Incubator. My redneck frankenstein

[Weremey59]

Ive decided to build a new incubator as my old one is now to small. I did a a couple coolers last year and it worked great, but I'm expecting more clutches. Im halfway and have a few questions. I would like to draw your attention to my abomination haha. I cut the freezer off the top off of it and attached a sheet of plywood (mostly to stack stuff on top of it and to insulate better.)

1) the old fridge came with glass shelves which doesnt have any space between them for air curculation. My solution is to use 1" alumium stock as cross support and very heavy gauge concrete mesh (im not sure if its galvanized). This is the best solution I can come up with but if you guys have a better idea I'm all ears, I do understand it is overkill as these boxes arent heavy. As you can see in the picture I should be able to put 3 bins per shelf.



2) How much space do you have to have between the incubation box and eachother, along with how much space from the wall in order to allow proper air flow? How much space above and below the boxes aka) how far apart should my shelves be? I will be installing two computer fans (one at the top to push the air down one side and one blowing up on the other side) I would like to mount both on the top blowing down but please tell me what you think.

3) How do you reduce the power input to the computer fans as it doesnt seem that they were designed to run on full 110 power? I saw something online about phone charging cables but again im open to ideas.

[NJ Balls]

I'm not an incubator expert but I made mine out of 3/4 plywood, wire shelves from Home Depot, and a helix control connected to 100 watt light bulbs. I used peg board between the lights and the egg tubs as a defuser to prevent a hot spot and an old cell phone charger connected to an old computer fan for air circulation. I've been using it for over twenty years and have never had a problem. Based on your pictures it looks like you have the skills and the tools to build a custom incubator to fit your exact needs.

It can hold 16 egg tubs but if I move the shelves around it can hold a lot more, I originally built it when I was breeding bearded dragons and their egg tubes are a lot smaller.

I see a lot of home made incubators made out of old refrigerators and soda coolers but keep in mind it only needs to maintain a temp of 88-90 degrees. Your not keeping something frozen or hot so to me (only my opinion) the thermal quality of the box isn't extremely important.


Again, I'm not an expert so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. Since the egg tubes are sealed to maintain high humidity the spacing between the tubes doesn't have to be big, I believe the circulation fan is primarily to move the heat around more than circulate the air. Don't get me wrong I think circulating the air is equally important to prevents mold growth.

[Weremey59]

Very cool. I definitely think my shelf idea is overkill but I have always been the type of go big or go home. You answered my question on the fans, what about bin spacing? How far is your shelf from your heat source?

[NJ Balls]

The heat source is actually behind the peg board creating a physical divider between the egg boxes but is probably a foot and a half.

The fan blows downward on the heat source side of the pegboard creating a circular effect on the airflow but I do get a 1-2 degree difference on the temps between the top and bottom shelf.

when I have multiple boxes in the incubator I leave a 1-2 inch gap between boxes but I also stack the boxes two high.

[NJ Balls]

I forgot to mention the thermostat is set on dimmer so when the doors are closed and the temp is up to 89 the light bulbs are almost off or at a very low glow. I guess I could also use a ceramic heat element but I haven't had a need to change. Don't fix it if it's not broken.

I built my incubation in early 2000 and I'm still using the original four 100 watt light bulbs.