Testing Stock Water in Sub Zero Temps | Engels Coach Shop
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- Опубліковано 16 жов 2024
- My first test of watering livestock at -5 degrees F, without electricity, was an extra challenge. With the use of geo-thermal heat and with a well insulated stock tank it seems to be working so far. The real harshness of winter has yet to test my whole system, but I'm hopefull I'm on the right track. Time will tell.
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#wheelwright #offgrid #livestock
That sounds like something straight out of a Red-Green Show Handyman Corner!
Nice looking calves, Mr. Engels.
Dave, if you add another smaller tube down the center of the barrels, not reaching the bottom nor the top, warmer air will rise more vigorously along the barrel sides and cooler air will sink back through the center tube to nearly the bottom. This will be a passive accelerator of the air flow and be warmer at the top. Good luck. I really enjoy your channel.
I use a Mirafount water trough for my cattle. It uses the exact geothermal structure that you built Above the surface is a insulated strucutre that includes the water line., shut off float and approx 10 gals of water. The geothermal heat keeps the water line, float and the 10 gallons of water from freezing. It uses a floating ball to close the drinking hole and the cattle can push it aside to access the water The hardest part of the installation was digging the hole deeper than the freeze line. With your barrels installed, it would be a quick retrofit if your version does not perform up to your expectations
I really enjoy your "after work" projects
Painting the box a darker colour to capture what little winter sun you get would help grab a little more free thermal energy for relatively little outlay I’m sure.
Another thing to consider would be insulating the water tank where it touches the ground.
Reducing contact it might have with the dirt at ground level and insulating it well, might give the geothermal well less losses to compete with.
We don't have the cold like you do, but our calf shed is enclosed, low ceiling (6'), with a south facing skylight on the roof. The calves push through a plastic "curtain" like you see in industrial freezers that allow passing through but limit air infiltration. The water trough is quite small (40 gallons) and actually sits inside the shelter, but they have to reach through the south wall from the outside to get to the water to ensure their bedding stays dry. There is another "curtain" there to keep the breeze away from the trough. It is kept at a constant level with a float valve. Between the passive solar and the calves, there is actually enough heat to keep the trough open. Good luck with your experiment.
Yes, using the heat from the animals is the only thing that will work to keep the water from freezing if it gets really cold. Just a roof can also help a lot - water under bridges is often open.
That's how fire hydrants work up here in New England and other cold climates. You shut off a fire hydrant and it's SUPPOSED to drain. However they don't always. In California or in a movie you see a car take out a fire hydrant and water instantly blows straight up after the car shears it off it's pedestal. Those are called wet top hydrants and ones in cold climates are called dry top hydrants. In case you were wondering.
As a retired FF from central Massachusetts, I can attest to what you wrote, Charles. Especially the SUPPOSED part. Laying a line from a hydrant that you find out is frozen when you try to open it is no fun.
I always thought they were for dogs to pee on.
Very clever! Having the valve below the permafrost level... I learned something there 😊
@@jimwilloughby As a up and coming NH FF, how hard was it to get into fire fighting in mass? I'm like 2 minutes from the border and might try to do Career in mass once I get a few years experience at my department in NH.
@@Vandal_Savage All my family in Northern Nevada have had these devices from forever.
I always had heard the standpipe drains. My question is where do they drain to?
Master Dave - really enjoyed your thought processes, and your ingenuity with this project! Living in Southern California, I've never experienced that sort of cold here (and NEVER want to!), but I gotta admire all the thought you put into this idea - just to keep free flowing water available for some calves. I do have some experience with solar water heating, and will offer that a fairly simple and well insulated water heating panel, could well keep the water at temperature, without the need of your twice daily trips out there to open up the lid. Of course size, placement, design, and so forth would be required, but having built several such panels, I can testify that the amount of heat collect can be quite surprising. Considerations for the snow and such might prove a bit difficult, but if it's set up properly - with the panel being appropriately lower (15" or so) than the water trough, the whole system can and will pump itself. Best of luck with this endeavor, am certain you'll figure out a solution.
Well living in Minnesota water freezes! Just thinking it easier to pump water than to heat it. With that said and you got the equipment. Dig and crib up a hole big enough for the 3000 gal tank and put the barn over the top of it. A few Solar panels and its so dry there you can store your batteries in the pit also. taking the geo-thermal to the next level. Passive solar house and your full time off grid. Makes me want to move....lol! Good luck!
nothing better than a cold day in Montana. Most folks don't know the work needed to bring beef to the table. Keep informing all of us.
