Terracotta heater

BrewedInNh

Songster
9 Years
May 11, 2010
221
9
111
Southern NH
Well, I decided to build my own heater for their 3 gallon plastic waterer. It was easy and cheap to build. It's a 40W bulb in a flower pot with an inverted galvanized pan bungied down on top.

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I added pics of the components to my web page .
 
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I like this! We were planning on making the cookie tin water heater for my 1 gallon plastic waterer, but so far have only had 1 freezing water morning here in Michigan. This looks like a good alternative, and might be more comfortable for the chickens to crowd around to stay warmer than a metal cookie tin.

I was wondering why you needed to bungee down the galvanized pan; seems like the weight of the 3 gallon waterer should be enough to hold it down.
 
i like this idea but i would turn that metal pan up right so i could water feeder inside an the chicken don"t knock down the water off the heater
laura
 
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I'm probably being over cautious, but I figure better safe than sorry. We've placed it in a corner and based on past behavior some of our chickens may try to squeeze in behind it. That would also knock the waterer off, soaking the pine bedding and exposing the bulb at floor level.

I doubt the odds of these events are too high, but I sleep better knowing I took steps to prevent them.
 
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Thanks, I would've turned the pan upright too, but the base of our 3 gallon waterer is 16 inches across, and the pan is only 12 inches. The heater is in a corner, and the waterer is tied to the walls while it sits on top.
 
This is my setup, zero freezing at -2F with the smallest (150 watt) heater I could find.

The heater at 14F is only on ~20 percent of the time, or ~30 watts (educated guess).

The tank holds about 8 gallons before overflow.

The rest of the pages are here http://scott-alcock.blogspot.com/

bird_water1.jpg
 
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