The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Badger on December 09, 2013, 11:39:33 am
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I wonder if anyone can advise us if these automatic door closers are reliable. There is one called "Chuxaway" we are considering, they are about £60. With our coop, the device would have to be mounted externally, and i wondered how long this would be likely to last exposed to the elements. Any advice/thoughts would be much appreciated.
Badger
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I'm halfway through fitting a Chuxaway at the moment. It's all nicely packaged, instructions are great and it looks good but no experience of how it works yet. We went for the option of their door kit as I felt ours being wood on wood may cause problems with sticking / swelling etc. That's been most of the work so far as it's smaller than the door I made.
One thing I'm not sure on is that it's gravity so there is nothing to hold it shut. Now I guess its unlikely that a critter could push it up and get under at the same time, especially as the Chuxaway has a bit of wood shielding the bottom of the door so nothing can get their nose under but it's not as secure as bolting a door shut. We have a decent poultry net as the first line of defence so hoping it's not going to be an issue.
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Hi, I have had the chuxaway plus door kit for about 9 months now it is working great saves a lot of time. I got the door kit as I had a wooden door and was a bit heavy, I have it internally and wash my hen hut with a garden hose once a month so it gets a bit wet and still working good. If it needs to be externally you put the programmer and battery boxes into a plastic box to help protect it from rain and damp hope this helps.
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likely to freeze shut or open
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Yes, it's possible but ours is intended as a precaution in case we are late letting them out or shutting them in ever. Like in summer if you want to go out for a meal, it would be just nice to know that the door went down after dark. Or if there is some kind of problem with school transport/ work or whatever in the morning, would be nice to know that they are being let out at dawn. I would always go and check anyway as I like to put feeders away and do drinkers anyway.
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Never used one of these. Are they on a timer or do they respond to light levels? If the latter my concern would be that in the Winter it can become very dark if snow clouds are gathering. Last thing you'd want is the hens locked outside in a blizzard.
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You can get both systems. Ours is a basic timer.
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We had a VSB opener for a couple of years, and it worked very well.
Once you have the sensitivity adjusted correctly, there's no problem with locking the chooks out if it's darker than usual because the birds are light sensitive too, so just put themselves to bed earlier!
However, ours burnt out the motor after just over a year, and VSB to their credit sent a new unit out. In hindsight, I believe this may have been our fault due to the door freezing in the shut position overnight.
We had the remote sensor version, mounted inside the house, and I definitely think this is a good idea for longevity.
Unfortunately the roof our our henhouse developed a really bad leak last winter, which filled the electronic box up and broke it (my fault). We haven't bothered replacing it, firstly because they're damned expensive, and secondly because we now have geese and ducks to put away as well, which defeats the object.
However, if you can put a porch around the door to protect from freezing, and protect the unit from water ingress, and I would definitely recommend the VSB :thumbsup: .
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Got ours fitted yesterday and it's all up and running. Set the timer for 5pm as we were out at a neighbours for a few glasses of wine and it was nice to come back and find them all safely tucked up and shut in. Fitting up the timer was very simple in the end. I put it inside the house, up as high as possible.