Earlier tonight I looked out the window and noticed a fire at my water trough! I ran out and found that the (three years old) water trough heater I had set up the previous day was on fire and had melted a section of my plastic trough almost to the ground! I was using a K&H trough with plastic casing, rated for plastic troughs. It was plugged directly into a GFI outlet. No sign of damage around the plug, looks like the fire originated from the element. The element may have been 1/3 out of the water as the trough was getting low. Thankfully my trough is a few feet from the barn. Has anyone had a similar experience?
No but this is the stuff my nightmares are made out of.
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No, but I make DH test EVERYTHING with a tester when it first gets hooked up for the winter.
Trough heaters sit within inches of the bottom of the tank. “—-May have been 1/3 out of the water—“ means the tank was close to empt, so over heating is a good possibility due to that…
I’m surprised your horses drank from that trough as there could have been electric current in the water.
If someone in your family does not have electrical savvy, it would be prudent to have a professional check the plug to be sure no damage was done — looks are often deceiving.
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Are you talking about this heater?
https://khpet.com/products/ultimate-stock-tank-de-icer
They must be fully submerged, or when the element heats up it can melt stuff. It sounds like that’s what happened? As terrifying as that is, that may not be a failure of the heater at all…it heated up because the tank was dry, melted the plastic casing, which then dripped on the element, and ignited. That heater doesn’t turn off automatically if the tank runs dry. Maybe one that does would be a better choice? (This page lists some tank heaters that have an auto off feature.)
How very scary, so glad nothing was damaged but the trough :eek: :eek:
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How scary.
We are very careful during the winter to never let any part of the trough heater be exposed out of the water. I would guess that was part of your problem.
Glad no one was hurt and all you lost was a trough and a heater.
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Yes, that’s the heater. I thought it did have auto shut-off like the others I have so that must have been the problem! The heater was hanging in the trough but there was still lots of water. So either the horses drank a lot or one of them was playing with the heater. I will be sure to replace all my heaters with ones that have an auto shut-off!
On a positive note, I learned how to use a fire extinguisher!
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Because I have naughty heese, we put the heater at one end of the trough and cover that end of the trough with a lid. We actually screw the lid to the rim of the Rubbermaid trough. That way it is very difficult (never impossible, they are horses) for any equine to play with the trough heater. There is still plenty of room to drink at the open end of the trough.
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:lol:
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Mine always played with the heaters that float. I use the ones imbedded in the drain plugs.
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I realize I had a misunderstanding about how these tank deicers work. I always assumed ones that advertised a thermostat also will shut off if dry as part of the thermostat’s function. I now realize how my thinking was flawed.
Yeeeeeahhh, some do, but some do not. And that function can certainly fail, too. They’re just not super reliable pieces of electronics, right?
I use heaters as little as possible. Thankfully it’s just not consistently cold here very much. In MN, the built in auto waterers felt safer, but no idea if they actually are?
We had a water tank burn from the water heater getting hung up on plastic tank ribbing. Heater was exposed to air, presumably overheated on the Rubbermaid tub, setting it on fire. Tank was outside, so a passing neighbor saw the flames and stopped to put it out! Not easy because large dog would not let him in the fenced driveway, so he climbed one gate, then the electric fence to reach the tank. He piled snow on it to put the fire out. Tank burned to the waterline, 5 inches tall when the fire was out.
These days we have insulated wooden boxes with METAL tanks inside. One half the tank is covered with a screwed down cover, heater in a back corner, cord out the box back so horses cannot reach it. Heaters are all sinkers, no floaters, and we top off the tanks daily. This prevents any “diving for heaters” by bored horses. They would have to immerse their entire head, yet still can’t reach the back corner of the 100 gallon tanks. Though divers seem to be mostly Morgans or drafts in stories we hear and we have no creative Morgans or drafts.
We also do not leave heaters on when horses are using the tanks. Learned our lesson! This prevents any leaking voltage from pinholes or cracked elements in the heaters. Horses here all are stalled at night, so we cover the open half top to run the heaters then. Cheaper electric at night! Insulated boxes keep the water from freezing in daylight hours for drinks. It is really easy to “untrain” a horse from drinking if the horse gets shocked every sip! We watch our horses get drinks, to KNOW they are drinking well. Some horses will tolerate the shocks, drink anyway, but most won’t, so that creates a big chance of impaction colic.
