home made waterer

[roughmac]

Do these peckers hold up to mains pressure or do they need to be from a low pressure, gravity fed system?

 

[AtomicPenguin]

Low pressure & gravity feed systems only. You could always rig up a float valve to keep your reservoir full if you're trying to avoid having something to monitor and fill up. That's what I'll eventually do with mine.

 

[Country Living Farm]

I have used mine (SS nipples) on gravity feed and low pressure. They both have pro's and cons. On gravity, the nipples never leak and the water flows out of the nipples great when the chickens peck it, but you have to make sure your bucket is higher than the pipe and the pipe needs to be at an angle. From Low Pressure, the pipe can be level and works great. But....if you have too much pressure, the nipples may drip. Also, the water kind of squirts out when pecked because of the pressure.

I also have a homemade water pressure reducer that I use for mine....WORK Perfect for the $5.00 is cost to make it....

 

[AtomicPenguin]

I'm going to be using gravity feed for mine however I will have a flexible hose between my bucket and the PVC line containing the peckers. I figured I would do it this way so that I can elevate the bucket that much more while keeping the peckers at the right height.

With this setup do you figure I would still need to angle the PVC line? It doesn't seem like I would need to since it will be much lower than the bucket. Infact. Why are you putting it at an angle? To get more pressure?

 

[Intheswamp]

The reason for the angle in the pvc pipe is eluding me, also. As long as the entire run of pipe is lower than the bucket seems the water would seek to fill up the entire pipe. Does it have something to do with getting air trapped toward the end of the pipe?

Thanks,
Ed

 

[Country Living Farm]

From my experience, if the pipe is not at an angle, and I mean slight, then the water does not flow to the end very well. When I say angle, the end closest to the bucket should be a tad higher than the other end. If not, it can stop half way, or if you happen to put the end up higher than the end by the bucket, it will not flow past a certain point. If you put it level, then the nipple at the end may not get a good flow of water to it and you have the air bubble thing you spoke about. The reason I use the low pressure is becasue I do not have to worry about air in the lines and putting the pipe at a slight angle. Also, unless you put a water valve in the buck for gravity feed you have to fill up the bucket by hand.

Making a low pressure valve and running it off direct water pressure was easier for me.

 

[Intheswamp]

Quote:
So, are you gonna share your low pressure valve design with us?

Ed

 

[AtomicPenguin]

I don't foresee having an issue then since my PVC line won't be coming directly off of the bucket and the bucket will be a couple feet higher than the PVC line. If you place one of the peckers just about at the end it should give you an easy way to bleed off any air that would be trapped. Do you have a link for the low pressure unit you built? I'd like to check it out.

I plan on putting mine together at some point this weekend so I'll know soon enough!

 

[Intheswamp]

I got to thinking that if you have a mixed flock with birds of different sizes then angling the pvc pipe might actually help the different sized birds to drink. Just a little benefit of angling. I guess angling the pipe would also help you when you needed to drain the system for maintenance, freezing weather, or whatever. Using a flexible hose to connect between the bucket and pvc pipe should make the angling easy.

Ed

 

[AtomicPenguin]

Quote:
Dealing with different sized birds is something I hadn't thought about so yeah that makes perfect sense there. I'll have a ball valve coming off my bucket that I can shut off for when I might need to disconnect the line from the bucket. I don't know if that'll ever come in handy but it'll be there.