So it’s that time of year again! Only this year I do not have access to electricity. I’ve always just used a heater. Is there anyway to prevent the water from icing over without a heater? I live in southern Ontario and the coldest it gets is about -45 degrees Celsius. Thanks!
Hope global warming comes your way.
Sorry couldn’t resist. There are a few “contraptions” to try but considering your location, weather and frost line I am pretty sure none will work effectively.
minus 40 c (-49f) … without electricity ?.. is there a volcano anywhere near?
gumtree, i was just going to say “move south.” global warming, that’s dark :lol:
The best you’ll be able to do is slow down the ice formation. People build plywood boxes and fill them with insulation - board, foam, roll fiberglass - with an insulated lid that covers all but maybe an 18" hole for drinking. In general, the bigger the tank the slower it freezes, but . . .
I hate dealing with giant ice blocks that eventually develop in all unheated stock tanks, though, so, I use muck buckets for winter water because they’re easier to insulate and when that goes to hell in a handbasket, the ice bock is small.
Also, I use bucket holders in the stalls that are foam-insulated plastic and hold a 5 gallon bucket. I bring 40 gallons of hot water to the barn once a day in a sprayer tank and pump that water into my insulated buckets. This helps a lot.
I’m in new England, though, and your weather is umm, much worse. Maybe use a propane tank and boil up 5 gallons 2x day and dump that into insulated buckets? How many horses are we talking about – that could get pretty challenging.
just reading OPs post reminds me of the winters of the late 1970s in Kentucky were it wasn’t as cold, just in minus 25F area but we had water lines freeze that were set below three feet that didn’t thaw until the end of May … it was an all day task to keep the horses watered (come to think of it I remember it snowing on Memorial Day in the late 1950s, wet snow that torn down trees by the thousands) … sure makes the summers here more bearable, sort of
Not to hijack this thread, but has anyone tried using a cooler and removing the lid? I wondered if it would keep the water from freezing.
[QUOTE=Fruitarider;8930747]
Not to hijack this thread, but has anyone tried using a cooler and removing the lid? I wondered if it would keep the water from freezing.[/QUOTE]
I use those round 5 gallon orange coolers in my stalls.
My trainer has those huge Rubbermaids and the one year I paid attention to how she did it without power she had them oriented east west so the longest black side was to the sun and it got GOOD sun, the dogs used to lay there in the daytime. Nonetheless by Feb there was a little nosehole about 8 inches deep through the ice and that was it. We’re in KY, it’s a bit warmer here. I suppose you could mound manure deeply around three sides and hope for some composting action. Remember County? IIRC He had deep geothermal taps of some sort that kept his stock tanks liquid all winter long. He explained it once but the information is long gone I am sure.
DH actually constructed a couple of custom refrigerated tanks back in the day and there are designs out there for passive solar collecting tanks, they wouldn’t take much beating on but if you have the right amount of sunlight and the orientation it might be possible. It would have to live in a plex window box like a greenhouse to really pump up the heat gain, with a little nose hole in the top.
This guys is kinda cool, but it isn’t oriented with the solar collecting window to the south all the time and the window should be a tad longer IMO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3qaarFYcg8
[QUOTE=Fruitarider;8930747]
Not to hijack this thread, but has anyone tried using a cooler and removing the lid? I wondered if it would keep the water from freezing.[/QUOTE]
How would it?
A cooler is an insulated container. The insulation helps to keep heat/cold from transferring from one side to the other. It does not make any heat (or cold).
Having no lid would greatly reduce the coolers ability to prevent that transfer.
Think about it this way, take that cooler and put some ice in it on a hot day. Remove the lid and see if the ice stays ice.
I grew up off the grid; strictly solar and propane. We did a couple things for our troughs.
Permanent: dug a 8-10 foot deep hole, filled with PVC pipe, and set the trough in the ground on top of the pipes. These troughs were 8 feet in diameter so it was quite the project.
Not so permanent: along with using the natural warmth from the ground, we also put in propane heaters. The heater bolts on the side of a metal trough and runs off of a 100 pound propane tank. They worked well in high mountain Colorado, granted we only hit -20 or so. Might have to finagle a wind break around the top of the heater to keep the pilot light going if you have wind (I assume your cold isn’t without wind).
