Winter Water

This winter I am getting water from a box!

This is a new contraption but I am so very excited about it.

We usually get water from the side of our house:

In the summer I hook up a hose to that spout and we fill all the animal's water buckets easily.  Zack loves this job.  He will fill water buckets and spray himself then spray the animals. In the summer, water is fun.  During the spring and fall we can use the hose, though I will unhook it at night just in case we get freezing temps (having the hose on the spout when it freezes could cause water to freeze in there and ruin the spout).

Then there are the times during the year like now when even daytime temps are below freezing.  The hose doesn't work at all (any water in there is frozen and blocks the hose).  The last couple of years this meant filling buckets on the ground by the spout and lugging them up the hill.  It's not a terrible hill, but not a fun one for lugging two 5 gallon buckets up either:

Zack couldn't mange this on his own, so water becomes my chore.  It's great strength building for my arms but I was open to other ideas.

J came up with water in a box.

We have another water spout in our garage, which is at the same level as our pasture area and alpaca shelters (no hill to climb).  However, when J hooked up the hose there, it froze (even though our garage is insulated).  With high temps in the 20's during the day and colder at night, it was too cold to keep the water flowing.

So he built this box:

It sits in our garage covering the water spout.

Inside the box is our hose hooked up to the water spout, and a light:

When the light is turned on, it creates just enough heat that the water does not freeze:

We turn the light on, and keep the box closed to warm it up, then we can use it when we need it.  Zack can pull the hose out and fill all our buckets with ease.

We've been using this for a week now and I have to say, it works great!!