Automatic chicken water system for pastured flock

[livingkitchen]

We are designing an automatic, passive, gravity-fed water system for 200 pastured chickens and have questions regarding pressure required for the chicken nipples. It will be a 55 gallon rain barrel sitting inside the engine compartment of an old bus and feeding through pvc pipe with 52 chicken nipples, running beneath the bus. What size pipe is necessary to generate enough pressure? We've read that the optimum pressure for a chicken nipple is generated by 4" to 6" inches of water height. Would 4" pvc pipe be the best choice? We have rough picture of the system. Any other advice or comments? Thanks!

 

[biga]

from an engineering standpoint, you have the same required inches of water pressure available at 1 nipple or 1,000 nipples when there is no water flow no matter what the pipe size is. so what you need to be looking at is how much flow are you going to get from the amount of chickens you have. will that many chickens empty a 55 gal barrel in a day? i doubt it. so your water flow through the piping system will be VERY negligible therefore the pressure losses through the pipe will be very negligible. just run some 3/4" PVC, it'll be cheap. without running numbers i would say 1/2" would also be fine, but since i'm a lazy engineer and the cost difference isn't that much, go with 3/4"

 

[livingkitchen]

Thanks for your reply! We had read that the optimum pressure for a chicken nipple is 0.16 to 0.24 psi which is generated by a 4 to 6" column of water above the chicken nipple. We weren't sure though if that was applicable to this system or if that much pressure is really necessary. So you think that a 3/4" pipe will be adequate?

 

[biga]

Thanks for your reply! We had read that the optimum pressure for a chicken nipple is 0.16 to 0.24 psi which is generated by a 4 to 6" column of water above the chicken nipple. We weren't sure though if that was applicable to this system or if that much pressure is really necessary. So you think that a 3/4" pipe will be adequate?

yeah, you have 60" of water pressure even when your barrel is almost empty (based on your drawing). i could estimate a flow and get an estimated pressure drop through your piping but really it's so small it's not worth talking about.

 

[livingkitchen]

Wonderful. Thank you.