I have seen this in Canada, but haven’t tried it. If you had left the bottom in the bottom barrel, you could use it as a reservoir. A friend made a unit that was sunk 10’ into the ground. His water line came in 2’ up from bottom (8’ from top) and was attached to a float valve on a pitiless adapter. He then installed a sump pump that had a ½” garden hose that went up to a water trough. In the water trough he had 6”x ½ “ stand pipe that had 4 ¼ “ holes drilled around the bottom. The sump pump is on a timer and pumps the trough full until it overflows and drains back down the stand pipe. When the pump shuts off all the water drains back down to below the frost line, through the 4 -¼ “ holes. It has never frozen up, even at -45. There or no water above the frost line to try to keep thawed. Water is a tremendous conductor of heat (hence its use in car radiators), so why try to keep it 75degrees above the surrounding temperature? You do have to have electricity to run the sump pump but the draw and usage is minimal. Livestock,water, and electricity are a lethal combination, but unlike conventional waterers cattle cannot come in contact with electricity with this system.
This is a suggestion in case that system does not meet your needs. Don' t give up on it. I have had great sucsess of keeping boat houses free of ice around boat hulls. A pipe with small tees was sunk and anchored below the hull of the boat. The pipe was perferated along its length and connected at both ends to a small compresser. The bubbles would the sides up the hull which prevented ice build up scraping the hull. I would be great if this could be placed at the bottom of all your barrels so it could help bringing warm water up from the bottom as well. But I'm not sure the bubbles when reaching the surface would cover the perimiter of of the trough. You may have to place the apperatus just in bottom of the drinking tank. Also, heating takes more power than a small compresser. A small wind or solar battery system may be all that you need. I spent my youth on a farm with neither electrical or phone service where most winter tempertures fell below 30 degrees below freezing. Our bigist problem was keeping all the animals in drinking water. Our advantage was the animals were in barns and sheds within walking distance of the house. We had to use oil fire water drinking devices. On winter nights with an early freeze, we woud listen to the trees exploding as the sap would freeze.
Years ago, my grandfather had a similar rig for his boat dock. Moving, agitated water doesn't freeze as easily.
Yes I grew up in Wyoming and I lived in a log house. The house was snug and warm and we had quilts my aunts and grandmother made. There was a part of the house my father started but never finished, it was made of logs. On those subzero nights you could lay in bed and hear the logs creaking and popping in that unfinished part of the house. God I am glad I got out of Wyoming?
Dave, It's fun to watch this project come together. I would never have thought of your geo-heater system. Very cool. Our dads would be impressed.
They would. 😊
I'm here for the coachbuilding.
Another great video Dave. Your production quality is tiptop even with microphone magnet silliness. I hate to bring bad news, but I’ve seen enough of your videos to know that you have a Plan B in place. Let me try to explain why disappointment is likely, without getting into the numbers… Simply put, the reason the ground below some depth does not freeze in the winter is because dirt has an insulation value inhibiting heat transfer. Saying that differently; the dirt around the barrels will give up its heat quite slowly. At the other end of your system, the water/atmosphere/(cow) side, the heat transfer rate out of the water and into the atmosphere is quite efficient, even with lots of insulation (as you clearly understand based on your water tanks shed instalation!!). What this means is that if your system functioned as designed, it would work to lower the frost level in the ground around your barrels quicker than warming the water in your tank. But you likely won’t even see that as static air (the air in the barrels) is an extremely poor medium for convective heat transfer. Air is actually really good thermal insulator (that’s why the fiberglass bats and foam work). Keep Plan B close to hand.
That is proper science. Make a hypothesis, create an experiment to test it, and wait to see the results. I look forward to see what actually happens over the winter.
@@michael-dm2bv Qwe? I noticed that I made a rather bad typo, but if you're not hinting at British restrooms, I need a hint.
@@anderswegge6828 i didn't write that.
@@anderswegge6828 Someone hacked my account.
That's a clever make-do to keep that tank from freezing solid. And some good-looking steaks. :D
Amazing how much heat comes up out of the earth. My yard is terraced a couple feet above my driveway, and there's a little garden strip between. Enough heat comes out of the raised ground there to melt snow off the garden strip even in below-zero temps. Couple years ago I had California poppies decide to bloom there in December!
At least you are trying to stay ahead of the game and the education of hard knocks learns good when we lesson
You may need a way to secure the open lid so the wind can’t close it . A bungee cord strap will work and a couple of fence staples on each end just arrange the geometry so it over centers to hold it in the closed and the open position. I have a Cousin who farm/ranches at Maple Creek SK , I have experienced the prairie breeze!
