How to Build a Freeze Proof Water Trough

Build a freeze proof water trough using these simple instructions to keep your livestock troughs from freezing up during cold winter months.

By Rhett Rinne
Published on November 1, 1982
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by Rhett Rinne
I put the trough together in less than two days, using mostly scrap and scavenged materials . . . plus a hammer, a saw, and a knack for "guesstimating" lengths and angles.

Want to keep your livestock’s water tanks unfrozen in winter? These instructions will help you build a freeze resistant solar water trough to solve the problem.

I, for one, am not overly fond of getting up early on bitter cold mornings to chop through a thick layer of ice on my cattle’s water trough so that they can drink. Nor am I especially crazy about lugging buckets of hot water to the bovines. So last fall, with winter weather just around the proverbial corner, I found myself in a real quandary: I had neither the time nor the inclination to take on those tasks, yet I had no money to buy a commercial heated trough, either.

Somewhere in the course of my ruminations, however, the notion of constructing a solar-warmed waterer popped up… and even though I’d never built much of anything before, I decided to tackle the project. I’m glad I did, too, because —  although the design is elementary (experienced handifolk would probably call it crude) — the danged thing works!

In fact, I put the trough together in less than two days, using mostly scrap and scavenged materials… plus a hammer, a saw, and a knack for “guesstimating” lengths and angles. (A tape measure? What’s that?) Here’s how I did it.

Solar Freeze Proof Water Trough Construction

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