Finally got the incubator set up

[Morphie]

I built this last year but my only girl then didn't go, so it sat in the basement for a year. I have upwards of 10 females I'm hoping will breed this year so I drug it out and I'm going to test it later. Here are some photos of it - it's kind of funky, and certainly not perfect, but i was uber proud of myself for making it (i built it 100% by myself).

Lights on (there's a little switch on the side that turns on cold cathode tubes inside that are really, really bright):




inside


lights off:



inside



Thanks for looking

[Melicious]

I know absolutely nothing about incubators, but it looks really cool. ^_^

[Drew87]

Very nice, im working on one myself right now!

[Cheryl Marchek aka JM]

Looks nice! All that insulation must have been a pain to get laid in there neatly! I see a little light sneaking out the top of the door frame~ you've checked to be sure it maintains temp even if the room fluctuates some? If not~ do that before you put your valuable eggs in it. Just turn it on~ put a couple set up egg boxes in it just like you would if you had eggs in the boxes~ and monitor the temps for a couple weeks inside the egg boxes. Try to intentionally trigger in room temp changes that may occur while your really incubating so you can see how the incubator reacts. Open and close doors~ windows in the room. Remember that depending on when your girls lay~ you may have eggs in there as late as June or even July~ try to see how the incubator reacts to the room being warmer too.

Good luck!

[anendeloflorien]

Nice looking bator! I'm thinking of setting up a fridge incubator myself just have to get to it!

[MDB]

nice I just built my first incubator a few weeks ago, I used a small refrigerator out of a camper. Seems to work good but Im going to do what cheryl said, and see if my temps fluctuate, and if adjustment is needed. Looks very nice job well done

[Morphie]

Thanks you guys - i actually could have done a much better job - this was just one of my first times actually building something. I learned a lot from it. There's a lot of feature creep going on, part of which is that light that Cheryl noticed. I do intend to do some tests on it and see how it holds up inside tubs and all that. I have 9 feet of wired flexwatt in 3 foot lengths laying around if it needs help with temp maintenance. I'm feeling pretty optimistic (it is reflectix-lined on the interior and underneath the external panels, with a 2" gap of air between the two layers - i expect it to be very efficient especially if i can get some hinges to help me close the gaps in the door).