Here's the system I came up with last year to provide water for my chickens. I wanted something that would provide clean water to them for several weeks. The trickiest part is that I had to keep it from freezing solid during the winter. Here is a sketch of what I came up with.
During the warm months, the pump does not run and the water is gravity fed from the bottom of the tank into some PVC piping with horizontal nipples.
In freezing weather, the pump is plugged into a thermostat that turns it on automatically when the temperature drops. The bird bath heater has it's own thermostat that turns on when the temperatures approach freezing.
I had a number of incidents where the water froze up until I worked out the kinks. The pump is definitely needed to keep the (warmer) water circulating through the system. At one point, the tank ran low on water so the pump stopped circulating the water and everything froze. Initially, the tank itself was not insulated, I found the bird bath heater couldn't keep up with keeping the water liquid so I had to wrap the tank in foam insulation.
This is the 15 gallon tank that you'd normally put in an RV.
Here it is mounted under my coop.
This shows the PVC pipe for filling the tank and the clear vinyl tubing that supplies water to the chicken nipples.
Here's the filling cap on the outside of the coop.
This is a shot of the 12v pump with the vinyl tube that feeds back into the tank.
This some black PVC (and white PVC painted black) with horizontal chicken nipples mounted at different heights.
and here it is installed with a bracket under the coop.
This shows the insulated tank and tubing. I eventually had to remove the insulation off the tubing and replace it with hard plastic (like you'd use to cover computer wires under a desk) because the chickens were eating the insulation.
And another shot. You can see where I replaced the lower pieces of foam with the black plastic tubes.
And here is an outside shot of the coop.
And here's a link to my full coop build. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/911139/hidden-forest-coop
During the warm months, the pump does not run and the water is gravity fed from the bottom of the tank into some PVC piping with horizontal nipples.
In freezing weather, the pump is plugged into a thermostat that turns it on automatically when the temperature drops. The bird bath heater has it's own thermostat that turns on when the temperatures approach freezing.
I had a number of incidents where the water froze up until I worked out the kinks. The pump is definitely needed to keep the (warmer) water circulating through the system. At one point, the tank ran low on water so the pump stopped circulating the water and everything froze. Initially, the tank itself was not insulated, I found the bird bath heater couldn't keep up with keeping the water liquid so I had to wrap the tank in foam insulation.
This is the 15 gallon tank that you'd normally put in an RV.
Here it is mounted under my coop.
This shows the PVC pipe for filling the tank and the clear vinyl tubing that supplies water to the chicken nipples.
Here's the filling cap on the outside of the coop.
This is a shot of the 12v pump with the vinyl tube that feeds back into the tank.
This some black PVC (and white PVC painted black) with horizontal chicken nipples mounted at different heights.
and here it is installed with a bracket under the coop.
This shows the insulated tank and tubing. I eventually had to remove the insulation off the tubing and replace it with hard plastic (like you'd use to cover computer wires under a desk) because the chickens were eating the insulation.
And another shot. You can see where I replaced the lower pieces of foam with the black plastic tubes.
And here is an outside shot of the coop.
And here's a link to my full coop build. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/911139/hidden-forest-coop
