Friday, December 10, 2010

Playing with electricity

In the past couple weeks, I have had cause to play with electricity twice (and plan to do it one more time). The simple project was rewiring a Xmas snowflake. While easy, it was mind numbingly tedious. I got this big light-up snowflake that looked perfect hung over our front door roof. The second year, it still looked perfect, but there were a couple (non-replaceable) lights out. Then, I forgot to take it down... For 2 years. Needless to say, it looked terrible. The clear vinyl rope light that it was constructed with was now an opaque, yellowish brown color. None of the lights lit, even replacing the fuse. Well, I looked around for a replacement to no avail. Ideally, I wanted the same look in an LED device for the energy savings and long life. My sister found a giant LED snowflake at Target which looked nice and worked well enough, but it just wasn't the same. Well, since I never throw certain things away, I still had the old snowflake hanging around the attic. Well, I decided it was worth a shot to try to replace it. Here are the results:


Project number two has far less interest to the general public, but was a lot more fun and useful for me.Also, it was a nice learning experience which is always a plus. At 32 degrees, water freezes. In winter, temperatures are routinely at or below 32 degrees. All life (as we know it) needs water to live. Chickens are alive. Therefore, chickens need water which isn't frozen solid into a block of ice. More specifically, I paid $40 for a nice galvanized chicken waterer and I really don't want to to warp or break from freezing. Also, I don't want to have to deal with a frozen waterer when I'm trying to get out the door to work and whatnot. After a bunch of research, I decided I didn't want to pay the $60 for a heated waterer base. I picked up a water heater thermostat switch for $8 and a strand of C-7 Xmas lights for $6. Everything else I had on hand. Here is what I started with:

On the left is the water heater thermostat. It's a simple switching device. When desired the temperature (set by a small screw) is reached, the circuit is switched off. The middle is a piece of scrap wood with an outlet box nailed onto it. On the right is a large square cookie tin with a set of clear C-7 Xmas lights inside. Also included in the photo are my trusty quick wire strippers (much better than my teeth) and a standard power cord. Ideally, I would have liked to use a higher gauge 3-pronged plug, but I didn't want to destroy any of my long cords. I cut the outlet end off the cord. The white wire is wired to the white side of the outlet. The black wire (yes, it's a white cord, so both wires are white) runs to a screw on the thermostat switch. Another black wire jumps from the other screw on the thermostat to the black side of the outlet. The outlet was stuffed into the box, and the thermostat was attached to the piece of wood in an orientation so that it would read the temperature of the inside of the cookie tin instead of the surface or the air or the bottom. The lights were plugged into the outlet and the end of the cord was secured to the wood with wire staples. It was all stuffed inside the cookie tin and plugged in. It was then that I realized that I didn't buy a rubber grommet... Or drill a hole for the grommet... Or run the wires through the grommet / hole so I could close the box. Crap! Here it is at that stage:
 OK, well a few days later, I swung by the hardware store and got a box of grommets. I drilled a hole, unwired, rewired through the hole, realized I forgot to run the wire through the grommet, unwired again, rewired through the grommet AND the hole, set the grommet in the hole, arranged everything in the tin and plugged it in. It worked like a charm. I put the lid on and left it for a couple hours. Initially, I had it set at 90 degrees. Inside the box, it may have been 90, but it was barely even warm to the touch. I bumped it up to 125 and it seemed to be noticeably warm but not even close to hot. It seems to be working. I have had it out in the coop for the past week and yesterday it was 22 in the coop and the water was still liquid. I don't have a picture, of the finished product, but if you use your imagination, it looks like a cookie tin with an electrical cord hanging out the side.I think the next project is going to be a variation on this to warm up the coop a bit. It's not supposed to be 19 degrees here in early December and I really don't want my chickens to get frostbite. Supposedly, they can handle down to single digit temps just fine, but I don't want them to be miserable. Also, most importantly, I want them to be able to do their job (lay eggs). If it gets too cold for too long, they may slow down laying. I really don't want to pay to feed them if they aren't returning on my investment.