Incubators and Living On The Furnace Outlet for Hell

I live what seems to be next door for the heating system overflow for Hell and our temps tend to get up there. I'm curious if anyones worked with an incubator system that cools as well as heats. I'm having a hard time swallowing the need to pay for AC for the whole house when no one's home and the eggs only take up 2 refrigerators (sp?) worth of space.

I believe I have seen incubators that cool as well as heat. I could be wrong about that, but I think I remember seeing them available. Regardless the cost of such a unit would be extremely high.

The way I see it you have two other options.
1, Put the incubators in a room with an outside window and use a single room A/C unit to keep the temps around 78-80°. At that range the power draw wouldn't be nearly as bad.

2. You can design a cooling system for the incubators. I have never done this myself, but I believe it can be done with a little thought.
You could do it with a source of cold water, a pump or electric valve, and a thermostat. The same could be done with a freon setup, but would be a little more complicated.
Drill two holes in the side of the fridge. run copper tubing in one hole, snake it around the inside however you wish and let it leave the other hole.
The thermostat would turn on the cold water once the incubator's internal temperature reached the setpoint. The water would circulate inside the tubing, which would bring the temperature down. Once it was cool enough the thermostat would shut the water off.
If you hooked it to the household water supply, then a valve would be adequate.
If household water would pose a problem, another small fridge could be used to hold a large container of water. In thise case a pump would be needed, and the return line would send the water back into the holding container inside the small fridge to be kept cold.
The pump should be placed lower than the water container to provide flooded suction.

I would think this would effectively keep the temperature inside the incubators from getting too far out of range. Soem tweaking may be needed to get everything in balance, but once the details were worked out, it should be a usable set up.

You know... if you're working with fridges to start... Two old ones that still run, with some slight modifications to allow for the heat tape and it's own seperate thermostat to be added wouldn't be all that hard...

I'm guessing the two you're using now are stripped down and of course by using a heating element in conjunction with the fridge's own cooling element, you would need to do some serious tweaking to calibrate the two thermometers so that they weren't just both constantly running and to acchieve the desired balance...

But old operational fridges aren't too hard (or expensive) to come by and remember, you don't need to be able to make ice cubes with the thing, just enough to balance against some heat tape and the ambient temp.

I would think you'd have to replace the fridge's thermostat with another that would cover the right range.
I haven't really checked, but I think the warmest temp you can set a refridgerator at is still in the 50's or low 60s. Too cool even it turned all the way down. It would run constantly trying to fight the heater.
With a replacement thermostat like one used in homes, it would be workable though.

hello Nieghbor!

I live pretty close to the same are you do, your right, it does feel like the furnace outlet for Hell!! I had to bite the bullet and turn on the AC though. The rats were looking mostly half dead BEFORE this weeks heat! So I brought them in from the garage and turned on our AC (Husband grumbles.....he doesn't like having the rats in the house and he is offended that I turned the air on for them when he has been whining about turning on the AC for over a month now! LOL!)


Not sure exactly how your set up with two fridges for incubators, or if any of the ideas discussed above would work. Here is a pretty simple, duct tape and bailing wire kind of suggestion: You could get a couple of those refreezable ice packs we all cool our beer in on the 4th of July. Freeze those and pop them into the bottom of the fridge box every morning just before work. Leave your heat pad (or whatever heat source on) it will spend the day battling the ice packs to warm the inside of the incubator. At the end of the day just pop the packs back in the freezer for tomarrow.

I did that last Winter to get the cool temps recomended for brumating corns, and it worked great. Just test the idea on a weekend when you can watch the temps really carefully for a few days and make sure it will work. You really only need to cool the boxes for about 7-8 hours. 11am to 6pm seems to be the worst of it.

Good luck! If all else fails drag your incubators over here and put them in my air conditioned house! Hubby should just LOVE that one! LOL!

Guess I'll just have to get my cheap butt to spend money on the AC. Grrr......

solution

I have constructed two boxes from plywood and foam building insulation, a ref could work. From a refrigeration supply house, a line voltage thermostat, interupts the 110 volt power going in to the unit, temp setting from 40 to 85, dial indicator, amazingly accurate. I use the cooling units off of built in Refrigerators, ie: Sub Zero or the big GE. No need for the defrost system using the higher temps, unit is self contained and sits on the top of the box. I have an advantage being in the A/C Ref business but the right conversation with a repair shop could yield the unit used for next to nothing. The above mentioned thermostat could also work on a conventional refrigerator with a little drilling and silicone. Use to interrupt the power to the unit.
Mark Daniels
New Orleans