Will this work to run one heated waterer?

[Iowa Roo Mom]

Thanks for all the info- I'm gonna say the solar thing is out. 120V sounded nice- but it's the whole wattage thing that really did me in. I guess I'll have to figure something else out- running wire, maybe. We'll see. Anyhow, I guess I have a few more months to figure something out, thats the good news!

For now, I need to get back to work before the rain hits- we're under the gun again this evening and tonight! Thanks again everyone- I'll keep you posted on what I decide to do- and will hopefully post pics within a few days.

Y'all are awesome!

 

[dude.i.wrote.that]

This is so cool!!! I wrote that instructable months ago and just checked it today after i got an email and it got over 10,000 views!!! Hahaha
But in answer to your question, yes, you could totally run a water heater off of this system. Just look at the box or even the device it self and see how many amps (or milliamps) per hour it uses and also look for how many watts it consume.

For the more watts it uses, by a bigger power inverter. They make some pretty ridiculous sized ones that are still portable (mine in the tutorial wasa a 200 but i've seen up to 1200 watts)

As for the amps, that will give you an idea of how big of a battery to buy. the more AH (or mAH) your device uses, the bigger battery you need. (the instructable used a 10AH battery [will run one amp for 10 hours] but you will probably need more)

You're still gonna run the whole system on a 12volt battery though (because the power inverter is made for 12 volts DC to AC)

Lemme know if you have any other questions or how your setup turns out!

 

[SpunkyTheMonkey]

you could run a water heater off something like this if you increase the amount of panels. in greece we routinely use solar heaters for the hot water in our houses, but that's with solar panels at least 1x1.5m directly heating the water in a storage tank rather than charging a battery, but the principle is the same, it can be done...and on a much larger scale than you need.

however...you need this in the middle of winter when the temps are < 0 and there simply isn't enough sun most of the time to get anything useful out of a solar panel (we can't use the solar powered heaters in the winter). you'd need a lot of panels or larger panels to make this feasible imo, and it would not be reliable...it might work a high percentage of the time if you throw enough money at it but unless it works 100% of the time then you'll still have to check on it all the time to see if your birds have water.

also, it'll cost so much to do it you'll wish you just dug a trench and buried a power cable down to the coop.

$0.02

 

[augustmomx2]

I have no idea in regards to your question...but congrats on quitting smoking

 

[Monk]

What will the panel producing? Here is a low wattage pet bowl, 50 watts...

http://www.petvetsupply.com/equmali019.html

 

[AHappychick]

ohh any pics of this treehouse coop? I would love to see

 

[patandchickens]

Heated waterers/bases typically use 100-150w and run pretty near 24/7 in a cold climate. So as others have said, you will spend so much on batteries, larger inverter, etc to run something like that, you would really be better off just running a proper electric line out there (and then you'd have capacity for other things too, which is much more useful in the long run)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat