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.

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Originally Posted by TheSnakeGuy

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.

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i dont think thickness or viscosity are what you want if you want to increase thermal capacity. by volume, liquid water on its own just rocks. its even better than solid metal by volume. and i found a few sources that say that salt water has a lower heat capacity compared to fresh water, so while the salt will make it heavier, it makes heat capacity worse, because it decreases the amount of possible hydrogen bonds between the water molecules. so i doubt solving anything in the water will make it better at storing heat. i may be wrong, but i dont see what could do the job.

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Originally Posted by dillan2020

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.

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Just don't use it with a proportional thermostat.

more info: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...u-Need-to-Know

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Originally Posted by The Serpent Merchant

Just don't use it with a proportional thermostat.

more info: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...u-Need-to-Know

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In the Herpstat manual they talk about generators. The only ones the recommend are the newer Honda models that put out such a clean power source that they are fine to use with proportional Herpstats.

http://spyderrobotics.com/home/suppo...afetytips.html

Its a hospital Refrigerator that has been taken apart. It is insulated and 2 1/4 in thick.


http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/...ps56e3ab5f.jpg

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Originally Posted by coreydelong

In the Herpstat manual they talk about generators. The only ones the recommend are the newer Honda models that put out such a clean power source that they are fine to use with proportional Herpstats.

http://spyderrobotics.com/home/suppo...afetytips.html

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Yes, those are what are called inverter generators. The thread I linked to goes over all of that.

Great writeup on the generators! Also, unless you need to run a proportional t-stat for something like an incubator where you don't want temperatures to fluctuate, it may be easier to simply plug an electric heater into your generator, put all the snakes into one room, and use the heater just to keep that room warm until the power outage ends.

I used a old coke machine not had a power issue here yet. but I am looking at figuring a way to set a pair of solar panels I acquired (not sure their rating yet since I must get to the leads to test them) but I figure I set them up to run the tstats and possible charge our cell phones if the power out for a while. ( once I tie them into some dry cell batteries )