Electrical Winter Woes

[ncsuequine]

I just moved to a new barn that I am leasing. It is a 4 stall barn, but there are 2-2 stall barns on either side of it that are leased by the lesson program that I teach for.

Anyway, I am in NC and we just got our first winter storm of 2017. I was a nervous nelly, since this is the first time I have been fully responsible for my own horses AND not lived on the property. They have round bales and in/out access to their stalls, so shelter and hay were not an issue. My main concern was water (in case I couldn’t get to the barn and break up the ice and refill tanks). So I bought two water trough heaters (1500w) and 3 heated flatback buckets. Spent 1.5hr setting everything up on Friday night and tripped the breaker when I plugged everything in. After talking with the property owner I could to find out that the breaker or circuit (I am NOT an electrical guru, so this all makes me blurry eyed) that is connected to all the outlets in my barn and one of the other 2 stall barns only holds 1500w. Property owner insists that they make water trough heaters that are 100w or 350w, but the lowest I can find is 500w.

My question to you all is doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous to have two barns worth of outlets only hold 1500w?

Anyone know of any fairly inexpensive solutions to this problem? Too late for this storm and luckily it wasn’t as bad as was predicted so one of us have been able to get to the barn to break up ice, etc…

The heated buckets are 110w. Property owner runs 2 in his barn (220w) and I have 3 going (330w), so that’s a total of 550w, so I have about 900w to play with if, but that is cutting it pretty close to overloading the breaker.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you

[clanter]

Using Ohm’s Law, 1500 watts of energy uses 12.5 amps… which is less than one normal panel breaker for single circuit (assuming this is 120 VAC)

My guess is the main power panel is a great distance away, the conductor between the panel and barn is undersized …is there by chance a set of mouse ears near the outlet?

1500 watts sounds correct for large a large stock tank heater

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ask the owner if there is an underground junction box … I often found these to have corroded connections…specifically the neural (should be the white conductor)

[gypsymare]

It’s low but not unreasonable if it was not sized to accommodate heaters. Nothing else pulls power like a heating element or compressor. Providing more power gets more expensive. Bigger panels, bigger conductors, possibly needing another meter.

Look into solar tank options. Not powered but the insulated passive types.

[ReSomething]

Electric is wired and rated by amps and most circuits are a 15 amp or a 20 amp and there are a lot of barns that were wired as an afterthought with a single circuit coming off of the house and not their own separate 100 amp service and panel. Really old barns are bad and some brand new ones too. Getting a separate service requires more permits, is it a business? and can be really expensive if not impossible.

It’s one of the reasons barns catch on fire, because they are under serviced, we have some threads on here where some people claim that they know of folks that shut off the power to the barn altogether they are so afraid of fire.

You might look into Bucket Cozies, they conserve the heat in the water in the buckets, or my trainer has an actual hot water heater in the barn so refills with warm water 2X daily and has a circuit just for the hot water heater. If you actually can’t get there at all then you would want the horses to have access to the large stock tanks and not worry about the buckets or a hot water heater, they’d be not much use without you so you can place floating items on top of the water surface to keep the ice skin from forming or there are designs for solar collectors to keep the stock tanks liquid without the tank heaters.

[gumtree]

“My question to you all is doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous to have two barns worth of outlets only hold 1500w?”

Not sure what you mean by this.

As far as your problem. As others have suggested it comes down to how the barn was wired and when.

I would think in this day and age just about all barn regardless of when built have had electrical upgrades. “Fuse boxes” replaced with circuit breaker with a minimum of 100 amp panel. This is easily determined by looking at the number on the Main breaker usually found at the top of the Service panel.

Then assuming that the barn was wired to the “spirit” of code. Lights should be wired on their own “branch”. X amount of lights per line. Code defines this. But even if there are only a couple of lights in the barn it is best to run 2 separate branches, 2 breakers. If one line should go out, trip the breaker the owner is not left in the dark.

Outlets should be wired to a dedicated line/breaker used for outlets only. The size of the breaker and the wire/conductor depends on their designed use. Most outlets are 15 amp breakers on a 14-2 gauge conductor/wire.

