freeze proof nipple waterer

ChickenCanoe said:

Thanks for the pictures.

How cold does it get where you are?

What is the wattage of the heat element?

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Normal lows when a cold snap hits can get into the single digits below zero.

The Mother Earth plans call for a 3ft heat tape but I could only find a 6ft unit when I was shopping. I just checked the Lowes website and it reports that these heat tapes are 7watts/ft. so mine would run about 42watts. With my extra insulation that's more than enough to keep it from freezing even when it dips below zero.

That's good to know. I'm heating two 55 gallon plastic drums and circulating the water through housing units and back into the drum. I'm going to run a heat tape on the barrels when it gets below 35F and an additional higher wattage inline heater to come on below 20F.

It is usually the same lows here but it hit -19F a couple years ago. This winter looks to be much milder. I haven't even needed to do anything yet though it did get below freezing a couple nights.

In this shot he'd already thawed the area around the nipple and was starting on the icicle.


Thawing one of the nipples on the other side.

<sigh> The water never froze - never even came close to freezing with the stock tank heater in there even when we hit 31 below zero. The horizontal nipples - oofda! They formed icicles that went all the way to the floor every time we went below about -17. But we went out with a heat gun in the morning, he melted the ice in no time flat while I did morning chores, and he was done before I was. Fortunately that would only be for a few days every once in awhile, and we agreed we'd still rather spend a few minutes out there thawing the horizontal nipples than hauling water out there a couple of times a day.

Made some changes this year with the new bucket. One of the members (and I'm sorry I can't recall the name right offhand) said that after using a point-and-shoot thermometer, he/she discovered that the water was warmer the higher up in the bucket the thermometer was aimed. So this year the nipples are up higher on the bucket and the bricks underneath are solid rather than open. We also kept the water in the run instead of moving it into the coop for the winter because the run is warmer than the coop. Fingers crossed for this winter!

Great ideas! I live in Alaska and this winter we've had temps down to -20, but more consistent in teens and single digits. I've been doing water changes twice to three times daily but used a nipple waterer during the summer. How did you attach the blue bucket top to the rigid foam on the bottom? I am going to do this!

AKfishchic said:

Great ideas! I live in Alaska and this winter we've had temps down to -20, but more consistent in teens and single digits. I've been doing water changes twice to three times daily but used a nipple waterer during the summer. How did you attach the blue bucket top to the rigid foam on the bottom? I am going to do this!

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If you look close at the pic of the blue lid over the foam, you'll see several screws that protrude through the outer bucket just below the blue lid(view is upside down so they are above the lid in the pic). I placed enough of these screws around the outer bucket to hold the lid in place against the foam. You can also see a couple of black magic marker lines that I use to orient the lid for the three nipples, so when I remove the lid I can replace it quickly without having to figure out which way it goes. Whenever I need to remove the lid and foam I simply remove enough of these screws to allow the lid to pull free.

I've been using horizontals in a 55 gallon drum with a stock tank heater its working good so far I'm sure the nipples will build ice in severe cold snaps but it's nice not hauling water daily

I have a similar setup.

I used a 2.5 gallon bucket suspended inside of a 5 gallon bucket. First, I wrapped a 6 ft length of heat tape around the inner bucket, focusing on the bottom half of the bucket - for two reasons. First, this way the heat is more concentrated, and hopefully it causes some convection in the water inside as the lower water heats up, rises, and forces cooler water to the bottom. Second is that when the water level gets lower I am less likely to have heat tape just heating up plastic.

Once I had the heat tape attached, I drilled a hole in the outer 5 gallon bucket for the cord to run through. I set the outer bucket on a concrete floor, and stacked two scraps of 2x4's laying flat, centered in the bottom of the bucket. I then sat the 2.5 gallon bucket on those, to keep it suspended. At that point I filled the cavity between the buckets with Dap Great Stuff Gaps and Cracks expanding spray foam insulation. Once dry I trimmed any overflowing foam from the top of the inter-bucket area so a lid would go on.

Unlike yyz0yyz0 I did not insulate the lid or bottom of the inner bucket (yet). Last night our temperature got down to 19 before leveling off in the low 20's until morning. I used a meat thermometer to measure the water temperature this morning and it was a balmy 49 degrees! The heat tape is supposed to shut off when the contact thermostat registers 40, so I have to assume it shut off and on over night. Due to the insulating properties of the plastic itself, and the fact that the thermostat is near the bottom of the bucket, I'm just assuming that the thermostat stayed colder than the actual water temperature.

I'm confident this setup will keep my vertical nipples flowing down to at least 0 degrees. I'll try and snap a couple pictures later today.