Print

[birchbark]

Does anyone use their owb to keep a live stock water trough from freezing, if so what kind of set up do you have.  I hate having to pay the electrical costs of running a 1500 watt heater 8 to 10 hours a day and sometimes longer during the winter months.

[Scott7m]

You could just run some pex around inside of it, a loop or two and use an aquastat to turn a pump on and off as needed.  Shouldn't be to hard.

[birchbark]

what about the lines going to the water trough, wouldn't they end up freezing?

[Scott7m]

Depends on a lot of things, how far it is, I assumed you would have used insulated pex to the trough.  Then inside the trough use regular pex. 

What was you thinking?  How far n such?

[Scott7m]

I guess you could put a well in the line and set a ranco aquastat to like 40 and it would kick on every time it dropped below 40, seems that would be wasteful tho

[birchbark]

The water trough is only about 8 feet from the boiler.  I am more worried that turning water on and off, I will end up having the line freeze.  I kind of thinking of running a line out to the trough and have some kind of valve that will bypass the trough and send it right back to the boiler when the temp of the trough is good.  Do you think that would work, and if so do you know of any kind of valve like that.

[Scott7m]

Could but I donno, thermo valves are not cheap by any means.  I'd use insulated pex over to it and have a ranco set on like 45-50 in the trough, the insulated line wouldn't freeze before the tank of water cooled below 45-50, or you could install a timer, like have a pump kick on for 5 minutes every 30 minutes or something of that nature.  A timer may be the least expensive option

[HandyMark]

I installed a loop of pex in my roof overhangs when I built my new house so I can melt large snow loads or ice dams. The only system I have come up with is to install a small plate heat exchanger and run antifreeze in that loop. The cost of a heat exchanger and pump or valve would surely be too high just to keep a trough from freezing. If you are going through all the trouble consider warming the water to a higher temperature. The animal will need less feed to keep itself warm if it's water source is warm.

[yoderheating]

 I also have been thinking about this as an option in my cattle business. Studies have shown that feeder cattle gain more weight when drinking warm water in the coldest part of the winter. It takes a lot of the animals energy to heat up that icy water to body temperature.  If I did it I would want to keep the water around 60 or 70 all the time. I thought about just running the water fill through a flat plate on the back of the furnace. If you had enough animals all drinking out of a small water trough it would work. If you only have several animals you would have to do something different.