I think in concept the thermo syphon system may work the driver is the density difference between 54F and 32F is small but is what drives much of the ocean upwelling!
Good looking cattle it’s obvious you care about them and for them very well. Interesting idea took me a while to figure out what you were doing. Will keep watching to see how it goes.
Thanks for this new series showing us some of your projects beyond the CoachShop. I always enjoy the Coach videos and also greatly enjoy these other videos like your water project. I wish you and your family a good and healthy winter.
Thank you. Same to you.
I really enjoy this series if everyday life in Montana. City and Town folk normally don't have a notion of what it's like to do farming and ranching, and how tenacious one has to be in order for life to work in those realities. Thanks for sharing your stories with us.
Great idea. Something else that might extend the temperature range would be to add a solar powered pond air pump but put the pump at the bottom of your thermal tower!
I really like how you find a use for so many *saved* things.
Necessity isthe mother of invention is what i have heard, thumbs up, i see all this working
"The Red Green Show" only your ideas actually make sense and work. 😀
I love the experimentation - it is what advances our world. But I expect that you do not have enough surface area at the bottom of your pit to maintain the temp above freezing when the outside temp drops really low. But I am not a geothermal engineer either, so I could be wrong. You should drop one of those remote outside thermometer into the bottom of the pit so you can see what the temp is at the bottom.
Man kann diesen Mann nur bewundern. Hoffentlich hat Amerika noch mehr von dieser Qualität in Reserve.
No, more into tiktok now. More practical . . . lots easier too! 🤓👍
Just kidding of course
Not sure if someone has already broached the subject, split the plastic barrels in half with plywood, place small solar powered fan blowing down to circulate the air in a down/up motion will improve depth 8 foot ground temp to surface flow otherwise you end up with temp inversion layers as temps drop.
Hi Dave, a roof above it will make a massive difference.
If a car is parked in a carport (with just a roof) instead of out on the road the windows are less likely to freeze because the car (like any object) radiates heat and this heat stays under the roof rather than disappear into space.
Thats not the case why cars wont freeze under a roof. Its because moist are sinks down and in the case of a roof above it cant.
I could never say I get bored of your wagon video's, but I can now guess what you are going to do well in advance, because I have been watching for years, this however is a mystery to me. Quite refreshing.
Like many others, I'm enjoying your after work vids too.
It looks to me that your water system and cattle shelter will work out or you will make it work. I read lots of very good suggestions in the comments, many good ideas there.
Maybe it would help to put some thermometers in different places to get a sense of what is happening and point to solutions.
Thanks for sharing the after work side of Engels Coach shop, I find it very interesting.
I read in a WesternHorseman some years back. A rancher in Wyoming doing this with a section of culvert pipe. If I remember he only had to crack ice a couple of times that winter.
Your theory is pretty sound, alot of farmers around here do the same thing. Worse comes worse, you can always get a solar powered trough heater. We have them here at Rural King, Western Ranch in Billings should have them also.
Your learning as you go and teaching as you go video's are great Dave. That cold weather is brutal but learning the ropes to continue growing your beef and handling the winter weather is beneficial and helpful too. Thanks for sharing with us and keep up the great videos and what you're doing around there. Fred.
Good looking animals and I like the water too
As someone stated below I wonder if you could put some sort of air hose down to the bottom of the barrel stack to create bubbles and maybe a bit of warm water circulation to help prevent the water from freezing. Maybe a solar charged battery-operated compressor of some sort
Really interesting Dave. Innovative solutions to practical problems!
Btw. Nice flowers in the workshop too.
Boaters up north use a bubbler, or small circulation pump, to keep from getting ice bound. There are battery/solar powered versions out there for short money.
Paint the lid flat black.
Put up a small windmill to stir the water and prevent freezing.
Good system. I would never have thought of that.
Might I suggest if you haven't already done it, to put a floating cover inside your insulated trough? This would keep the air to water exchange at the top to a minimum. Cut a bucket sized hole at your watering area for the animals. Modify an old swimming pool cover and add a bit of rigid on top. I am apprehensive about whether your heat exchange will be rapid enough to keep the trough ice free depending of course on how much is used? It would have been nice to lay a line of Pex in your original ditch in a long loop to really help the heat exchange. Of course if you can get enough solar a very small pump keeping a constant flow even though of small volume will do wonders in keeping it ice free. Letting free air circulate is probably on the lowest end of the heat transfer scale. Going to be very interesting for sure. On the plus side you are dealing with a cold, dry climate so that helps your ground insulation. Best of luck. Might also think about a small solar powered fan (such as used to ventilate boats) which would be inside your envelope but would keep the air moving and prevent stratification. Doesn't take much to keep the heat rising.
