselves to hold the extra humidity I needed~ (egg crate over water in the egg boxes themselves.

Hope yours is less work trying to calibrate than mine was!
Good luck!

That pic was taken before I replaced the open water tubs~ you can see the water on the lid, sides, and all over the egg boxes (don't worry, there are no eggs in there yet!)
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Cheryl Marchek
AKA JM
The Red Dragons Den
Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons~ for you are Crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!