New incubator I'm working on.

[BoidKeeper]

This has to be the easiest one yet.
I striped a perfectly good fridge to make this! I removed the inside door liner to make more room. In the bottom you see a Hovabator style thermostat, low RPM PC fan and a heat pad. This is where the problem lies, the pad is not getting hot enough. I have to find something else.
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/504/289Incubator_1-med.jpg
This is adjuster and an idicator light. When the light is on the heat is on. When it's off the heat's off.

http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/504/289Incubator_2-med.jpg
Close up of the "guts"
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/504/289Incubator_3-med.jpg
Thanks for looking,
Trevor

[Jeff_Favelle]

Use more heat. Run it up the back, sides, fold it around, whatever it takes.

Best of luck! I'm not a fan of fans, but many people seem to use them.

[BoidKeeper]

Well maybe I spoke too soon. It seems to be working. It's at 82 and climbing. I still may either go to a bigger pad or a more powerfull people heat pad.
Thanks,
Trevor

[Jeff_Favelle]

What are we going to be incubating here Chewie?

[crocdoc]

fridges are usually well insulated enough that the fan alone could just about heat it up. Have you checked to make sure there are no gaps in the door seal?

[BoidKeeper]

There are gaps in the door seal, that's how air gets in. The heat pad is working I've been checking it with my reytek.
Jeff:
This will be the corn egg incubator. I've made two larger versions of last years incubators for the balls. My how time flies eh! Wasn't just about this time last year I having a fit about how to get my first one built!
Thanks,
Trevor

[Jeff_Favelle]

Time does fly man. We are NOT getting any younger, that's for sure.

I hope it works man. 82F isn't that "bad" for corn eggs. But I guess you're shotting for 84-85F?

Hope it works out man!

[BoidKeeper]

It's holding 85 but I think it's working for it. I'm going to go with the next size heat tape anyway. It's the same amount of watts but maybe it won't work as hard with a bigger pad.
Thanks,
Trevor

[Jeff_Favelle]

Keep us updated.

[Invictus]

Looks good Trevor. I think I'll start looking around for broken down fridges that people want to get rid of. It looks like it makes for some awesome incubators.

[BoidKeeper]

I changed the heat source. I took out the 8w exo-terra pad and replaced it with a people pad. Should have no problem holding it's temps now as well as getting hotter for python eggs.
Here it is with the egg boxes inside.
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/504/289Incubator_with_new_heat_pad.jpg
Here's a shot of the new heat pad,
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/504/289Incubator_w_new_heat_2.jpg
Thanks for looking,
Trevor

[Tim_Cranwill]

Ken, I managed to get a full size fridge for $10 last spring. They even took all of the useless parts off of it and cut the antifreeze line for me. Good deal for me and he gets extra parts to work with.

Call around. I'm sure you'll find something.

Brian, how are you controlling and measuring the heat?

[BoidKeeper]

Who's Brian?
If you meant me which I belive you did. I'm controling it with a wafer thermostat, same as what's in a hovabator. I measure it with this new fangled measure device called a thermometer.lol I use a digital with a probe and I check it with my reytek.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Tim_Cranwill]

Sorry, Trevor... I did mean you. :) Not sure where Brian came from either.

Looks good. Let us know how it works for you.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Put the bottom Rubbermaids on top of styrofoam, so that they are being heated by the surrounding air, not the DIRECT radient heat coming up from the heta pad.

[BoidKeeper]

Done, already, my reytek pointed that one out for me but thanks. Better to be told something you already know then to have never been told at all I guess.
Cheers,
Trevor

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by BoidKeeper
There are gaps in the door seal, that's how air gets in.

You don't want that much air getting in, that's probably why your original heat pad was struggling to keep the fridge warm enough. There'll be enough air exchange to keep your corn snake eggs breathing (I presume that's what you're worried about) if you open the fridge door once a week to look at them, which is what you'll likely be doing, anyway. Eggs don't require THAT much air flow. If you want an efficient incubator with better insulation, you can get rubber door trim to seal up those gaps in the door.

