I have few more ideas for my coop

[conny63malies]

ok rhino liner is way too expensive, plus i got a free box of stick on vinyl tiles in the bathroom. I though abou the cold NE Ohio winter and how to keep them chicken tushies comfy warm. So this is what i came up with after two beer.
I have leftover reptile heating supplies such as flexwatt heat tape in 3in and 12in, a UT heater pad and orange heat cable in various length so there all kinds of watt from 8 up 100Watt all on 110Volt. How hard and expensive would it be to rig up a solar panel system and what would kep them at 45-50F during winter timein a 3ftx5ft area. .It gets down to 10-15F from what i know so far. I thought of mounting the heat source behind a ceramic or porcelain tiles to work as a heat"battery" and to keep curious chookies away from the cable/ whatever. I could mount a little heatpad in the nest box, it was made for a 5-10Gtank.
what do you all think ??
to xpensive? i tend to get carried away with projects , but its just wayyyy to much fun. My kiddos are already waiting for spring so MOM not Dad can build a no-tree house.

 

[sussexgal]

Good Morning Connie,

Solar gets expensive real quick. It would depend on how many total watts you would need to run all your heating stuff. I looked into how big of a system I would need to run a 40W bulb to keep water ice free and a 250W heat lamp. Just the 40W bulb would end up costing around 350$. Add the 250W? Jumped into the thousands.... However! there is a thread running right now on using aluminum cans for heat collectors and piping the heat into the coop. It works during daylight - night time? No. But..... if someone were ingenious enough to add, say, soapstone or some other material that was slow to cool, then the coop (in theory) could stay somewhat warm during the night hours.... just a thought?

My thoughts are that chickens are pretty resilient critters. Insulate your coop and their body heat should be enough to keep them okay at the temps you mention.

 

[LynneP]

I was thinking the same thing. You could insulate, and provide for heated water, but save the other heat for emergencies...

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
I think you're probably over a $1,000 there already. It takes a WHOLE LOT of electricity to run anything that's heating your coop (doesn't matter what device is emitting the heat, the point is, watts of heat come from equivalent watts of electricity) and you are getting into a significant solar panel, significant batteries, and some other things.

What about a lightbulb and, I know they're not totally safe but you can make them *reasonably* safe, a long heavy-duty extension cord?

Also, insulate the heck out of your coop. (You'd want to do that even with an expensive solar-powered system). The more of the birds' body heat you hold in, the warmer it is in there. And there are some other features you could experiment with that might help -- the stuff being discussed on the pop-can-heater thread, a south-facing window with dark-painted barrels of water in front of it and heavily insulated panels fixed on over the window at night, etc.

Is it really necessary to keep it at 45-50 F? I would have thought that even for a bantie, just keeping it above freezing woul be sufficient...?

Good luck, have fun,

Pat