How advantageous is having electricity to your coop?

[Scarlet Girl]

I ran electricity to my coop last summer and love it. it was a pain in part because of the steep slope I live on. I ran conduit and made the mistake of putting a retaining wall over it before running wire through it. well the hose kinked and there was no way to pull the wire through when I finally got to it, it was a huge frustration, so I had to run new conduit, overall it was a pain but turns out to be well worth it. it has allowed me to have an outlet for plugging in a deicer for the water and it's very nice to be able to plug in the mother heating pads in the brooder without running an extension cord and, when the hens stopped laying eggs around winter solstice, I had an easy way to add a timer and a light and, voila, I had consistent eggs all winter.

as for which building you should go with, I'd go with the best building for you and figure out how to run electricity to it. there is more than one way to get electricity to a building, you could always run it above ground by tying in a support cable from a high point on your house and running it to the side of the out building, or to pole(s) along the way. as a kid, our barn was a good 200 ft from our house and we had a cable about 20 ft off the ground running the whole distance. of course the other way is going underground. the best way I know of doing that is using conduit/tubing under ground. there is direct bury rated electrical wire but having it more protected is better, IMHO. you want to go a good 18" below the surface to avoid it getting dinged by a shovel in the future (it's good to keep in mind that you are not the last person that will ever own your house). home depot sells Liquidtight Flexible PVC of varying qualities, on up to a version that is steel reinforced but still flexible. On my second go with my run, I used the steel reinforced stuff since I have a knack for running into stuff with my shovel down the line and since the first run callapsed under the pressure of the wall. In any case, having electricity is a wonderful thing!

Wow, thanks for a very informative reply.....I just assumed the one out building might be too far.

 

[Scarlet Girl]

Why do you say that?

JT

I assumed it might be too far & more trouble than it's worth.

 

[squadleader]

These are all good points.

Electricity is completely unnecessary for adult chickens, and even adds the risk of fire.

EXCEPT, and there it is, for the convenience of not having to take water out every morning to the coop, if the coop water freezes.

Then the brooder issue as well, but I only work with adult birds, no more chicks for me, been there done that, I'll pay $16 for a laying hen all day long!

In Virginia, I don't mind, it's less than 30 days a year my covered chicken nipple bucket freezes (I can usually make it through a high 20's night), plus I have a chicken tractor, which really puts the kabosh on any lines running to my mobile coop.

But I notice you're in Canada, so I'll bet you have way more freezing nights than me. If that's true, and if I had a fixed in place coop, I'd definitely be putting in electricity.

If I were in the southern third of the US, I wouldn't even bother.

 

[squadleader]

Your concern about distance is actually a real thing I learned the hard way, on one of my rural subdivisions.

I wanted power to some gates about 2,000 feet from the meter head. So I called the electrician.

That's when I learned the shocking fact that the longer the run, the bigger the wire size has to be. I've forgotten the exact gauge we had to use, but it was REAL big, and expensive.

Here's an even worse problem with it. It turns out if the insulation on the wire is nicked just a tad, exposing a tiny piece of the wire, it'll work for awhile, but the exposed wire because it's electrified underground, and exposed to moisture, degrades, and in a year or two, the wire is actually cut by the degrading, and fails. It happened on that job, we had to replace that line a year later.

What's going on, is like on a boat motor, they have sacrificial metal plates, that are easily replaced, that degrade because of some electrical deal with the water. Exposed metal is going to degrade, when exposed to the water and the electrical deal, so they purposely concentrate all the degrading to those plates, that can be easily be replaced, instead of allowing other essential metal parts of the engine to degrade.

All that being said, be aware of the wire size requirement of the distance you have to go, and for goodness sake do not let that underground wire get nicked during installation.

 

[jthornton]

I assumed it might be too far & more trouble than it's worth.

What is the distance?

@squadleader for long distances you use a transformer on each end, the higher the voltage the smaller the wire. If your electrician was a house electrician he might not have thought of that and just use the voltage drop table.

JT

 

[squadleader]

Hey JT, I'll keep that in mind.

Either way though, it looks like long distance has to be addressed, so it sounds like it is important for you, or anyone, to know how far she's going.

I don't know what the standard gauge house wire is, but I'm sure you do. Based on that, how many feet can someone go with that wire, before having to increase the wire size?

 

[Birdinhand]

I assumed it might be too far & more trouble than it's worth.

compared to an electrician's time, wire is cheap, even the fat stuff. so, what kind of a distance are we talking, a hundred feet or several thousand? accounting for distance isn't that hard, but it's important if the distance is significant.

 

[jthornton]

Hey JT, I'll keep that in mind.

Either way though, it looks like long distance has to be addressed, so it sounds like it is important for you, or anyone, to know how far she's going.

I don't know what the standard gauge house wire is, but I'm sure you do. Based on that, how many feet can someone go with that wire, before having to increase the wire size?

Typical house wire is 12-2 with a ground romex. The 12 part is the gauge. The size of wire you need depends on 4 factors voltage, current, distance and how much voltage drop you will accept. For example say you want to power a 250 watt water heater in your water container. Watts divided by volts equals amps. So for our example 250 watts / 120 volts equals 2.08 amps... which is not much. Most electricians will want to run you a 20 amp circuit... here is where it gets fun the "recommended" maximum voltage drop is 5% this a CYA number. For a resistance heater it means nothing for your electronic devices it might make a difference. Back to our chicken water heater you can run 400' of 14 awg wire (smaller than 12 awg) and pull 3 amps and stay just over the 5%. So like all rules you have to add up the details first.

Oh and for long distances that same 3 amps and 14 awg wire if you got up to 480 volts for the transit part you can go 1600 feet on that same little 14 awg wire! This is exactly how power companies transmit electricity over long distances but with crazy high voltage.

JT

 

[NorthGeogia]

I assumed it might be too far & more trouble than it's worth.

Hey Scarlet, what part of Atlantic Canada are you from? My wife's family is from Pubnico, NS. We had a fun visit up there this past summer.

 

[squadleader]

Thanks JT,

We all need a point of reference. So it sounds like she could go several hundred feet without getting into big wire if understood you, correct me if I got that wrong.

I also think I understand that resistance heating elements aren't sensitive to lower voltage, like electronics, so if all she's probably going to do, is keep the water from freezing, she'll be OK.

People with good solid expertise like you, are a beautiful thing! Keeps us imagineers, in the real world. Thanks for sharing that knowledge!