Down Spout Waterer???

[Charlene1234]

Hi, I've seen waterers that were from a 5 gallon waterer but I'm wondering if anyone has redirected their downspout to fill the waterer? I'm from Oregon and we get a lot of rain and I use my down spouts to fill all my horses water troughs from Fall to Spring and it works great. But I'm trying to figure out a design to use the down spout somehow inside the chicken coop. My father wants to have his running inside his coop then out again so they can get fresh water, but I think it needs some kind of bowl or trough for when the rain stops (it does stop here in Oregon SOMETIMES!). I would love to figure this out for inside my horse barn as well... sort of a bucket with a downspout going in then another overflow spout to dump the excess water??

Does anyone understand what I'm thinking here?? Seen any pictures of someone doing this? I'd love to see it so I can give my hubby a picture of my idea!

 

[LynneP]

I'm leery about extra water inside a coop. What if the overflow fails? It's bad enough if a waterer or bucket spills. Maybe it would be more useful as a reservoir outside...or could be directed to a storage cistern of some kind away from the birds?

 

[Fudgie]

We just use the downspout to fill a horse trough then carry water into the barn to fill the waterers. I was afraid of overflow and the chickens running around in muck. The ducks would LOVE it but not the chickens.

 

[patandchickens]

If this is a painted metal roof and you don't eat giant amounts of eggs, fine... but if it is a galvanized roof or, much worse, asphalt shingles, you might want to think whether you REALLY want to be eating a potentially concentrated version of all the exciting chemicals that leach off the roof. This is a real issue in designing roof water collection systems for human use, and if you're eating eggs from your chickens, is worth considering.

I think what you'd want is a cistern, as not-gonna-leak-or-spill as possible, that is fed with a foolproof overflow valve from the downspouts. The cistern itself would feed a gravity-pressure auto waterer system, of which there are I think a couple brands on the market (make sure to get one designed for gravity-feed i.e. low pressure, not tap type pressure)

Good luck,

Pat

 

[silkiechicken]

Yeah, I personally don't touch down spout water. Our roof may see rain 10-11 months of the year, but after all that, a whole lot of nasty crud washes off the shingles. Nice yellow water with particles.