We decided to upgrade our watering system by adding a timer to fill the waterer. This way I’m always certain they have fresh water, especially in these very hot summer days! Originally I had a simple watering system made out of PVC pipe and nipples with a cap to open and fill with water. Click here for a link to the original post. My husband decided we should continue to automate things and he put a timer on the system. Now there is one less thing for me to worry about 🙂
This is what he had to say about the set up:
I mounted this automatic chicken waterer to one of the barn’s support columns, where I already had a water source with a standard hose bibb. I installed a 3/4″ tee fitting on the end of the water source PVC, with the hose bibb on one end, and the other end was used to supply water to the chicken waterer. I’ve set up the timer to allow water to flow into the tank for one minute every day. With a ball PVC valve installed after the timer (maybe it should go before the timer, if the timer works fine with low water pressure) I can control the flow of water. I’ll have to test how much flow I need to fill the tank every day without having too much overflow. I’ve drilled a small hole in the top of the tank to allow water to overflow if it fills up before the timer shuts off the flow of water.
Instead of using PVC piping, you could also use a Y splitter on the hose biib and a short hose connected to the timer’s water IN connection, and another short hose connected to the tank with a hose thread to pipe thread fitting.
