Waterbator, part deux

Fired up the waterbator again, but this time have a new goody.

Hub twisted my arm into buying a digital temperature controller. An STC 1000. ( $33 purchase and delivery, ebay). I had resisted the digital controller. My aim was to build a bator that anyone could build with stuff they had laying around the house. I had assumed that most hatching people had spare wafers kicking around the house AND I assumed a wafer would work in this application. Wrong.

What has been giving me grief, and sort of still is, is measuring temperature.

All other bators work on a heated air principle. The waterbator is not a heated air bator. It is a heated surface bator, working on direct contact between egg and warm surface. I have been trying to determine egg and surface temperature with thermometers designed to measure AIR temperature. This has been a problem.

My original wafer unit, which Hub designed, worked as well as it could, but a wafer is not meant to measure surface temperature and the whole unit was pretty clunky, limiting the number of eggs I could fit in the roaster. (reminder: the waterbator is a big, plastic wine bag full of water, sitting in a large turkey roaster heated from below with a lightbulb)

This digital temp controller is working well, it switches the light on and off within the parameters I have set. BUT...it was way off on its own temperature accuracy. Plus it works on a Celsius scale, which is NOT as finely tuned as the Fahrenheit scale. We've had some tweaking issues.

I did buy a direct contact forehead fever measurer thingy at the drug store. In an inaccurate way it measure the surface temp of the water bag, which is what I want to measure. First I used it on the Horse Daughter's forehead, relieved to know she has no fever. THen used it on water bag, it had no fever either, so bumped up the heat a hair. At least with the digital controller I CAN bump it up a hair.

Stand by for chicks or more disaster.

Anyone wanting to build their own bator, whether conventional or following one of my brilliant plans, get yourself one of these digital temp controllers. YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY!

I cannot believe how the temp on this waterbator does not move more than .3 of a degree! Those eggs are holding fire exactly where I want them to! I am super impressed with this digital thingy....of course how the rest of the bator performs is unclear.

That is good to hear uno . I do admire your inventor spirit!
Reminds me of the story about the inventor when asked if he had made a machine that worked yet who replied that he hadnt yet but he had found 21 ways that it wouldnt work! Hadnt solveed the problem yet but he was focusing on what he had learned. I liked that.

Oh Miry, I have made many, MANY things that don't work. Just glad I haven't burned the house down yet!

Uno I have a spare digital controller laying around. I picked it up off ebay for 20 bucks I think. So I guess it's not to far off to say that *some* people will have one floating around.

Call DUcks! Get to the bottle depot, get a huge, empty plastic liner from a big wine box, get your turkey roaster and light bulb and you've got a waterbator! Well, maybe that's a little oversimplified, but basically, the right stuff.

You might be the only person I've heard of who has a 'spare' digital temperature controller kicking around the house.

uno wrote:Call DUcks! Get to the bottle depot, get a huge, empty plastic liner from a big wine box, get your turkey roaster and light bulb and you've got a waterbator!  Well, maybe that's a little oversimplified, but basically, the right stuff.

You might be the only person I've heard of who has a 'spare' digital temperature controller kicking around the house.  

Not to sure mom would like me using her roaster as an incubator  . I get bad enough looks when I say I have set eggs in the incubator HAHAH.

I am also one of the few teens in my school with my own microscope. I bought this because I was going to install it in my old incubator - That was two years ago and it's still kicking around here somewhere.

I used an old cooler for mine, the beer holding kind - had an abundance of them after the pie shop - used to be named the Tartan Pie, so changed the names to Tartan Peeps - version 1, versioon 2... They started as incubators, and now I use them as hatchers and one or two day brooders...but I'm thinking that the digitial controller would be good - my temps always change when the humidity goes up when they start hatching so I have to watch carefully. I take the viable eggs from the modified brower at lockdown, put them upright in open egg cartons and they hatch away. I'm getting 100% of the viable eggs hatching in my homemade beer cooler brooder.

After watching, for years, the temps in my HOvabator fluctuate wildly, I am SHOCKED at the accuracy of this digital temp controller!

Now, it is not a heat source, nor is it a thermometer. It merely switches the heat on or off as per my settings. But boy oh boy, have I been able to fine tune those settings!

I have two thermoms in the waterbator. As is typical with thermoms, they often give different readings, which is annoying. That's why I have 2, somewhere in the middle of those reading is the truth. One thermom reads 99.5, the other reads 101.5. Those temps DO NOT MOVE!

So if the egg is somewhere between 99 and 101, I am happy.

Well, if my egg was 101 for an extended period, I would not be happy. But the 101.5 is a measurement of the surface temperature of the water bladder. I am sure there is a formula to determine the drop in temp where the water bag transfers heat into the egg, with the egg losing heat out the top at a certain rate too. I do not know this formula but my guess is that if the bag is 101, the egg is slightly cooler. I am happy with that.

Call Ducks, you'd only need the turkey roaster for 21 days. Christmas is more than 21 days away. You're good to go!

What on earth would you do with a microscope in your incubator?

uno wrote:
What on earth would you do with a microscope in your incubator?

It's only in there if I have an experiment running  Than it's like for 5 min - I have a very spacious incubator (If the trays were out I could hide in there... Not easily but I could - I am like 5'10 or 5'11 (not overly tall but not short).

When you look at the structure the structure off egg shells and membranes of eggs as they develop (I look at the shell structure of eggs that don't develop I sometimes wonder if there is a correlation between the shell and development of the embryo)

Have 10 good eggs going into hatch.

Last night they were all bumping. Bumping means large, lumpish shadows looming around when candled.

One early bird has hatched so far. No others have ppped (oh please Gordon, don't let them die at the finish line!

The main man in the hen house is my big white roo (I should not have a white roo, all my birds are dark) that has blue/black skin. I am assuming that he breeds the most hens in the pen since if the other two rosters try it, they get a beating from him. The first chick hatched is ALL BLACK. Black feathers, black eyes, black hide.