Waterbator PICS ADDED

This is the idea that just won't go away.

A friend brought me his fish tank heaters for tropical fish. Theory being that we heat water in a container, then with a pond pump, pump it through coils laid in the bottom of a box (in this case, black turkey roaster). In theory, this was a good plan.

However, I don't want to invent an incubator that one has to go to the pet store or gardening centre to build. I am not certain, but I think those fish tank heaters are not cheap. I was wanting to build something that anyone, with some basic help from someone electrical, could build. With basic objects. For little cost.

The WATERBATOR is now plugged in and I have set eggs. I am not very happy with the temp range. IT varies from 97 to 102. But this is the fault of the homebuilt wafer/ switch mechanism. I suppose I could have bought some very accurate digital switch. But remember, the point was to keep this basic, do-able for anyone and cheap.

Keep in mind also that the thrust here was the worry and fussing we do over humidity. We have to worry about humidity because hot, blowing air is not a natural environment for an egg. The waterbator has no hot blowing air. It has no direct heat from a coil or bulb. It has conductive heat from contact with a bag filled with warm water.

I have taken photos as I assembled it today. May post if there is interest. So..an experimnet begins. Will not be risking any of Serjay's precious duck eggs. Have tossed in 12 mutt eggs (love my mutts, don't get me wrong). Last time I hatched in the roaster, on a bed of popped popcorn, it worked. I seem to have good luck with the roaster, more for hatching than for cooking Christmas turkey!

Good luck, Uno. Aquarium thermometers, unless very expensive, are notoriously inaccurate. I have experienced huge temperature spikes using them and due to the amount of water involved the water temperature moves up fairly slowly and USUALLY. You can catch it before it is too late. With a smaller amount of water, be vigilant.

I am rooting for you and your WATERBATOR. But! I guess you can no longer claim a dry hatch, eh?

I would also love to see this. Go Uno GO!

Please post the pics, I am very curious.

Set eggs in last night to warm up.

Put a tea towel over the 'bladder'. Seems the tea towel really slowed down heat transfer. Removed towel and set eggs directly on the bladder.

Although I tried to remove as much air from the bag as possible, you can't get all of it out and there are air pockets. These cause problems. If an egg gets set on an air pocket, it is not getting warmed as well. Also, if my wafer thingy gets set on an air pocket it does not respond correctly.

Lesson one :BEWARE THE AIR POCKET!

Now that eggs are warm, am going to set them on a very thin piece of fabric. No waffle weave tea towels. It is hard to handle them when they are all squished down into the bag. But I will cover them over the top with a tea towel. It's all very cozy in there. No glaring light, no vibrating fan, just a warm bubble of water.

EDITED TO ADD I will post pics, but it is a long process here with our slow internet. So it will be a few hours before that's done. Stay tuned.

Very curious to see how this one works out Good luck

uno wrote:
EDITED TO ADD I will post pics, but it is a long process here with our slow internet. So it will be a few hours before that's done. Stay tuned.

Uno, if you can email pictures faster than you can post them, send them to me. I can post them for you snippety quick!

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You need a light bulb wired to an extension cord. Do this so you have the MALE end of the plug in still on the cord.

This is how mine looks on the bottom of the socket. Do not touch this area, you will end up with a new, frizzy hairdo!

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Next you need a cardboard box to sacrifice. This one is 13 inches tall. 12 inches would work, but no shorter.

Slice the box, top to bottom, through one corner so it unfolds into a long rectangle of carboard. Roll it up so it becomes flexible. Work the stiffness out of the cardboard so it will make an oval or round shape around the roaster.

Note the little slices cut in the top edge. This is for the handles of the roaster. You want the roaster held up by the rim, NOT by the handles. Your cardboard edge is going to have to fit under the top lip of the roaster as close as you can get it. Secure with string once you have it the shape and size you need it.

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Set your bulb and box up in a non-flammable area. Centre the bulb as best you can. Make sure there are no flapping bits of cardboard to catch fire. Safety first! This is a 60 watt bulb. 40 watt will not work.

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Set the roaster into its cardboard holder, make sure the handles are in the notches, make sure the cardboard is tucked under the rim of the roaster. Make sure you have paid your house insurance.

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Use a large, sturdy garbage bag, IT MUST NOT LEAK to line the roaster. Smooth the bottom. This is easiest to do with a little water in it. Rumples and air pockets on the bottom will mess up heat transfer, so gently try to work the wrinkles out.

