Incubator problems...

I have a Hova-Bator 1602N and for the longest time it worked great, even in a room with fluctuating temps. Here the past two weeks it has been nothing but trouble and its driving me insane! It is in the most temperature stable part of the house and is not near any windows or drafts. It won't hold a steady temp at all. I'm guessing the cheap little wafer thermostat is going bad.

I've got corn eggs in there right now and which I've been trying to keep in the 82-83 degree range. No such luck. I have to watch it like a hawk and constantly tweak it to even keep my temps between 81.0 and 84.5. I've had it spike to 85 once and it got down to almost 80 once. I have two digital thermometers in there and both are always within 1/10 of a degree of each other, so I am confident they accurate.

I used to just tweak it til I found that sweet spot, set it and walked away. It rarely varied +/- .5 degrees.

I've heard about putting water bottles with the same temps in there will help stablize it. I'm gunna try that today. Makes sense that it would help hold a steadier temp.

If that doesn't do the trick I think I'm just gunna strip all the guts out of this pile and throw in a heat mat with a thermostat. I bet that would solve my problems.

Any other ideas how I can I make this more stable?

Ulgh. :( I'm afraid I'm not much help, but I'll give you my condolences, and bump this for you. That sounds cruddy. :( I'd definitely put the water bottles in there for the time being, though. Although considering the wild fluctuations, probably not a long-term fix. I really have no experience with incubators, though, so I probably shouldn't be saying anything. :oops:

Get a 60$ space heater with built in digital thermostat at lowes. Plug it in and set room temp at 81. Set the tub of eggs on top of the racks and thats it.

Ive never used incubators for colurbids eggs. always incubated at pythons room temp.

On other hand, i always tell people stay awya from hova bator. Theres more problems with them and more clutches are lost each year than make it

Well until just recently it has worked pretty good considering how cheap it was. The water bottles have helped a lot and its staying +/- 1 degree with minimal tweaking. I'm surprised how well that worked. So far all the eggs look fine. Good veins and you can see them growing inside. Hoping for around the 29th, that will be day 55. We'll see.

This fall I think I'm gunna try score an old mini bottle cooler from wal-mart (they always have ones breaking down) or an old mini fridge and build one. I'm gunna need a lot more stable temps and more room for ball/carpet season. Should be a fun build. :D

If your temps are only varying from 80-85 degrees, everything is fine. Corns in the wild go through much more than this and they are fine. You're trying to keep them at an ideal temp, and that's fine, but it isn't an absolute. As long as the're staying at the temps you described, everything should be fine.

Good Luck!
Jim Smith