Planning for the worst.

So I am building an incubator and am trying to plan for the worst. Such as the power off for a day. Any suggestions would be very helpful.

how many watts will the incubator draw? Don't have an incubator, but I would think a small inverter type generator would work.

I have a ups backup power supply hooked to mine. It's an older model without a display so i'm not sure how long it will keep it running before the battery dies. but i'm sure it gives me 12 hrs atleast to figure something else out if the power doesn't come back on.

good call, I have two of those at home that I use for heat mats if i need a backup, didn't even think about that.

Keep something that conducts heat well in the empty space to hold it in. Most people use water bottles. If the power goes out, it takes significantly longer for the water to lose the heat than the air around it.

best advice I can give is, get a good proportional thermostat, I recommend the herpstat. I use the older herpstat nd. many nice feature for an incubator. like high and low level alarms that you set. I also have a generator. some generators will make a thermostat go crazy. has to do with how pure the sine wave is that the generator is producing. be careful in using an ac fan as these will heat up a small incubator. and also have your incubator finish in time to give it a decent run. I ran my for weeks and did some adjusting until I had it where I wanted it. when incubating eggs. the incubator controls the temp and the egg box controls the humidity. keep it simple. good luck don

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Originally Posted by MrLang

Keep something that conducts heat well in the empty space to hold it in. Most people use water bottles. If the power goes out, it takes significantly longer for the water to lose the heat than the air around it.

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Yes, i mean, thermal capacity is what you need, and water bottles have high thermal capacity. Also it helps if the incubator has really good insulation. with good insulation and high thermal capacity, if you lose power, the incubator will lose its temperature very slowly. good insulation also means high energy efficiency, which also helps if your backup energy is limited, like when you use batteries.

I don't have a generator but here's a tip I figured. Instead if just bottles of water I'll be adding powdered fruit pectin. It's called Sure-gel and its at nearly every grocery store. It will essentially triple the thickness/density of your water and therefore make it hold heat even better. Haven't tried it yet, but the theory is sound.

We lose power quite a bit during wintertime ice storms. So, our generator has to provide power for the wood stove blower so the whole house doesn't freeze, the snake racks, supplemental heat for the snake room, the incubator, and the refrigerator/freezers.

Lots of 2 liter bottles. My incubator is an old fridge and it has enough bottles of water that it can hold temps for 8 hours. If the power stays off I can fill them up with hot water from the sink and keep the temps up that way. Backup batteries don't last long enough for me to want to spend the money on them. They would be nice if the power is out short term, but in this town if it goes out it's going to be out for a while.