RCReptiles.com

[Richard]

This is the incubator that I put together. It is decent sized however not big enough for large volumes of eggs. It would work great for 1 or 2 clutches of BP eggs or many Colubrid clutches....ie cornsnake, kingsnake, so on.

The size is roughly 24H X 21W X 17D outside, 16H X 17W X 14D inside.

It is an Igloo Portable Fridge that uses no freon to operate, so it was easy to strip down and convert. I pulled out the cooling fans, control, t-stat and all. Then installed a ZooMed Rheostat in its place. The mini-fridge had a control knob inside so I put the rheostat control knob in its place and ran the wire in the areas of the original. It has a single plug just like a normal fridge would except its for the rheostat now. The heat pad is a small "mini" Hermie heater. I had used a heat cable ran zig zagged on the bottom in eye-bolts first, however even on the lowest setting it was getting well into the 90's in there! So I got a smaller heat pad put it on a piece of glass mounted on two strips of wood on the bottom. I mounted the heat pad raised up to get the most heat out of the pad as possible without heating up the plastic bottom of the fridge. I drilled some large vents in the top near the control vents and some smaller ones around the inside to allow some air exchange as the heat rises up. For now old tub lids are my shelves, however these will be replace with metal wire shelving soon. The entire thing is insulated with 2+ inch injected foam, it holds heat very very well. I found this little thing fixing to be thrown away. If a normal small fridge was used you would need a HVAC person to remove the freon and compressor for you. It is a federal offence to release freon into the air and throw the compressor away. I know this because I am an EPA licensed freon handler.... Here are a couple of pics.