[QUOTE=BroncoMo;8931056]
. . .
Permanent: dug a 8-10 foot deep hole, filled with PVC pipe, and set the trough in the ground on top of the pipes. These troughs were 8 feet in diameter so it was quite the project.
Not so permanent: along with using the natural warmth from the ground, we also put in propane heaters. The heater bolts on the side of a metal trough and runs off of a 100 pound propane tank. They worked well in high mountain Colorado, granted we only hit -20 or so. Might have to finagle a wind break around the top of the heater to keep the pilot light going if you have wind (I assume your cold isn’t without wind).[/QUOTE] The permanent thing is what County had done. IIRC his well was deeper.
Also the larger the volume of water the longer it takes to freeze, disturbed water takes longer to form a skin and begin to “freeze” or solidify, and there is some weird thing about hot water freezing faster.
The old dairy farmers in my area remember the days before electricity at their farms. They had cast iron stoves with a tall chimney in which they built a wood fire and immersed the stove in the stock tank to keep the water from freezing. Works, but a lot of work to tend the fire. I have actually seen these stoves offered for sale on the Eau Claire Craigslist as antiques.
[QUOTE=Horsechick200;8930186]
So it’s that time of year again! Only this year I do not have access to electricity. I’ve always just used a heater. Is there anyway to prevent the water from icing over without a heater? I live in southern Ontario and the coldest it gets is about -45 degrees Celsius. Thanks![/QUOTE]
What part of southern ontario hits -45?
Ok, to the point we have only had success using heaters. Even if you insulate, etc, heat transfer is inevitable and relentless.
I guess you are not interested in investing in automatic waterers with heating elements? The water always stays about 60*
[QUOTE=Horsechick200;8930186]
So it’s that time of year again! Only this year I do not have access to electricity. I’ve always just used a heater. Is there anyway to prevent the water from icing over without a heater? I live in southern Ontario and the coldest it gets is about -45 degrees Celsius. Thanks![/QUOTE]
Nope.
-from Northern Ontario.
I don’t understand what you are describing here, could you please elaborate?
[QUOTE=Lord Helpus;8934203]
I guess you are not interested in investing in automatic waterers with heating elements? The water always stays about 60*[/QUOTE]
The OP says they do not have access to electricity. Don’t these units require electricity?
[QUOTE=saultgirl;8934240]
I don’t understand what you are describing here, could you please elaborate?[/QUOTE]
I’m horrible at explaining this so bear with me. As ReSomething said above, a poster called ‘County’ had done this as well; he must be before my time because at first I didn’t get the reference.
It’s called geothermal tapping (I believe, couldn’t remember the name when I first posted). I’m sure you can google and find more info, but my search is bringing up geothermal heating for houses. My uncle has a geothermal tap to heat his house. Anyways. Using the examples of the troughs I grew up with. Essentially you are sinking the trough in the ground and using natural ground warmth to heat the trough.
The big tank was 10 feet in diameter. So we rented a backhoe and dug a hole that the trough would sit in with about the top 6 inches or so of trough exposed. Then dug the very center of the hole (about 3-4 feet in diameter) to a depth of about 8-10 feet; it may have been deeper, I don’t remember, I’m thinking back close to 20 years here. So, visualize a hole in the ground that the trough will sit in, with the center dug super deep. Then we cut 4 inch PVC pipes to the 8-10 feet in length, duct taped enough of the pipes together that it would fill the deep center hole, and dropped them in the hole. So the natural warmth from down 8-10 feet will rise up the pipes to the bottom of the trough; I’m sure there’s a scientific term for this. So the trough was naturally warmed from the geothermal taps, but we used propane heaters too. And the trough would still ice over if the wind blew out the pilot on the heater, so it’s not perfect. But I’m sure it saved us on propane usage over the long term.
I’ll do some more looking for the info from County. When I did a google search, several threads on here came up, so I may be able to find it. If I do, I’ll post it here or copy the link.
