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Before I incubate and hatch new chicks, I'm gonna
make a new version of the incubator instructions
As an incubator I'm using a polystyrene box, but you can basically take what ever you want
from the dresser to the refrigerator, anything is possible, it is only important that they well insulated.
A good site for homemade incubators is BackyardChickens.com.
So Let's start with the things you need to build a incubator
I'm using a styrofoam box (61cm * 46cm * 32cm) 24in*18in*12,5in
two Pringles cans as windows,
the universal thermostat UT200 by Conrad,
an E27 lightbulb with 40W
an E27 lamp socket with a power cord
power cord with plug,
one luster terminal,
a 12V charger with an output of 1000mA
two 8cm (3.14) inches PC fans with 0.14 amps
4 screws and nuts for the fan,
two 0.2 ml plastic cups for the humidity
a freezer grid to set the eggs on it
a piece aviary wire to prevent the chicks from getting to the lamp
a thermometer and a hygrometer.
As tools, a screwdriver, a knife and a side cutter,
and a soldering iron or Electrical tape.
let's go to the instructions
you first make two holes into the sides of the box,
one for the lamp and one for the cables.
In the lower hole you put the light socket,
in the upper one the cables of the thermostat and the fan.
To get the cables of the fan through the hole you have to
take them out of the box, by pushing the hooks in.
once you have plugged the cable through the hole, you can turn out the barbs again
Then You take the screws and
attach the fan in the two upper corners of the incubator.
it should look like this. The next step is the wiring
The cables are not connected at any time with the power supply
if you have no expireince with with wiring, you better keep your hands off it
The fan cables have 2 different sites
on the left the Female side and on the right the Male side,
the same thing for the boxes left Female and right Male.
you have on the left the male and on the right the female plug
you connect basically yellow with yellow and black with black.
because of security reasons we put every thing in the box
make sure that the barbs are back out
make sure that you take a Female Box and plugg
the Male cable into the box,
best with a red exterior and black interior order.
Then you take the Male box and plugg the female cable
with the same order of red on the outside and black on the inside.
You then put the two together and
you are left on the right side with 2 times male and
on the left with 2 Female connectors
Now we take the 12volt Power Supply Unit and cut off the plug,
Then we isolate the cores with a knife
and twist the individual wires with each other
on both sides.
The important thing is that not both cables are twisted together,
only the individual wires of each cable
It should look like this.
Then we go back to the fan cables
we then cut the two Female connector on the left and insulate them.
These are then used as an adapter for the power supply.
The two cut wires are then soldered
with those of the power supply
and wrapped with electrical tape,
you can also only electrical tape and forgett the soldering
If you do it differently and connect the AC adapter
directly to the fan, you should
make sure that it works, befor soldering the cables
The two other Male connectors come back in the box
and we can then use the builted adapter
to operated the fans with the Power Supply Unit
You now have to look yourselfe which cables are
connect to each other,
on the power supply unit cord are strokes which shows the
negative cable and it goes to my red fan cable
but in others cases, it goes to the black fan wire.
The fans are used to evenly distribute the warm air in the incubator.
you can imagine it like in a convection oven.
You don't really need them,
in a fanless Incubator you have to switch the eggs
position more often otherwise the eggs in the front
are getting more heat than the eggs in the rear.
A Fanless one is called a area breeder (in germany)
And on with a fan a motor breeder.(in germany)
let's go to the wiring of the lamp,
if you can get to the inside of your lamp socket you can
Screw the power cord directly to the socket.
Since this is not possible for me, I need to connect both
cables with to the luster terminals.
This works again by color,
you connect blue with blue and brown with brown.
and thats all the wiring
The next step is the place for the eggs
to prevent the from egg rolling around
I'm usinf the freezer grid but
you can basically can take the
Egg cartons or a W shaped bent wire.
To protect the chicks we must prevent them from
to the side of the lamp and the water.
for that i connect the aviary wire
to the grid.
How you do it is up to you
for ideas you can go back to the Backyard Chickens website.
Now we will come to the lid
you cut two holes in it,
which are slightly smaller than the Pringles packs.
Where you put the holes is up to you
I placed one in the middle above the brood chamber
and the other near the lamp to check the water level
and the humidity
I have shortened The Pringles cans and
made some Holes in the lid
to allow the humidity to escape.
As a final step now comes the thermostat,
whose job is to regulate the temperature in the incubator,
when the temperature
falls below 37.4°C (99,32F), the lamp is switches on
and as soon as a temperature of 37.6 exceeded
the lamp is switched off again.
You can also use other thermostats
like heating or hot water thermostats.
If you have a room with a constant room temperature
you can do it completely without a thermostat
and just use a dimmer or a thermal blanket
or even put holes in the box untile the right temperature is reached
It is then naturally prone
and not as accurate.
So you should invest some money in a thermostat
For safety, we check all the cables again
especially the lamp cord
we look if the colors match
Blue to blue and brown to brown
If this is the case
we look for any bare wires
if there are any we put some tape over them
if that fits, we take the power cable of the lamp
and put the cable in the thermostat
then we take the thermostat and the power supply unit
and connect the to a multiple plug
turn on the whole thing on
and when the light bulb lits and both
fans are working th assembly instructions is finished
The next step is to make a test run
in which we try to maintain a constant temperature of 37.6 ° C
and a constant humidity of about 60%
if we managed the humidity of 60%
we raise the humidity to 80%
and try keep it at a constant level, if it works
we can order the eggs for hatching.