Outlets needed for higher power demand are 20 amp on a 12-2 or 10-2 wire. These types of 20 amp outlets look somewhat different. 1 of the slots will look like a sideways T. A standard looking plug works with them. Something that HAS to be used on a 20 amp outlet will have a “sideways” prong.

IMO every barn should have 1 dedicated 20 amp outlet.

I run two 1500 watt tank heaters on a dedicated 12-2 1500+ foot run (length of wire) to tanks in my outer paddocks with no issues. But if I add a small 15 gallon heated bucket that has a 250 watt heater it generally trips the breaker on prolonged cold days. I had a spool of direct bury 12-2 wire when I installed the underground wire, water lines and my budget was tight. At the time the price of wire had sky rocketed. In hind sight I should have sucked up the cost and ran 10-2 to be able to run a 20 amp line and add one more tank heater when needed.

Most heated stall buckets that I have seen use 120-130 watt heaters. Most likely you are plugging into a 15 amp outlets. I assume you are not plugging all of this into 1 outlet? Yes there are 2 places to plug into on an outlet but that doesn’t mean you can use both. It depends on the power demand on what you are plugging in.

You don’t want to use a power strip. Unless it is made for high demand commercial use. It will state how many amps/watts it can handle on the spec sheet. You need one that is rated for minimum of 3500 watts.

Also you do not want to use a multi-plug adapter at the outlet and there should be nothing else drawing power on the outlet line.

But even than a 15 amp outlet which is most likely on a 14-2 wire/conductor will trip the breaker. If the wire can be seen it will labeled. If the wiring is of recent vintage it will be/should be color coded. 14-2 is white, 12-2 is yellow. Older wiring both were the same color, white. 14-2 direct bury can be found in grey or black. But the number size will be stamped on it.

Question; is an extension cord being used for the tank heaters? If so what size wire and the length. Each heater needs to be on its own extension cord and it should be a 12-2 gauge. The 2 extension cords plugged into on outlet may work. But if the outlet is wired with 14-2 most likely not.

It would be best to plug into 2 different outlets that are NOT wired to the same breaker.

What size are the tanks? A 1500w heater is only needed when keeping say 50++ gallons ice free in much colder climates than what will be had in your area. Might be better off getting 500w tank heaters and keep less water in them if needed.

Are these being plugged into the GFCI outlet. Is the breaker tripping or the GFCI? Tank heaters and GFCI don’t always play well together. They trip easily and it has nothing to do with a “ground fault”. This would take another lengthy explanation. GFCI outlet will not always trip due to shorts either. That is not what they are really designed for.

I have read a lot of in accurate information from folks on the forum about GFCI outlets and the absolute need for them.

[judybigredpony]

Ok we have zero degree temps here up north today…and I am not as stressed as you are …about an occasional out of the normal weather condition…the stock tank heaters are a bit much since rarely required…as long as you coordinate with someone to make sure horses have water in their stalls…Maybe do wet feeds or soaked alfalfa cubes or fill a muck tub and place in corner of stall with soaked hay to hydrate the horses the night/ day before…But unless you are getting a blizzard or days on end of continuous below freezing weather you should be just fine…I would worry more about frying the circuits and starting a fire…

[Scarlet_Gilia]

I have a K&H Deicer (going on its third year, I think) in my 100 gallon stock tank. They are available from 250 - 1500 W and can be used as floating or sinking deicers. I have used 1000 to 1500 W heaters previously; the K&H zoning/wattage chart recommended 500 W. I had two nights below zero this week, and 500 W was fine - no ice in the tank. You might be OK with a 250 W model.

[LittleblackMorgan]

I only have 20amps in my barn. If I attempted to run a 1500w heater, the breaker would pop all the time. I bought 2 16g heated muck type tubs, they work awesome. I believe they are only 60w a piece.
Had I not know how to calculate current draw I would have bought the 1500w and been screwed. I’m an electrician so I have that on my side

[2DogsFarm]

I have a sinking de-icer similar to the link Scarlet Gilia posted.
It is probably 5yo & lives outside in a 50gal barrel,
We’ve had -20F windchills this Winter and the water in that barrel never even got a skin of ice.

I use heated flatback buckets in my 2 stalls, but horses have free access In/Out, so would have water if those buckets were not heated.

Are your horses stalled at night?
If so, then could you used the heated buckets at night & the tank de-icer daytimes?