It’s forecast to get down to -11 Wednesday night. That’s unusually cold for Tennessee. I have a heater for my 100 gallon trough. Assuming the power stays on (big IF due to ice) will it be ok? Barn water has never frozen, but it’s never been this cold before. I plan to keep some water running at the house, and have buckets and gallon jugs if I need to carry water to the barn. Is there anything else I should do? Thanks.
Should be fine with the heater! 
(It’s crazy that it gets that cold in TN!!)
I would insulate and wrap all pipes you need in the barn. Hope your power stays on. I would fill the bathtub in your house in case you need to carry water to the barn. Jingles the power stays on!
I love the heated buckets, used to use them in the stalls in OK. I’m concerned, too this week. I don’t have a barn,water or electric yet and I guess I’ll be hauling a hot bucket of water out to my pony each day. If I can get to Lowes tomorrow, I may try to get something to insulate a muck bucket so that I can at least put 5 gallons of warm water in it and hope it stays liquid for an hour or two.
We’re supposed to be really cold towards the end of the week and it’s freezing rain right now.
I did just order a heated dog bowl for my guineas, which should be here Weds. They stay close to the house so I can plug the water in in the carport. i used to use one in OK and also when I was in northern CO. They work great.
Oh, make sure you leave the water on a little. Or,if you have a frost free spigot make sure it’s fully off.
I buy three or four large rubber trash cans with lids, put them in the garage (attached to the house, so it doesn’t really freeze in there), and fill them them before bad weather. You could use a large laundry room or back hall. I always have reserve clear water.
I’ve used insulated bucket “cozies” successfully in the winter when it wasn’t possible or practical to use heaters. Every little bit helps when it dips as low as it is this week.
Thanks for the idea about the trash cans. I do have a couple of unused ones I can fill up. We will leave the water in the house trickling a bit, and set the dishwasher to start in the middle of the night.
A tip from someone who lives in a very cold place (I don’t think we’ve seen above 5 degrees in almost two weeks…):
If you have a hundred gallon trough, even if it does get as cold as predicted, AND even if you do lose power, AND even if the water freezes, your trough will not freeze solid.
Make sure to fill the trough to the brim. If you lose power so the heating unit doesn’t work, you will get a layer of ice on the top, most likely. If you cut/create a hole in the ice, and leave the rest intact, it acts as its own sort of insulator. The hole may crust over a bit, but the horses can easily break the thin layer of ice and drink.
Ask me how I know
you may want to turn the water off to the barn and blow the lines clear
I still remember the winters of the late 1970s in Kentucky when it went into the minus 20 to minus 30 range… all water lines froze because they were only buried 36 to 40 inches…it was a pain in the butt …so much so we moved.
A sheet of the blue or pink styrofoam insulation will float on the surface of your stock tank and insulate it a little, enough to help your tank heater and possibly get you through a little while of you lose power. Cut it a little smaller than the surface of the water so horses can tip it a little to drink.
Ice sucks. Dealt with it a few years back- 10 days without power, some people were without power for nearly a month.
When I realized it was going to be really, really bad, I went for kerosene while DH filled every available container with water. I wanted to be able to flush the toilet as well as water the horses without busting ice on the pond and hauling water. Fortunately we never lost our county water.
It also got wicked cold. Water buckets in the barn were frozen solid. Outside tanks weren’t much better, but I was able to bust ice on the big tanks and re-fill with water from the hydrants. As for the inside buckets, I rounded up all my spare buckets from the horse trailer and such and swapped them out. I brought the kerosene heater in the tack room and cranked that baby up. It must have been 90 degrees in the tack room- but it thawed the buckets so I could get the blocks of ice out. Rinse and repeat procedure for several days.
Right now it’s 14 degrees in the barn. I’ll give the horses about 2/3 of a bucket of water so when they freeze it won’t be such a PITA to chip the ice out. I know my horses- they (inside horses) rarely drink more than 3-4 gallons overnight in the winter, about 4 gallons during the day. It’s interesting to note that the horses that have been pasture rats in the past seem to be able to keep ice to a minimum in their buckets- the whiney-baby show horses not so much!
I’m very thankful we own that 20+ year old kerosene heater. It kept us warm and the pipes from freezing. I heated water on it for coffee and bathing, warmed up food on it, etc. We didn’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning, so we did turn it off at night- one of us just got up and turned it on for a while when it got chilly in the house.
Good luck and I hope you don’t get much ice.
