Anyone else got no water at their yard!?

No mains water anyway
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We have two one thousand litre tanks that take the run-off from the roof of the barn. Now they are very, very low
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Our plan is to buy two more tanks to try and cover future dry periods.

One field is actually slightly lower than the water table, so we have a big puddle in the middle, but we do have to break the ice every day: great exercise yomping up and down for ten minutes lol.
 
We managed to finally defrost the main tap yesterday by standing there for hours with a hairdrier
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I brought a water container from home over to the yard and as soon as e have a bit of water every spare container gets filled
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I tried wrapping stuff round the water buckets to stop them freezing but my daft horses think it's a new toy and keeo unpeeling it
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I've been leaving a tap dripping every night since the weather got so cold to prevent the water pipes freezing, so all the taps and drinkers are still working. Although I don't think the weather over here is quite as freezing cold as GB, but it was -6 last night so still pretty chilly!!!
 
Luckily my corner stable is the tack and feed room, and it has a tap and sink. Even more luckily, the last freeze caused the tap to start dripping a bit. I therefore constantly keep a bucket in the sink, a short hose on the tap into the bucket and not only does the tap not freeze due to the running water, I always have a full bucket of water available, filled from the leak. No point fixing it, will wait till winter is over!

Failing that, the house is only 20 feet away! I learnt from our last freeze though and a) bought proper water buckets with handles, not trugs - much easier to carry and b) keep my water container full at all times, just in case.
 
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Out of the three yard taps only one is working. We've poured kettles and kettles of boiling water over the other two but can't get them working. The automatic troughs in the field are frozen solid. Buckets of water were freezing in the stables last night too.

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Are the yard taps lagged?

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Two are, one isn't. Although the one that isn't lagged has been wrapped up with an old stable rug, plastic bags, straw and allsorts! We're fine because of having the one tap working, would be a bit of a nightmare if not so am very grateful that it is working I must say!
 
We've got no water at all, even the underground water supply has frozen, so there's no automatic trough filling either.

We are taking 2 x 25 litre drums plus a 5 litre one up every day. The 2 x 25s are going straight into the trough, and the 5 litre one is used for damping feeds, filling the kettle, washing hands etc.

We have had to bring the horses back from their winter grazing field this week (hopefully only temporarily) because the trough in the winter field is at the top of a very steep hill and it is too difficult to get water up there manually (no vehicular access near to the trough).

The freeze situation is no better now they're back in the summer field - however at least it's flat enough so that we can trundle the water containers along in a wheelbarrow from the car.
 
My tap is frozen each morning and each night - but I just boil my kettle and tip it over the top letting it run right down the side and so far so good it has let me have water every time - so not one day yet have I had to carry water cannisters thank gawd.
 
Our horses have a bowser in their field. Unfortunately, about 4 weeks ago, a rusty hole appeared below the level of the tap, so all the water drained out!

That wasn't so bad - I just carried water from the nearest trough which is about 100 yards away. However, when it first started freezing, the farmer turned all the troughs off! It is much too far to carry buckets from the yard, so yesterday I filled a milk churn and took it over on a trolley!

Not too bad taking it over, but my mare trashed the field a few weeks back when the other mare went out of her sight for 10 seconds. It is now ankle/fetlock breakingly hard and horrible, and bloody difficult to pull a full milk churn on a trolley over!
 
Our water pipes weren't sunk deep enough
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We managed to get the pipes to two of the troughs (in the two winter fields) dug in deeper before everything froze, so we have two working troughs, but the yard tap has frozen solid as its pipe isn't deep enough and it only has a towel wrapped round it as the guy doing the water obviously couldn't be arsed to lag it
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We also have a large metal square container thing that we collect the water off the stable roof in... but of course that is only used as washing and bucket cleaning water so it hasn't been broken properly in weeks and the ice is now about four or five inches thick!
To add to all that, the one water trough that we are using and that is working, is overflowing... of course. It's never one problem it's a whole heap of problems!
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Then again I prefer this weather to rain, so I'll stop complaining
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Now I've just been reminded - even though it's now far too late - to lag the stable tap again. We did have one of those grey foam tap cover things on it but Warrior was tied up there one day having his tail brushed out and I wasn't paying any attention to what his front end was doing. Next thing I new was there were a lot of grey "crumbs" on the floor around the tap - a missing tap cover - and Warrior pulling his best ever "it wasn't me, mum, honest" face.
 
Not far from the Earth's core.
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Our yard supply is a hose running round the outside of some outbuildings, so even though it is lagged it freezes at the first sign of frost, let alone such a deep freeze.
 
We only have one tap working which is inside a stable block, it must have frozen last night as some muppet left it turned on this morning so by 8am we had two flooded stables and a frozen stream down to the haylage
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My sis is gonna have a lot of mucking out to do tonight the pony's stable is deep littered and was squelching, so put the pony out until we get it sorted!
 
we fill our kettle up at night with water boil it in the morning then use that to defrost the tap, then spend the next 45 mins trying to defrost the hoe to fill the water in the field up. i was in a nice mood this morning and deiced everyone's water troughs and re filled them with fresh waters, dunno if the owners appreciated it but the poor bloody horses did.
 
Had to get mine from the river yesterday. I was not impressed and neither was my bottom when the bank gave way a bit and I slipped in. My horses must have found it hilarious as they stood in the field next door, with their big butch boy mates, staring at me like I was some kind of freak!

The taps on the yard have been frozen solid, almost non-stop, for about 2 weeks. We have to use the tap in the snug. That freezes occasionally and after yesterday when the YO had to allow people to use her utility (she wasn't there when I was, so I had to use river) because the snug tap was frozen, they decided to put a heater in the snug to help the tap free up in the mornings. Was -8 at my yard this morning (-5 yesterday), but I was able to use the tap and not the river!
 
Oh and we have huge buckets next to each of the 3 taps, and a water butt, all of which get filled (as well as the buckets that hang from each tap) to the brim; but unless you are there early enough, you really don't stand much of a chance!
 
i am in a wooden stable block i take down 5 water containers on a sunday night coz i dont drive they last me until friday but they are solid my hay bin water is solid my lads water bucket in field and stable is solid even my feed his solid it is just a pain in the arse!
 
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