Ideas for De Icing water in coop

[jwatts]

I am looking for some ideas on how to keep my water from freezing in my coop, I had a 4" PVC waterer with nipples on it but it recently froze and busted on me, It was -6 deg that night and my heat lamp just couldn't keep up. I see that theres Heat tape and Thermo Cube's that I can use but im wondering if you can wrap the heat tape around PVC? Im open for suggestions on whatever everyone else is using. Thank you

 

[Going Quackers]

I have two methods, one will require hydro, a heated dog bowl, thermostatically controlled. The next is a simple exchange, keep spares and take out the frozen one and replace with the non frozen.

 

[chfite]

You could wrap heat tape around PVC. PVC needs around 200F to melt.

Chris

 

[jwatts]

Thanks Chris. I didn't know if I needed to put flashing or alum foil down before I put heat tape around the PVC.

 

[RedDrgn]

We had to go for the heated dog bowl once the overnight temps started falling into the single digits. The bird bath heater we kept in the bucket with the nipple waterers installed on the bottom just wasn't enough to keep the nipples themselves from freezing (though the water in the bucket stayed completely liquid). So we just swap out for the heated bowls with each epic cold snap. It's a pain to have to dump and wipe out morning/night (hard to keep your fingers dry doing it and ooooooh is it cold, lol) to try and keep it relatively clean, but it works. $20 at Petsmart here.