Well folks, the aquarium heater arrived at the weekend, and has been on trial for a couple of days now. All I can say is that it looks to be nothing short of a triumph!
Basically all I did was to take an old plastic bucket, and cut a hen-head sized hole about a third of the way down, so they can lean in and drink. I then turned the heater thermostat to its minimum level (20 degC unfortunately), dropped it in, and set it going.
It's a 50W heater, which initially turned out to be a bit much for just a wee bucket, in that the water was sitting at about 15 degC. To get around this, I fitted a mains timer (the sort you might use to unsuccessfully fool burglars into thinking you're on holiday), and set it to switch on for 15 minutes every hour. This has been just about perfect so far, with the water sitting un-frozen at about 5 degC, despite thick ice all around, and icicles forming on the handle of the bucket! Our outside tap was frozen solid this morning, so all I did instead was to throw a few lumps of ice into the bucket, which then slowly melted and topped up the level!
I'm afraid I can't post photos from this computer, so they will follow. However, I do reckon this is worth a try for anybody who has mains electricity out to their coops. The heater is
this model, which cost me £7.99 including postage, from an E-bay seller called "Koi and Ponds". I chose it because it was firstly cheap, and secondly had a plastic guard around it.
If I had my time again, I might go for the 25 Watt version. However, using the 50 Watt model plus the timer does give a bit more flexibility for tweaking the temperature, and having it turned right down at night.
Have fun folks!!
Womble.
