Cooler Incubator by Degei

[PythonWallace]

I didn't mean to sound like I was calling you out. Nice work on the incubator. I only commented because I felt a little "called out" by your comment about the drama in the other thread, and the fact that you decided to post your 3+ year old tutorial here as a response to that. Like I said, people who can make their own will. Some people who can't will ask me or someone else to walk them through it. Others will bend over and fork out the $800+ for a well known cooler incubator, or $1,200+ for a small commercial incubator, and the few that are left over will give me a call. How consistant does yours stay with only a foot of flexwatt? Does it get up to temperature and hold it without your thermostat jumping around? On a couple of my different prototypes I didn't use a ton of heat tape and I had issues getting up to temperature, and when they finally would, my thermostat would be all over with the amount of power it was putting out.

[Damon Theis]

What I've found is that as long as the room temp is at least 10 degrees below the desired incubation temp, the setup is rock solid.
If the room temp for example, gets to 80 or above, and the desired temp is 88.9, the unit will spike up to 90 or over. Through trial and error, I can attribute this to heat that is actually put off by the fan motor.
While it is not perfect, in reality, it has never affected hatching. I, however, resign myself to working in and "unperfect" environment, much as nature.
It can be resolved by killing the fan when you "have the a/c off" on hot days, but I rarely do unless the incubator hit's 93.
( let the boo's begin... lol. i'm a bit more careful on chondro eggs than bp eggs, but my hatch rate is consistant in both species. )
So to the point, that one foot is more than fine for that cooler setup.
I have actually lucked out this year on spacing of clutches or I would have had to build another one.
Thankfully, that is still keeping pace.
-d

[wuffielover]

I've been looking for this tutorial everywhere! I swear I had a link to it back a couple years ago but lost it. You are awesome!

[Cougr]

I tried to use your link tonight and unfortunately the page is down =(

[Damon Theis]

I tried to use your link tonight and unfortunately the page is down =(

http://www.eyehit.com/degei/supportfiles/links.htm

hosting was changed due to bandwidth issues, the link above is active.

[Cougr]

Thanks a billion =)

[JenH]

I set one up like yours last spring. I did not cut the windows in the top and did not screw the wires down to the side. I figured I might want to use it as a cooler again someday. I also used just 1 ft of flexwatt and it was perfect - it created just enough heat. Even if I opened the cooler for a minute or so moving things around, it was back up to temp in a couple minutes.

Perfect hatch rate last year..

Thanks for posting the design!