Hot water at the barn? How do you do it?

[mountainhorse]

So, those in ‘colder climates’ (think winters that have snow, 30 degree days are ‘warm’, and nights are commonly in the negatives),…do you keep hot water accessible in your barn?

If so, what do you use?
A hot water heater (what type-tank or tankless)?
A kettle with a plug?
Do you use it for bathing, or just adding warm water to feed?

If you don’t, do you wish you did, or is it just not needed for your barn?

With winter coming up, it would be interesting to see how different owners cope with the cold!

[Romany]

Following with interest! iirc someone like Clanter recommended an on-demand water heater for cold climates, but hopefully others will chime in as well.

[starsandsun]

Our climate isn’t quite that cold (we do get plenty of snow, variable temps between 20s and 40s during the day), but I do have a hot water tank heater. I use it all winter long to top off water buckets, rinse off the occasional filthy legs, etc. The tank is wrapped in insulation within a wood frame, with the water line into the barn wrapped in heat tape to keep from freezing.

[enjoytheride]

My barn located in Indiana has a water heater in the tack room. It is a regular one, not an on demand. It actually helps keep the insulated tack room above freezing unless it is very very cold (then the barn manager uses a heater and stores the hose in there) and as a bonus the very short pipes coming out of the wall never freeze and you have warm water all winter.

[2foals]

Water heater (tank) in the tackroom, wash stall with drain located next to the tackroom so the pipes just go through the wall. I’m not an expert on the tankless styles, but the tank ones are very simple to install and use. You can shut them off if not planning to use hot water for a while.

Inside the tack room the pipes run exposed along the inside of the wall. Not my favorite look, but that way those pipes do not freeze as long as the tack room is heated. You cannot run pipes inside exterior walls or they will freeze.

Also, should the power go out and the tackroom temps sink below freezing, any leaks/repairs are easy to find and repair. Pipes are expandable PEX which isn’t ruined if it freezes anyway.

[Bluey]

We had a tack room/feed room and between them a half bath and the other side of that was a small furnace and heater closet.

That kept the two rooms warm and we had warm water to the outside horse washroom also.

We get to -10F for a while in the winters, below freezing regularly also.

[Cat_Tap]

DH put a small hot water tank in my barn, enclosed it with insulation and plywood. He then hooked it up to my cold water faucet. I wouldn’t want to do without it. I add hot water to the horses’ buckets in the winter and it keeps their water from freezing. It gets pretty cold here in the winter.

We do not bathe the horses in winter.

[SugarCubes]

50 gallon water heater in climate controlled tack room, shares a wall with the wash stall. No issues even when it was subzero for over a week last winter.

[BuddyRoo]

Most barns I’ve been at in the upper Midwest do not maintain hot water year 'round. So for me when I’ve needed it (mostly to soak feed), I’ve gotten in the habit of filling gallon jugs before leaving home or work.

I don’t bathe the horses during winter so that’s never an issue for me but I have needed hot water for a hoof soak or feed and I just plan to haul it in.

[Libby2563]

I installed a small tank heater under the tack room sink. I originally wanted tankless/on-demand, but the plumber advised that it would not meet even my modest needs and I would be unhappy in the long run. The tack room is quite well insulated so most of the winter I don’t need to heat it at all to keep the pipes from freezing.

I don’t bathe in winter but I do use it to fill water buckets part of the way with hot water then the rest of the way with cold so they stay unfrozen for longer. One of my horses LOVES to drink lukewarm water so it makes me happy to do that then watch him drain it. This year I will have auto waterers instead! But the warm water will make tack cleaning more pleasant too.

My small tank (5-8 gallons, totally guessing here) runs out of hot water pretty quickly and takes a while to heat up again so it is really only good for my small setup (two horses, one mini donk).

[2miniB]

I’m in Maine and we put in 2 barns. Barn A has a heated feed room with radiator and electric water heater. It’s connected underground to a small boiler in Barn B. Barn B also has a 500 gallon reserve tank and washing machine. We only store hay in Barn A. The hot water is mainly to heat the feed rooms, and it makes scrubbing buckets/waterers a little more comfortable when it’s 15f for weeks on end. Have heated automatic waterers.

I only bathe horses when it’s at least 60f out. I don’t have the right setup, or need, to bathe them at any other time. Plus I think it’d be kinda mean to give one of mine a bath when the highs are around 15f.

[Fred]

I have a small electric hot water tank in my feed room and it is something I use all year 'round.
I soak beet pulp and hay cubes morning and night, and use it for that.
All feed buckets have warm water added before feeding, and in the winter I use hot water to top up the water buckets because the horses prefer tepid water to drink.
I love having the hot water tank, and would not want to have a barn without.
It was not expensive to buy or install and it has been a blessing.

[Guilherme]

Standard 20 gal. hot water heater from Home Depot.

G.

[clanter]

[QUOTE=Romany;8830878]
Following with interest! iirc someone like Clanter recommended an on-demand water heater for cold climates, but hopefully others will chime in as well.[/QUOTE]

laughingly … cold here is 40F … but we came here after the winters of the late 1970s when it was minus 25F for weeks at a time

Really is another “depends” answer… if only for warm food… tanked maybe better… wash horsy --tankless as you have basically unlimited hot water

[DancingArabian]

One barn I was at had something they called an insta-hot. It was set up on a dolly so we could move it around and used propane to heat water super fast. Obviously we didn’t store it in the barn because of the propane, but it wasn’t a huge ordeal to wheel it out to use it.

[Ceylon_Star]

[QUOTE=DancingArabian;8831502]
One barn I was at had something they called an insta-hot. It was set up on a dolly so we could move it around and used propane to heat water super fast. Obviously we didn’t store it in the barn because of the propane, but it wasn’t a huge ordeal to wheel it out to use it.[/QUOTE]

We have one of these for bathing horses, and we have a small hot water tank in the bathroom next to the boarders locker room.

The hot water tank holds enough to do a quick bath for one horse, but we primarily use the insta hot for that. The hot running water is more for human use, or for hot-soaking beet pulp or soaking feet.

There are also multiple kettles in the barn - one in the bathroom, one in the locker room, and two in the feed room.

[whitewolfe001]

I just googled some, and really had no idea small hot water tanks were so cheap. Definitely going to go with that for my new place! My original thought was to run a heated hose from the house to the barn, but I just looked it up… those heated hoses are $$$! Definitely more economical to have a hot water tank.

[FitToBeTied]

We are not excessively cold here in the mountains of Virginia. The current configuration is a 12 gal traditional electric hot water heater. We’re a small backyard barn, so the 12 gal works out well for giving one horse a hot bath about every 20 mins. I have it on a switch so that it is only turned on when I need it. It is positioned under the counter on the wall adjacent to the wash stall. The tack room is heated as well.

We tried an insta-hot system but it couldn’t raise the well water (50-55 degrees) above luke warm.

[SMF11]

Much more back yard situation here; I use an immersion heater in a muck tub of water every day in the winter so I can soak everyone’s feed.

[Texarkana]

If you can’t install a hot water heater, bucket heaters work really well. I much prefer them over electric kettles, which heat such a small volume of water comparatively.