Incubator...thoughts please?

[pied pythons]

Right...

We live in a small house with an under-the-stairs 'cupboard' which has a full length door to it and makes a nice small room...rather than the typical types which you'd be lucky to stand an ironing board in...Lol...

My partner used to use the space as a little shack, with a PC, all his books and ornaments etc on shelves.

He's since moved all that into the loft so I have been left with this room...

It is only small, granted...but perfectly useable for all my spare equipment, books and with any luck to incubate some eggs...

I've finished painting etc and we are about to put some shelves up...

The room is 8foot high in the tallest point (for 2-3foot) and 3foot wide the length of it.

I'm planning on putting shelves on the wall you face as you walk/look in the door.

Now...my question is...what does anyone think to this idea?:

I'm wanting to use a couple of shelves to incubate eggs...heat mats or heat strips will be secured to the wooden shelves and the eggs in their boxes placed on top...sat on the shelf.

The heat mats will obviously be statted, and I have an oil filled radiator to raise the actual room temperature should I need to. Also have the option of putting a ceramic or infrared heating element in there to help raise temps.

So in effect...a warm room (which could be raised to incubation temps if need be) with the eggs on statted heat mats, in their tubs with vermiculite as usual...

Can anyone see why this would or wouldn't work please.

Best wishes and apologies for the epic!!

[essexchondro]

Hi

I can see two potential problems;

1 Temperature fluctuation if you just have the eggs in tubs on the heat mats when you open the door to go in etc. I'd still use a poly box to gouse the egg boxes to help keep egg temps constant.

2 Vibrations caused by people going up and down the stairs which might be a problem.

Stuart

[pied pythons]

thank you, good points...

I will look into it and see if I can remedy them!

I was thinking it was probably likely polyboxes would be required...which I have dozens of, lol...will be doing trial runs without eggs of course before I even consider using this idea...

Best wishes

[essexchondro]

If you use poly boxes the extra insulation would probably solve both problems so definitely worth while.

The only thing you need to remember when using a heated room for incubation purposes is to make sure that the room never becomes warmer than the statted incubation temperature otherwise your stat wont be able to control the temperature inside the poly box....basically I would still stat each poly box rather than statting the whole room.

This is my chondro egg incubator. I use it with a pulse prop thermostat. It has a heatmat at each end and a perspex window in the lid;



Stuart