RCReptiles.com

[JLWilliams]

Since my female African Fat Tail decided to breed to lay some nice viable eggs, I had to get an incubator. Since I needed it like 4 days ago, I decided to go ahead and build my own. Here are my step by step directions, with the exception of wiring the flex watt and rheostat. I did not want to be resposible for someone making one and burning their home down because they aren't electrically inclined.

This construction method is very handy if you are not ready to destroy your cooler. Meaning down the road should I decide to buy a nice cabinet style incubator, I can disassemble this one and still have a perfectly intact and useable cooler!

Here is the cooler I am going to use. It is a Coleman 48 quart chest cooler. I got it on sale at Meijers for $20.


This is a 15 foot 2 prong extension cord, that has had the sockets cut off and the loose end fed thru the drain spout of the cooler.


The spare 14.5 feet or so inside the incubator leaves me enough slack to wire up the flex watt with the cord already inside. You can wire it outside, but I chose to do it this way to cut the cord as little as possible.

Since I was not going to be using a fan to circulate the air (I hear that dries out eggs, and I can always install one later if I decide to) I chose to not heat from the bottom like most people do. Instead for this project I will be using 2 11" pieces of flex watt fixed to opposite sides. I figure this way will help allievate some hot and cool zones by heating the 2 farthest sides from each other. Before you attach the flexwatt to the insides, and get your wiring all nice and neat, now would be a good time to plug the heater in and make sure the heaters work! How mad would be to do the rest of the work and find out your heaters don't work!

This is the side farthest from the drain hole. The flexwatt is held onto the cooler by 2" wide foil tape.


This is the drain hole side. You'll notice the flexwatt is not completely flat, this is because of the wires and the drain. If I had the time, or the other sized flex watt on hand I would have chosed the 4" or 3" wide for this size cooler. If you look right below the wrinkled area of flexwatt you will see a bit of the cord that is doubled back, and wrapped in electrical tape. This is just to keep from being able to pull on the cord from outside the cooler and riping all the wireing or flexwatt off the walls. You can also just tie a knot in the cord to get the same effect.


Next I preppaired my water bottles to go into the cooler. For my design the water bottles serve 2 purposes.
1) as a heat sink to hold the temperature more stable when opening the incubator

2) as a buffer between the heating element and the egg containers. I don't know I just feel better knowing there is something in between.

I used 16.9 oz bottles. I pulled the labels off so down the road if I should take the bottles out of the cooler, I will know not to drink the water out of them.


The bottles did not want to stay directly next to heater where I wanted them, so I needed to make something to hold them there. I had a spare sheet of acrylic so I cut some 3" wide strips about 4" longer than the front to back measurment of the cooler. I then pulled back the protective cover so I could bend the the acrylic into an L. To do that I turned one of my electric stove burners to high (DO NOT DO THIS OVER A FLAME BURNER!!!!!) As the Acrylic stats to heat up it will first bend upward, then after a few seconds the weight will start to pull it down. At this point you want to pull the sheet away from the heat, lay the short end of the L on a counter, and hold it down with a pot holder, and pull down as you bend the longer piece into a nice L shape. Hold it like this for about 10 seconds, then check to make sure the bend angle is correct. The 10 second wait will let the acrylic soft set, the angle will stay, but you can still easily bend it if you need to. Once the angle is just right, turn on your sink to cold water and run the piece of acrylic under the water. And now you have a piece that looks like this.


Put the water bottles inside the cooler against the heater, and put the piece of acrylic inside. The water bottles act as your spacer while you attach the piece of acrylic.


I used more of the foil tape to hold in place, you can also use silicone or hot glue, or even bolt it down. But to maintain the ability to disassemble later if I need to, foil tape it is! Here is a picture of both acrylic pieces installed. Since they are clear acrylic they can be a little hard to see.


At this point you want to go ahead and put the water bottles inside.


The inside is now complete. I put the egg containers I picked out inside to show how it look completed. These are 4quart Steralite, number 1952.


Next we need a method to control the heat inside this thing. You incubator at this point is capable of hitting an egg cooking 118 degrees F.

Before I go on with how I finished the incubator, I'd like to take some post space to explain why I did what I did, and what I would rather have done.

For an incubator I HIGHLY recommend the use of a thermostat. I know for African Fat Tails, constantly adjust the temperature while the eggs incubate is not a good idea. I don't know how much fluxuation within the incubation range is not good, so as little as possible is what you should strive for.

Being that the eggs this is for were already laid, and burried in the cages substrate on the warm side, I had to get this thing together fast! So I chose to use a rheostat instead. At this point in time I didn't have the extra money to order one, nor the extra time to wait on shipping. If you are building this before breeding, like you should, use a thermostat instead. If you get unexpected eggs like I did, do what you gotta do until you can put a thermostat in.

Ok now thats over with back to the incubator.

If you look back up at the picture with the L shaped acrylic you'll notice a blue jiffy box sitting next to it. Jiffy boxes are typically used in walls for wireing electrical outlets and wall switches. This particular one has 2 clamps instead of nails. The unit just so happens to fit nicely inside the handles of the cooler. Using the clamps, you can clamp the box to the handles fixing it in place. Then you want to go ahead and wire up and install your rheostat into the jiffy box. Finally you want it to look good, so you might as well go ahead and spend the 22 cents on a wall plate.

To make sure I knew where the on and off possitions on the rheostat were, I used a blue sharpie marker to first mark the indicator on the knob itself, and then to mark the off possition and the full power possition.


You have now completed your coleman cooler incubator, without doing any damage to the cooler what-so-ever.

I'd recommend doing test dry runs, and slowly turning the rheostat up in power and marking on the wall plate about where 80F 85F and 90F are. Of course these markings are just a rough idea, but will help you in finetuning the temperature should you use it for a diffrent spieces, or you just want more females than males, or vice versa.

Ejnoy!

[RonCrawford]

Excellent post!

[PyMama]

A +


This is such a great idea....excellent last minute incubator!

How much do you think you ended up spending?

[JLWilliams]

Most of the stuff I had around the house, but to the best of my memory:

Cooler $20
Steralite tubs $1.29 x 3 = $3.87
Flexwatt $3.80 x 2 = $7.6
Rheostat $4
Jiffy box $1
Face plate $0.22
15ft extension cord $2
Foil tape $3
Electrical Tape $3

Since these are estimates I'd say about $40-50.

I have no idea how much the plexiglass is, I haven't bought the stuff in about 4-5 years. Last time I did buy it, I bought a really big sheet, and cut what I needed. I'm one of those people that like to overbuy just in case. Kinda like the flexwatt. When I bought it, I only needed 2 feet, but I bought 5.

I will say this again. Get a themostat for this! It's taken me about 3 days of adjusting the rheostat, and waiting several hours to get a stable temp, to just get into the temperature range I want, let alone the temp I want. This thing has a 74-118 F temp range, so dialing in on an exact temp is time consuming. This morning when I woke up it was reading 86.7F so I am getting close.

Hopefully on payday (next friday ugh) I can get a ranco themostat ordered and on its way. With the temp controls on the outside, I figure I can uplug the incubator, hook up the thermostat, plug it back in and get the temp set before the temps drop 2 degrees.

[FuzlBaby]

I joined this forum just to see this thread..... I can't see the pics still! Is there any way you could get me this posting with the pics??? I am really wanting to make this incubator soon!!!

Thanks

[deborahbroadus]

[NickMyers03]

JLWilliams - the website your using to post these pictures does not work. i tried to pull up the address and that did not work either, i got a 404 error.

try using a website like photobucket for the pictures