Hopefully those cows are for pets and not for eating. I love your videos.
The smart one's named Sirloin, the other's name is T-Bone. I don't think they're destined to be pets.
I used to have to take an ax and chop a hole in the little stream that flowed through the bull pen. We raised purebred hereford bulls for sale. Also had to check each water hole for ice in the morning and evening where the cows wintered. We had electric heaters for the tanks in the corral but still had to check everyday.
I remember them days. Growing up, dad always had these grand ideas (like hydrants and a proper barn instead of a shed) for our place, but invariably would settle on "it'll do for now." That's how I ended up lugging 5 gallon pails of water out of our bathtub out to the horse trough, duck yard and pig pen. Flip over the water tubs, make sure the ice is gone, fill 'er up, and go back to get two more buckets. Some days in deep winter it hits -30 around here, and a fresh tub of water is a solid block by sunset.
Maybe use one of your barrels cut in half as the Water Trough, then the thermal updraft is only warming a much smaller base area and less water, plenty of insulation and all should be well.
Thanks for explaining the hydrant valve being in the base and draining down the stand pipe. I was wondering why you left it bare, with your attention to detail I knew there was a reason. Take care stay safe.
Those style valves are often called an “Iowa Riser”
I've been thinking Dave... my doing so has in the past been labeled as dangerous, but anyway. You could get a small solar panel to charge a 12 volt battery, and a vehicle oil pan heater or battery heater like we use here in the frozen north (Fairbanks, Alaska) to keep the water from freezing, or a thin skim of ice that could be easily broken. A 12V aquarium bubble pump might help too.
You need air space around the tank so the warm air can circulate around it, when the insulation is pressed tightly against the tank, it defeats the purpose of your geothermal setup. And, they make solar tank heaters that work quite well.
Best regards from Indiana.
I watch Few Acres Farm, Pete Larson uses a submersible heater to keep his water tanks for his Dexter Cows not frozen, but I do like how you did things, The cows like to be in the enclosure, nice job on the whole.
Me too, but Pete has power available to his barns, and I don't think Dave does have power.
Thought for you, make a "floating roof". Throw a bunch of ping pong balls to cover the surface. Some insulation and the calves can still poke their nose in and drink.
I see your calves have their hooves crossed!
I've given some thought on using ground heat to thaw water. I think it would work better if the barrels were filled with water and the bottom of the trough was connected to the barrels (so you had a deep well of ground warmed water). Using some sort of conducting medium (water with anti-freeze), then have it touching the bottom of the trough, might work better with your design.
You could use a gravity heat-pipe. Choose your working fluid (probably one of the alcohols), and use a system pressure low enough so that it boils at ground temperature (12°C or whatever) and then condenses at say 5°C at the bottom of (or better yet within a coil inside) your water tank.
@@davidhaywood8029 Yeah, that's along the lines I was thinking, a heat pipe. The trick is finding a fluid that boils at at ~40-50degF but will condense at around 32-34degF. That's boiling at 10C and condensing at 0C. Also, it would need a lot of surface area to be effective for a stock tank.
@@eformance As long as you're dealing with soil rather than rock then I guess you could just use say a 100mm dia. plastic pipe & bore down to whatever depth gives you enough surface area. I seem to recall that such an approach was trialled for road de-icing using ammonia as the working fluid (not personally my favourite chemical). It was, of course, economically impractical for road de-icing -- but perhaps it may be economic for remote stock watering where it's expensive to run cables for an electrical heater?
Try floating a couple of tennis balls in the tank. It worked for me with our goats when we lived in Ohio.
I've seen that suggestion work
GREAT JOB, GREAT VIDEO, SEE YOU WHEN...
Hi David: If all else fails try placing a large container of heavily salted water in the trough. The freezing point of salt water is lower than that of plain water therefore the trough will not freeze as readily. Same principle as salting the highways!
What you are suggesting seems to me exactly how the home made crank ice cream makers worked. The salted ice around the ice cream bucket lowered the freezing point of the water thus making the now slushy mixture colder than the freezing point surrounding the ice cream mixture thus making ice cream. Salting the highway lowers the temperature that water freezes and thus the wet pavement instead of ice. Seems I heard that the principle stops working when the temperature drops below 20 degrees F or so. IMHO
With all of the wind you has as we do in Cheyenne if you ran a pipe deeper into the ground than place a windmill-operated pump below the frost line it would have to get real cold before it would freeze. No electricity just a mechanical pump jack to circulate the water below the frost line.
