A question for Jade and others who live in cold places...

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Charmaine18

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I was just wondering, those of you who live in places that are much better prepared for snow and ice than we are, how do you prevent your outdoor taps and water pipes from freezing solid? We've been getting water from the YO's kitchen all week, which isn't convenient for anyone - do you just have to make do with lugging buckets back and forth from the house like we are at the moment, or is there some clever way to keep the outdoor water running all year?
 
I used to work on a yard a few yrs ago that had a kind of wire running round all the pipes, it was warm and kept them from freezing. Can't remem what it was called tho!!
 
I know they have heated water troughs out in the fields
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Our yard tap usually freezes but i follwed someones tip off here the other day and it worked! That was to wrap a paper feed bag over it and then a plastic bag over the top. Seems to do the job as its lagged as far down as it can be too.
 
Okay, I'm not Jade, but i grew up in snowy, cold Massachusetts!
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You can get special insulator tape for taps etc (ie lagging) to help those - but the taps themselves, I can't remember how we kept those from freezing. I don't remember it ever being an issue. Hoses, on the other hand were a different story. We either used to roll them up to store them indoors - or we'd shake every drop of water out as we were rolling them back on the reel so they'd not freeze solid.

The best solution, IMO was one that my brother in law thought up when we built our barn. Not sure you could use it here though. We had a 100-gallon water tank installed in an area of the barn that we could box in and put insulation around. It was also lidded and we used a drop in heating element to keep it from freezing. These were common enough to buy, but I have never seen one here. YOu could heat a bucket of water with them in no time. Something like this which was a de-icer rather than one to boil water....

http://www.cheappetproducts.net/BUCKET_HEATER_14IN_1000W______6-UKP114499.html

Anyway, as the tank was located in the center of the barn, we would just use a stainless steel pail that we'd dip in to the tank to get the water we'd need and carry to the buckets in the stables. For six horses we'd have to fill the tank once a week or so and out come the hose which ran from the tap at the house at the weekend.
 
Hi,

I still don't have any snow, but will expect temperatures below freezing most of the time (except Dec 25th when it is forecast for 3C and rain- yipee -Not) until at least the back end of March.

Yes we have heated water troughs, or trough heaters, same result. I also have heated water buckets, and pet bowls for dogs, cats and even my rabbits have a heated bowl. I couldn't live without them. Today is warm, just -8C but water freezes within minutes.

Outside taps? I don't have any. The one in the barn is in an insulated, heated pumproom (we have well water, no mains supply, if that freezes we are in deep poo) The well pipes are heated and insulated as are the pipes (6' down) to the outside troughs.

The first year we lived on this farm the well froze and for 3 weeks I was pulling 300l of water a day for the animals/loos etc from our creek half a mile away in the forest through an ice hole that had to be broken every time. After that winter we had the piping relaid and spent a lot of money on insulation!
 
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The first year we lived on this farm the well froze and for 3 weeks I was pulling 300l of water a day for the animals/loos etc from our creek half a mile away in the forest through an ice hole that had to be broken every time. After that winter we had the piping relaid and spent a lot of money on insulation!

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OOhh, hardcore horrible!
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Today is warm, just -8C


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Eeeeeep!
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Well, it is warm if you are busy, I have just stood in a barn for 2 hours having horses feet done and my feet were frozzed big time. Why do horses always stomp on cold feet?
 
When I was in the states earlier this year, and for a brief period it got to -25 during the day, we had the following:

All the outdoor troughs had heating elements in them - still froze on top sometimes but always thin enough to break. Always filled them right up from the hose whenever it was warm enough.

The water itself came through pipes which were buried approx 5ft underground, and came up through special 'gravity' tap things - I cannot explain this very well, but basically they had a self-clearing valve in them so when you turned it off the water was cleared back to 5ft underground - those never froze.

The horses in the stalls had regular buckets which I spent a good hour to two hours with a mallet chipping the ice out of every morning. I then did not refill them until all the horses were in - body heat kept them liquid for just long enough.
 
I'm in the southeast so certainly not that cold but this week the taps had frozen and we had one heck of a job accessing water on Sunday.We got some haylage bale wrappers and filled them with manure
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and tied them around all exposed pipework.It seems to have worked as yesterday the pipes and the water weren't frozen.
 
Some very good ideas here - I'm particularly liking the poo-bags! Very cost-effective!
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I've always wanted to live in a snowy place, but I've been starting to change my mind over the last week having found out how awkward horses + ice is! Think my mind is changing back again now though... I suppose there are ways round the difficulties. I love snoowww.
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The taps SC is talking about are "gravity fed". The water pipes are buried under the frost line (which is a minimum of a meter or more down, depending on where you are) and the tap works like an old well pump handle, pulling the water up by a vacuum. When the handle is closed the water "falls" back down below the frost line. I'd say this is the only way to have an outside faucet in most of Canada or the Northern US.

Otherwise, faucets are usually housed in a heated pump room, as Blitzenfys described. I shared a farm with a woman who seemed incapable of closing the pump room door properly . . . I could cheerfully have killed her. On the upside, I learned a lot about fixing burst pipes.
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You can use heat tapes and/or pipe insulation but it's not really a reliable option because even the smallest join or space in the insulation can freeze in the wind.

The reason you call "American barns" that is because that's the standard North American construction - warmer in winter, cooler in summer. (Parts of Canada have a possible 60+ degree temperature range between winter and summer.) Generally, if it's constructed well, the heat of the horses keeps the internal temperature above freezing but I've certainly been in lots of barns where that's not the case. Automatic watering won't work if the barn freezes and the upshot will be a disastrous so places either keep enough horses in during the day to keep the temp up or have a different system in place for winter.

There are all sorts of ingenious methods for keeping troughs and buckets from freezing. Bucket/trough heaters work well but obviously need electricity. Otherwise people build insulation filled housings then fill the buckets with warm water and hope it doesn't freeze too quickly.

I've certainly had to "haul water" (see above anecdote about the woman who couldn't close a door), usually using buckets (with lids or lined with plastic bags we tied shut to avoid spillage) pulled on a sled. It sucks.
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The water freezing is a absolute nightmare and a great deal of effort goes in to trying to avoid it happening. The problem is, once it does freeze the pipes often burst and there are few things less fun that trying to patch pipes in sub zero weather. It's also often very difficult to get it warmed up again as the bit that freezes is almost always the part that's not safe to heat with an external source!

As someone above said, "Hardcore horrible"!
 
I live in the north of scotland and last year we had three weaks almost of eveything frozen!
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we just broke the ice on the troughs every morning and night and hoped from the best! :S and carried buckets when it got to empty and icy! I hate this frozen weather!!
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In this country the easiest way to keep the yard tap from freezing up is to leave the tap running a little, but of course you need it to go directly into a drain otherwise you get a big sheet of ice around it. And if your YO has a metered water supply they won't be too chuffed.

I live at 1100 feet in the Peaks and my water supply is frozen, but I am lucky and I have a natural spring in the yard and that never stops and will also unfreeze frozen things because it comes up from underground and is well above freezing. I have a high-backed trug on wheels which is absolutely perfect for moving the water around in. And I wear fisherman's boots with screw-in studs which are purrrrrfect for stopping me sliding around on the ice.
 
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