No more freezing waterers this year

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Uh, that's in the code. All houses sold since some such date have to have GFI outlets in all "wet locations" including bathroom and outdoor outlets. They also have to be upgraded if you intend to rent. Your house must be old, pre-code I guess.

I hate them! They go bad on you after a while, like a surge protector, and they don't agree with all of the RAIN that we had over the past year!
The ones in this house are probably a maximum of 6 years old and I've had to replace the 2 outdoor ones in the past year. One is currently not working, I bought the replacement but I ain't freezin my digits off to fix it! We are compensating by almost-overloading the other one. Sounds real safe doesn't it???
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The "regular" outlets in my parents house are 30 years old -- they work and no one has been electrocuted either.
 
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That may be in YOUR code -- doesn't mean it's in mine, or anyone else's.
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My house is 10 years old. My "rooster house" is a bit younger. My barn is about 3 years old. None of them have built in GFCI, except for one in the bathroom.
 
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That may be in YOUR code -- doesn't mean it's in mine, or anyone else's.
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My house is 10 years old. My "rooster house" is a bit younger. My barn is about 3 years old. None of them have built in GFCI, except for one in the bathroom.

Well my city adopts the current codes from the "2000 International Building Code" so I kinda figured it was pretty universal
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My house is 60 years old
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I guess not!
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If your house was built before 2000 then no they wouldn't have been put in. But my house was a rental from 2004 to 2007 so it had to be brought up to code, including things like GFI outlets and hardwired smoke detectors. I must say that I don't really appreciate either of them.
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I've been running this since the cold weather set in. I made it of course out of things I had on hand.
It's holding an average temperature in the low 50's even with the temps into the single digits during the night and even all day when it barely is hitting 20.
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It's a 40 watt christmas light strand inside of a 5 gallon bucket, with a 2 gallon bucket inside of that. The 2 gallon bucket, which holds the water is propped up with 16oz cans of beans. I was getting ready to make 8 of these when one of my website clients ordered me 12 heated 1.5 gallon dog bowls as shown throughout this thread as a suprise! How lucky am I?

I'm not sure which I will be using because I was really excited to have somewhat warm water available. When the temps are above freezing but still cold.. the temps in this bucket hold in the mid 60's.

Here's how it is inside before I added the lights
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It's a TON easier to work with lights that are new because you can keep them bundled and distribute them around the edge of the bucket SO MUCH EASIER... and they lay flat against the side. The two buckets I did with older unwound lights were a nightmare.

after a couple of single digit nights and days in the 20's. The bucket is located out of the wind but in the shade
Temperature in the bucket
Temperature in my house
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When the dog bowls arrive I'll check to see what the water temperature difference is.
Anyway.. 40 watts isn't much cost wise... and I figured christmas lights were intended for season, outdoor use, and I always have lots of buckets. I prefer them as waterers honestly.
 
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Christmas lights? Freaking brilliant! Best part: a lamp burns out, and you only lose 1/4 watt of heat. I bought a case of 150-lamp strings on end-of-season markdown several years ago. Maybe I'll make one next week.
 
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Why thank you... both of you..

Another bonus.. in my case, I have coop after coop after coop

So I can hook ONE bucket up to the extension cord... then plug a strand into the end of the strand in bucket #1 and carry another strand over to coop #2 where I can plug it into a strand inside bucket #2. That is strand #3 in the circuit. Strand #3 inside the bucket can connect to strand #4 which runs to another coop in the line where I can plug in bucket #3 aka strand #5.

The strands I have state up to 5 connections (some are only 3) so I can use 5 strands to do 3 coops, on one extension cord.
 
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