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Entry Date
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Location
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Saturday, October 29, 2022
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Pumpking
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Germany
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Entry 34 of 40 |
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Step 4: You close the box, you plug-in the heater (the plug should be connected to a timer, the on/off frequency will determine the final temperature inside the box) and monitor the temperature with a thermometer. Important advice: Before you start with starting seeds, your incubator box should be tested with some empty pots inside, which contain some seed starting mix (or other soil) but not the precious seeds. Turn on the heater and maybe set the timer at a frequency which allows for 50% on and 50% off (half hour on, half hour off…something like that)…wait for a couple of hours, monitor the temperature development inside the box. It will take a while before the sandbag bottom and the inside of the box will have adjusted to an equilibrium temperature. It should be reached within a couple of hours (maybe after half a day). If it´s too warm inside, then adjust the timer to more off rather than on (half hour on, one hour off, for example), and if it´s too cool inside even after one day, then adjust the other way (like one hour on, half hour off). The wet sand and the rather low wattage of the heating cable are required for releasing the heat into the box in an even manner, the warm sand will heat the box even when the cable is off, and the wet sand will take up the heat from the cable as soon as it is switched on again, thus prevents formation of hot spots. Important: The equilibrium temperature inside the box will depend on the room temperature of the room where this box is kept. In a cooler room the inside-the-box equilibrium temperature will be lower, in a warm room it will be higher. The on/off pattern of the timer needs to be adjusted as soon as room temperature around the box changes noticeably! (Hence, I keep my incubator box in my kitchen where there is a pretty constant room temperature.)
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