We did have a later issue with electric in the wet/frozen ground. One mare kept testing the water but not drinking. No power going to the tank!! But she was grounding on electricity from someplace when she touched the water in tank to get shocked. I finally put out several rubber stall mats in a pad in a new location, moved the tank onto them, so she was not standing on any dirt when drinking. That worked, no more shocks and she finally drank well again.
Horses are SO SENSITIVE to any electricity, they notice the smallest amounts and won’t drink. You have to look and notice things when using heaters.
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Scary story!!
If you don’t already, it’s absolutely essential to have GFI plugs for your trough/bucket heaters. They’ll detect most instances of current leakage or a ground fault and trip the circuit open to cut the current. (Not a solution for the overheating element, but GFI would address all those stray current anecdotes above).
I have a horse that plays in the water too. To make it difficult to get the heater out of the trough, I run the cord through a length of 2" PVC and then ziptie the PVC to the trough (drill a hole through the plastic, or if it’s a metal one, get creative with baling twine to create an anchor point.
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I run the cord of my sinking de-icer through PVC as @HungarianHippodescribed.
My trough is a 50gal plastic barrel.
Then I go a step further by adding a PVC elbow joint & added length of PVC, so cord is completely encased.
Further insurance by running the exposed end of the cord through a cinderblock, filling the cavities in the block with rocks & finally running the (outdoor-rated) extension cord along the conveniently protruding bottom seam edge of the barn wall - adding more rocks to keep the cord in place - & into the barn where it plugs into a GFI outlet.
Above steps finally prevented my Jr. Engineer herd from pulling the de-icer out of the trough to lay hissing impotently until I could rescue it.
If you mean my stray current anecdotes, our outside plugs are all GFCI, and never tripped during our problems! We even replaced the GFCI guts in outlets, in case they had aged out. Mare still would not drink until I moved and insulated the tank and area around it with the stall mats.
So GFCI outlets are not a cure all, to trip as you might expect in situations.
Adding in that any tank heater using an extension cord should have a low gauge wire thickness to provide enough power to the heater. They are huge electrify users. Read the cord labels to find the gauge inside the cord. I would not recommend any cord higher than 12gauge, even if it is outdoor rated. And use the shortest cord possible to keep the power sufficient for the heater. The longer the cord, multiple cords connected, the more power is lost by the time it reaches the heater plug. This shortens the heater life, may allow tank freezing with not enough electricity out there.
Funny no one has mentioned using the drain plug tank heaters! Those have been popular in other heater discussions. No accessible cords, can’t get pulled out. We do not use them because of difficulty in changing them out of the insulated boxes here. Other folks like them.
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I cannot bring myself to use a heater! I have playful horses who mess with the floating ice chunks so I can only imagine.
One of these days when we are no longer leasing a place I want to install those cobett waterers. I will stick to chopping ice or watering them out of the creek
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Are tank heaters those things that my pony gelding is playing Frisbee with in the dry lot? Must be because there is a cord attached… I have tried every kind and the little bast*** will go all lengths to rip it out, dig it out or slosh the water out until he either sets the tank on fire, hurts himself or destroys the tank. We put a wood top on one time and chewed out the hole until he could get his head in it, got stuck and we were awakened to gosh awful ruckus. Pony running around with a wooden plank stuck on his head. I had to coat his whole head in lubricant to get it off. Yep, scary. Really funny now…but it wasn’t at 3am in freezing cold.
No tank heaters for me. I just break ice and scoop it out with an old milk crate. In the summer the light colored tanks are in the shade and in the winter the black tanks are in the 🌞. I do have heated buckets in the barn and keep an eagle eye on the three to make sure they well hydrated. If not you they get to stand inside until they drink.
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Honestly folks - get the heaters that install in the drain plugs. No problems with the kids then.
:lol::lol::lol::lol: tell that to my pony! That little bugger is willing to dive. I will not even tell you about the goldfish fiasco.
For MOST horses those are indeed the best choice. :yes:
Until your horses stick their feet in the tank for fun and beat the sh!t out of them.
Drain plug tank heaters: filed under “thought I’d love these but noooooooo.”
