Incubator temperature

For all of you that think your $40- $50 IR Temp guns are the bomb, do this little test.

Boil a pot of water in a stainless steel pot. Measure the outside of the pot right at point where the surface of the water on the inside is boiling. Guaranteed you will not see 212F like you should.

Now place a piece of BLACK electrical tape on the outside of the pot and do the same test. You will see 212F with the black tape.

How much confidence do you have in that temp gun now :confusd:

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Originally Posted by PitOnTheProwl

Yeah I have never had to adjust my stats on either of the bators I built.

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Just curious- What size incubators and how many clutches at once?

I'm talking fridge sized with 12- 15 clutches at once. Towards the end of the season when the incubator is nearly full the temps seem to rise.

http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h1...psq3tf3esb.jpg

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Originally Posted by coreydelong

Just curious- What size incubators and how many clutches at once?

I'm talking fridge sized with 12- 15 clutches at once. Towards the end of the season when the incubator is nearly full the temps seem to rise.

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Yeah mine is huge fridge size but only 5 or 6 clutches. (Freezer actually)

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Originally Posted by coreydelong

Wrong....

Temps guns are a very poor indicator due to their fixed emissivity errors. Even the highest quality $500 Exergen temp guns will not give accurate readings on all surfaces due to a fixed emissivity setting. Not all surfaces are created equal.

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A high quality temp gun used properly,will beat anything you using when it comes to temps with breeding snakes! Period! By the way,good try saying you wanted my pied females for future breeders,when in reality you wanted to by them cheap,then sell them for more. Good thing I called you on it. Then came the infamous "car repair " excuses.;)

While I enjoy the enthusiasm and use of crazy large text and !!!!!!'s... I'm going to have to agree with coreydelong here. Temp guns are great for reading the floor temp in my tubs, but I would never use it to read ambient temps in an incubator. They don't read ambient temps so I'm confused as to how you think it will beat anything, when it can't do everything? Temp guns honestly have no use in an incubator :colbert: I use multiple Acurite thermostats at different levels within the incubator and inside the shoe boxes themselves.

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Originally Posted by BrianDallek

While I enjoy the enthusiasm and use of crazy large text and !!!!!!'s... I'm going to have to agree with coreydelong here. Temp guns are great for reading the floor temp in my tubs, but I would never use it to read ambient temps in an incubator. They don't read ambient temps so I'm confused as to how you think it will beat anything, when it can't do everything? Temp guns honestly have no use in an incubator :colbert: I use multiple Acurite thermostats at different levels within the incubator and inside the shoe boxes themselves.

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Actually in a well insulated incubator, everything in mine temp guns out at between 88-89 degrees.
So yes they do have a use.;)
With exception of the rear wall when the flex is on.

One word...... emissivity. Temp guns may read consistently, but not always accurately to a given degree.

Most all the little "cheapie" $40- $50 temp guns have a fixed emissivity which leads to errors on varying colored/textured surfaces. Black has an emissivity of 1. White, silver and translucent surfaces have a much lower emissivity and this is why many temp guns have a fixed emissivity lower than 1 (like 0.95) which leads to accuracy errors of varying degrees.

Energen makes the only certified NIST traceable temp gun in the industry at a price point of ~$300. They have a microprocessor control that automatically compensates the emissivity. Having owned several $800- $1000 full blown R/C nitro burning engines, Exergen is the only temp guns racers can truly rely on the manage their engine's temperature and performance. Overtemp a nitro engine by 10% and you will have a pile of parts when the glow plug drops at 45,000rpm on the back straight. At 300F you do not have much leeway.

The best tool we could probably use is a contact pyrometer which is not practical for egg boxes and are quite expensive as well. The next best thing is what most all of us use.... Herp related temp probes. They have no emissivity errors since they are contact probes and are not prone to the same errors as temp guns. Far more reliable IMHO.

Just a spec sheet from an Exergen DX501:

http://www.exergen.com//industrial/dxseries/broch.html

Here are a few quick videos on the emissivity error of a $40 temp gun. This is probably the maximum error using a reflective surface vs. black electrical tape. Would you like to trust your eggs to this?

Test #1 on warm water. What is most amazing the the degree of emissivity error closest to where we incubate our eggs. A 17F difference (~17%)!!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaprzFKJTOg

Test #2 on boiling water. 212F would be a perfect reading. 209F is only a 1.4% error:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFVhAS207_0

Real world incubator test. I checked 4 tubs and got the same variance as the one in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfiA3hECFEw