Food for thought, don't know if you know about the automatic chicken feeder that when stepped on the lid opens and the chickens eat and when they step off the feeder closes, So i was thinking what if you made something like that. That way your calves have access any time and the water would never freeze. Look up auto chicken feeders. By the way I really love your show.
Great job Dave Happy Thanksgiving friends love from TEXAS
Dave, it is obvious that you really care about your animals. Another excellent, and very watchable video.
You would love the soil we have in Nebraska , except for the sand hills the rest of the state the top soil and sub soil are the same , and no natural occuring stone , has a dept from perhaps a dozen feet to 100' plus feet known as Loess soil.
Happy Thanksgiving and may God Blees from Ray, Johnny and Tina King Eckert CO.
Thank you. Same to you.
Clever contraption. I hope it works good enough.
Hair brain ideas make the best videos!!!!
If you could install a small pump to Circulatie the water from the bottom of the barrels to the top the water would never freeze. They do this to keep the water from freezing around boat docks.
Thanks Dave
thank you Dave.
I think you should consider converting that spare bedroom at home.
You can always add a 12V resistor. I do this to keep my chickens' drinking water ice-free.
good job teacher, congratulations
The bottom section being plastic maybe slow the heat transfer. I suggest that making the bottom section of steel would have been better. Great idea though and hope it works well.
Proverbs 12:10 A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
Great video and good ldea God bless .
Great idea guess we will be learning also
It was kind of fun watching you build a pit trap for some future piece of heavy equipment. Now some poor sap like me will have to go "find" it when I drive around your property in my concrete truck. Starting my second year of retirement into the cold weather. Glad I don't have to keep the water on the truck from freezing. Pissed on my share of hose nozzles.
You must love fooling with cattle. I have raised calves before in southern states and winter was not fun. Hats off to you.
Nice thinking Dave. I'm no stockman but would it be an idea to extend the shed around the water tank to give it another layer of insulation/protection from the elements?
I’m a huge fan
I know nothing about thermodynamics. That said, I question whether +50F underground is warm enough to counteract -20F at the surface.
I guess we and the calves will find out.
And this may sound idiotic, but I wonder if a couple of old-style, incandescent, 100-watt light bulbs underground but near the water might be enough to keep it free.
Just a thought.
Love to watch you work. I always learn something.
Nice work Dave. Watching you work through these issues is reminiscent of our forefathers doing the same thing. Makes you wonder just how much knowledge we have lost to modern technology. Thanks very much for sharing.
I have to admit to being skeptical that this will work. I think any convection in the tube will be so slow that it won’t transfer enough heat upwards to make a difference. Having a fan in there might help. However, it is definitely an interesting experiment and I am curious to see how things turn out.
I enjoy these videos a lot thanks for sharing.
You are darn clever, Mr. Engels.
I have heard the solar heaters for those tanks are one of the few that actually work pretty well at keeping the water clear. I don't believe any of those people live in Montana though so take it with a grain of salt. let us know how the barrel trick works.
thanks for the videos.
fun to watch
The cows were talking to you all evening in the mic, hoping you would come back to see them! 😂
Batteries and solar panels. Spin a little propeller or an aquarium heater. The Batteries would need to be well insulated.
It will be interesting to see of the cold gear down that chimney or if the big thing of water allows the heat to rise.
what a great idea
Flex Tape might be a better solution for the connection between the barrels. It has a reputation for water proof over time where duct tape doesn’t.
I was thinking the barrels in the ground were going to be water filled to help conduct the heat up through the tube to the bottom of the trough.
Love the modern cooperage- that was really slick. "Muy coyote", they say here.
Brilliant !
Great thinking.
Interesting project.
Very good and clever!
The bubble wrap insulation has an R value of 1. What you want to get is a flexible foam insulation with radiant barrier.
Will be interested to see how this works
loving all the videos
Thanks uncle Dave.....
Shoe🇺🇸
Dave, there's nothin' like necessity for Mother to come along! I'm wondering if you could put a lever & pulley system on that lid so that when the calves step to get close enough to reach the water they'd either step on or push into the lever that would automatically open the lid so they can drink when they want but the lid stays shut unless they're pushing against the "actuator".
Keep makin' those videos!
Dave, brilliant execution on this experiment. If nothing else, you certainly have the wheels turning in the comment section. Wow; so many great suggestions! You are doing what keyboard warriors only dream of! Can’t wait to see a follow up on the results.