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Then add 2 inches of WARM water. If you start with cold it will take days for your bulb to bring it up to temp. THen, carefully try to smooth out as much air as you can. Gather the top of the bag together off to one side. Make sure it is against/near the edge of the roaster. Twist and secure well with twist tie. Let the top edge of the bag hang out over the edge of the roaster.

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Instead of a garbage bag, would a hot water bottle work? Remember those, from the old days??

Have you had a look at how the contact incubators, that you can buy and are expensive, actually work?

I am impressed, but you are missing the most important thing, duct tape.
It will be neat to see if it works.

This is what has given us grief. The switch. Hub built it using scrap steel and wood he found in the kindling box. It is large and clunky. Not the best design to be used near eggs or on water. But for now, it seems to be working.

The wing nut holds it all together. The long silver screw adjusts hot or cold by moving the switch nearer or further from the wafer. That micro switch with the little arm is wired into another extension cord (not in the photo). When the wafer gets warm, it puffs up, hits the switch, which turns the bulb OFF. When the wafer cools off, it shrinks, moves away from the switch with then clicks out again and turns the light ON.


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The hard part was attaching the wafer to the plate steel. Most of the wafer has to be exposed to the water surface to work properly. This leaves only a small area to attach to the steel plate, and how do you do that? We used glue dots and copious amounts of hockey tape. It's not perfect. When you lay the wafer on the water bag, it flexes, which pushes it closer to the switch. This is compensated for when you spend the next several hours watching your temperature and tweaking your setting. Oh no, this is NOT quick!

Coopslave, I have not looked into contact bators. I mostly do this because I am convinced that it is do-able. For people like me and you. For less money than a fancy bator.

A water bottle would work if you had it in a container that it fit perfectly into. You want all your heat coming up through the water, and no heat coming off the roaster bottom where it is not covered by water bladder. These are two different types of heat and the roaster area NOT covered by water gets VERY HOT! I use a garbage bag because I haven't found a better alternative yet, but I'm sure someone has a better idea. Liner from a box of wine? I tried three smaller separate bags, but found a problem when they were not equally filled. This creates an uneven area to set your eggs on, set your wafer on and wasn't going to work. One big bag was better.

I have more pics yet to take...photobucket makes me want to stick a nail in my eye, good grief what a nightmare!

uno wrote: Liner from a box of wine?

I feel like this area is worth experimenting with.

Better go buy a box of wine.

And you can't just let it go to waste.

Authentic, let me know how you make out with your boxed wine. Yum, the good stuff!

DISCLAIMER! DISCLAIMER!

When I showed Hub the pics I had posted, he fell to the floor in a state of shock and horror. I did NOT post pics of that DANGEROUSLY wired light bulb! OH MY GORDON! Do I want people to think he is an idiot? That bulb should be mounted on a box , properly done, blah, blah, blah.

THe take home message here is, only make a light bulb unit like that if your wife is heavily insured and you don't like her very much. Obviously I have set my bulb unit on concrete, and do not handle it when it is plugged in. Duh. If I need to move it or change bulb, it is unplugged first. But apparently this is a safety issue so we do not recommend you try this at home. We are trained non-professionals and you might not be and not trained not professional.

Further discoveries. I knew the failure of this would be the building of a wafer unit, and I was right. The glue dots that hold the wafer in place are letting loose. As they do, the wafer wobbles. As it wobbles, it hits the switch and my temps are off. If one could find a solid way to mount the wafer yet keep it exposed to the bladder, you'd have it made. I'm still mulling that over.

Other problem, the overly large size of the garbage bag. There is a LOT of loose plastic gathered together. There are pleats of plastic that prevent the eggs from making direct contact with the bladder. Unlike an air bator that has hot and cold spots, this bator has no hot or cold spots, the heat is lovely and even. But if your egg is set on 4 layers of plastic, that creates a heat transfer problem. Same if I get the wafer on an air pocket or too many layers of plastic. This would work better if the bag I used to hold the water, was closer in size to the roaster. I tried to find those bags that were designed for roasting a turkey in, but our grocery store did not have any. Too much extra plastic gets in the way. I overcome this by shuffling the plastic around and making sure eggs and wafer are on one layer of plastic only. A smaller bag would be better though.

