Which thermostat and how much heat tape for wine cooler incubator

[88Snakes]

I've bought a 52 bottle wine cooler which should hopefully fit 8-10 clutches but I have yet to set it up. Will it matter which type of thermostat I use (proportional/ on-off)? I run currently Herpstats on my snakes racks but recently picked up a used Ranco and was wondering if that would work on the incubator?
How do I determine how much heat tape/pad to use and where do I locate it in the cooler?
Lastly, how many fans? and where do I locate them?Does it matter how much CFM?

[ace_singapore]

IMO the thermostat is used to keep constant temp so whichever brand shall do the job as long as it's working effectively, and a proportional one tend to do it better. I see people setup the heat tapes on the backwall, maybe you want to do a test first, same goes for the fan which is meant for circulation. The idea is to get constant temp all around your incubator, including the corners.

[don15681]

I like the herpstat nd for incubators. the nd has high and low alarms that beeps when temps are out of range, which you can set how much over and under the incubating temps before the alarms go off. plus the herpstat is adjustable at 1/10 of a degree and the helix is 1 degree.

your heat tape, I put heat tape in mine and test ran it with thermometers in the top and bottom. ran it and had to cut the heat tape a couple of times before I got the temps high and low where I wanted them. remember heat rises

[pavlovk1025]

More than likely 3 ft of 11" Flexwatt on the backwall. Tie that to a regular Herpstat and youre golden. Incubators that are small, such as mini fridges and ice boxes and wine coolers are pretty tough to mess up or throw out of wack temperature wise. The probe is subjected to the interior temps, the inside is weather proofed from the outside.

1 3ft sheet of Flexwatt stuck to the back, properly soldered/connected/crimped/whatever to just ONE plug. Bam. Good luck. I have a thread up somewhere about how to build one, but then again so do a lot of people. Any specific questions, my PM box is open.

[pavlovk1025]

Oh and with something as small as a wine cooler, dont bother with getting a bunch of water bottles to stabilize temps and what not. The heating element is big enough that i gets back up to temp quickly, and heats the incubator very efficiently so less headache for you. DO keep at least 1 bottle in there in order to have properly heated 89 degree water readily available to add water to the substrate if you need to.

[seeya205]

I put heat tape down the whole back and bottom on mine! I also put a fan on the bottom right and top left to get perfect temps everywhere! Any good thermostat will be fine!

[LeviBP]

I'm interested to see your incubator design

[rabernet]

For me personally - I wouldn't trust my incubator to anything less than a proportional thermostat like Herpstat or Helix.

[mechnut450]

I got a coke machine I set it up with 4 inch wide flexwatt I got it so the tape goes down one side accross the bottom and then up the other side. I use an ESU tstat on the incubator I had a perfect temps once i left it closed, the trick is to have it set up and running befoer eggs are due in case need to adjust it. In my case I had it running from beginiing of Febuary ( going to start it here in a couple weeks as the breeder lone female ( het albino) is unknown when she could possible lay eggs or how fast she go. I got my incubator to take possible 6 clutchs and I don't want that many with out a ready supply of rodents on hand lol.
I found it smart to havea towel ( somme ones) in the bottoem of any unit to asord and mositure that runs down the sides ( which i set so would pull it to the heat tape and be evaporated back into the air lol) I can post pics as I may even play with it today and turn on since can't do much outside with 8+ inches of snow ( snow a 4 letter bad word for me )