[Stav.T]

Good idea Trevor. Just a personnal thought if you want less headaches... I've tried regular size fridges when I was doing burms and they work very well. The thing that was diferent with yours is that I was buying elements ( like the ones in hovabators ) They sell those elements In stores, coops here in quebec that sell products for farmers. They have them in different wattage and they also have many types of thermostasts ( even those in hovabators ) . They also have hovabators , Lyons etc. incubators. I'm using lyons now .

Another thing that worked very good is putting in sockets and bulbs. You can adjust it by trying diferrent wattage.

Good luck with your eggs;)
Stav

[BoidKeeper]

That's a good idea. I was thinking of a socket and heat emiter.
Looking at the door seal it could use a bit of help after all.
Thanks guys,
Trevor

[crocdoc]

I'm using light bulbs at the moment because it is easier to see if they are working or not when I open the incubator - they light up. They are controlled by a dimming, remote probe Habistat thermostat.

The thermostat and max min thermometer probes are fixed to the centre of the back wall. At the moment I have four 15 watt bulbs in there, so if any burn out the incubator still works (unless all 4 burn out at once, which is unlikely).
http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Dec/200312277533717632408208.jpg

Drilled pvc shelves separate the bulbs from the shelves that hold the egg boxes. Even with all of the lights on (including my flouro 'viewing' light) not much light reaches the eggs:
http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Dec/200312271511505817207263.jpg

A close up of the shelves:
http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Dec/200312274069983822172673.jpg

With everything in place:
http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Dec/200312273918390675232628.jpg

disclaimer: I am currently incubating my first two clutches in there, so I'll let you know how successful the incubator is if I hatch these suckers. Thus far the incubator has been running for five months (four months with eggs in there) and has kept a very stable temperature.

[MouseKilla]

That's not homemade is it? I like the opaque shelving.

[crocdoc]

yes, it's home made.

[MouseKilla]

Really? To what extent? It looks like the fridge or whatever it is had the light sockets already built into it, same with the tracks for the shelves. Are you all set up for home-injection moulding? lol! Why doesn't anything I make ever make people wonder if was factory made? I'm lucky to come away from a project with all my fingers intact.

[BoidKeeper]

Really is amazing!
I finished mine with an electrical box to hide all the wireing and conections. Just have to secure the fan.
Next year I'm converting an old deep freez that no longer works.
Cheers,
Trevor

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by MouseKilla
Really? To what extent? It looks like the fridge or whatever it is had the light sockets already built into it, same with the tracks for the shelves. Are you all set up for home-injection moulding? lol! Why doesn't anything I make ever make people wonder if was factory made? I'm lucky to come away from a project with all my fingers intact.

Thanks for the compliments, but I am not much of a home handyman whiz at all! It's an old bar fridge, so the slots for the shelves were already there (since fridges have adjustable shelves). I made my own PVC shelves because 1. the original ones were rusted 2. I wanted to make shelves with a slight tilt so that any condensation on the lids of the egg boxes would slide down the front rather than drop on the eggs. As it turns out, I needn't have wasted my time, for I've yet to have condensation on top. I also put lips on the front edges of the shelves so there are no 'accidents' with egg boxes.

PVC is quite easy to work with. Just saw, drill and sand the edges. I used stainless steel screws to hold the bits of the shelves together.

As far as the light fittings go, the one on the upper right looks as though it was built in only because there was an existing moulded form and hole for the freezer wiring and mechanism (I yanked the whole freezer out). The light fittings themselves were cheapie plastic jobs I bought at the local hardware superstore.

The hole for the thermostat and thermometer probes were also pre existing, and originally held the wiring for the internal thermostat when it was a fridge.

I tried a little computer fan in there at one stage, but fridges have such good insulation that the fan itself overheated the incubator so it had to go on its own thermostat (the bulbs are all on a dimming thermostat). I may try the fan thing again with a timer that turns it on for five minutes every hour or so, but as it is only a bar fridge the temperature variation from top to bottom is only 1 or 2 degrees, so the difference in incubation temperature between the two egg boxes is 1 C.