Aside from these glitches, I am happy with the temps and will candle the eggs tonight.

This is the set up with 12 eggs. You can see the enormous wafer unit takes up a lot of room. Since this pic was taken, I removed the garbage bag and went to two much smaller bags. So far that seems to be working okay.



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Blurry shot of wafer.

Wafer is wired into middles of extension cord that has both ends still attached. The wafer unit is plugged into the wall, the lightbulb is plugged into the wafer. Thus the wafer turns the bulb on and off.

H and C indicate which direction to turn for hotter or colder.

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The whole unit, ain't it a beauty?

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A floating bed of warmth ? Kinda goes with what I've always said that the eggs should be "" feeling "" that moist, feeling just like real skin ? Might have to try and do something similar ?

YES! I hope this inspires people. I believe that we should be able to build bators, with stuff that is easy to source, and a little electrical know how. Build a better bator! I lay awake at night and ponder this stuff.

cool! keep us informed on how this works! =)

Looking at the pic's I am assuming that your "" device "" is stationary then ? or at least till the eggs have hatched ? And you are turning the eggs what ? two - three times a day ? do you also cover them with the towel / cloth ? or does the top cover take care of the upper area ? Cardboard would make a somewhat good insulator as far as keeping in the heat I assume ? it is a wood base product so it should hold heat in fairly well ..........

I keep the eggs covered with a tea towel, to hold heat in.

In the pics the eggs were on a black garbage bag. I took that out and put in two separate smaller bags. I took those out and went back to one big bag. Took that out and now I have the inside plastic liner from a box of wine.

Hub asked about wine box liners at the recycle place and they gave him 6! They are all different shapes and size. The one I am using does not quite cover the whole bottom of the roaster, which is not great, but I'm making it work.

Because the liner is made of two layers of heavy duty plastic, I no longer have the eggs on a tea towel. They are directly on the plastic bag.

That black roaster is a poor insulator. When you take a roasting pan out of the oven and set the lid down, it loses its heat very quickly. But I think the blackness of it absorbs heat very quickly too. So this is a bonus with the bulb underneath. I think a tea towel over the eggs help the eggs stay warmer longer because while the roaster may cool down quickly, the water stays warm for quite a while.

Also, that lid is a risk to eggs! It's large, heavy and awkward. Due to cords coming out over the edge, it doesn't sit securely. I have almost dropped it on the eggs more than once. A flat piece of rigid Styrofoam would be better and likely not break eggs if you dropped it on them.

Candled tonight and I think only 5 of the 12 eggs are fertile! I am UNIMPRESSED! Will give it another day or two before I stomp and swear.

This unit, once set up, is not mobile. But you could unplug it and move it if you felt like it. Goodness knows I have disassembled and juggled things around multiple times in the last few days!

I am still looking for a "" Gel "" form sheeting that is about two inchs thick that I can carve out spots that will contain the eggs and then add warmth like you did from tha bottom ,cover the top and see if that doesn't do the trick ? Somehow I will imatate the feel of skin and the warmth that it holds to the egg ........seems more natural ?.

The problem with gel, as I see it...heat movement.

A bulb makes very hot spots. Unless the 'liquid' that transfers the heat can move and flow freely, you are going to end up with HOT spots right above the bulb, and cooler spots off to the sides.

I have built many different bators and light bulbs cause problems because they create intense heat up close, intense heat where the light hits an egg, and much less heat further away. I have built different baffle systems to use the heat of the bulb but not the brutally hot glare of the bulb. Some are better than others.

My first design, that had quilt batting stuffed in to baffle the slosh and wobble...it had water in with the quilt batting, but because the flow of water was held up by the batting, there were hot spots. The temperature of the water was not uniform.

In this 'bladder' method, that bag of water is the same temperature all over. No hot spots. This is important.

However...I think the garbage bag had advantages over this wine skin idea. The garbage bag was large, there was extra empty plastic for air pockets to move up into. It also had room for the water level to remain level. With the wine bag, the air bubble, which I cannot get out, rolls around. If it gets under an egg or the wafer, it throws off the temp readings. ALso, the wine bag, once it's full it just gets rounder as you set eggs on it, and the eggs roll off the rounded top. Clunk, against the side of the roaster. There is no extra plastic hanging out the roaster, but no room for air pockets to move to or water level to remain level, and not all humpy and round.