Where I board the paddocks are quite a long ways from the barn. There is no water line out to the paddocks, so we have to haul water using the gator, and there’s no electricity there to run an electric tank heater.
Right now they’re using smaller (40 gallon) water tanks because there’s less hauling to do. They look like the 100 gallon Rubbermaid tanks cut off at the knees. But winter is coming, and those tanks freeze much too quickly for me, I want my horse to have access to water all day.
I can put my 100 gallon tank in my girl’s paddock, and I can wrap it up to insulate it.
But I was thinking about the portable water heater that Schneider’s sells and wondering if anyone had ever seen/heard of/invented a stock tank heater that uses propane.
Yes, we had some for long time, worked fine for the larger, metal stock tanks, kept a hole open in there.
We also at times used it without burning the propane, just let the gas float around from the bottom with a pipe with little holes in it.
That was when the wind was very bad and kept blowing the flame off.
The movement of the water alone kept ice from forming.
When using gas only, not burning it, the water had an odd taste and smell, but the cattle and horses didn’t seem to mind at all.
We may still have an old one in the back of the barn, if my neighbor returned it after he borrowed it last time, some years ago.
Ours looked something like this, but galvanized silver but for the red top lid and was square bodied, not round.
We used to connect it to our branding iron propane tank:
That sounds like what we need! Do you know where to find one? I’ve also looked into something that would just keep the water moving but the pumps require more electricity than I can scare up with a car battery or solar power.
We once put a propane burner under a metal stock water tank. When we were doing chores we would fire it up and it would thaw/warm the water and when chores were done we shut it off. Had one under a cast iron bathtub waterer (oh so redneck) before too; the porcelain started to chip but it stayed at the bottom of the water.
The propane burner worked great.
Does a fish tank water filter run low enough for battery power? A neighbor had a small one in her fish pond for the winter and it worked well, but was electric.
[QUOTE=Hinderella;7891638]
That sounds like what we need! Do you know where to find one? I’ve also looked into something that would just keep the water moving but the pumps require more electricity than I can scare up with a car battery or solar power.[/QUOTE]
I added a link to my post, looks that they still sell them.
Seems that they were running thru the propane tank very often, so we quit using them, would have worked better if we had a large propane tank set by those.
[QUOTE=Hinderella;7891638]
That sounds like what we need! Do you know where to find one? I’ve also looked into something that would just keep the water moving but the pumps require more electricity than I can scare up with a car battery or solar power.[/QUOTE]
Too bad you are so far away. I saw four heaters (three of which need burners replaced) and 3 - 100# propane bottles on Craigs List today for $200, that look like the one Bluey posted!
Here is a new one for $399.99 plus $35 shipping http://www.jaxmercantile.com/products/stock-tank-heater-propane.html?gclid=CPun4_y1rcICFdRzMgodt0IAYA
Thank you everyone! Looks like Trojan is out of stock for the winter but I’ll start looking around here. I’ll also check with my relatives who are dairy farmers, they might have a local lead for me.
