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Eastern NE KS | +1 Same here.
I used a lot of hot water. First 3 days the tanks held up. Day 4 every valve and ball or wafer were froze. Spent 6 hours cooking water and hauling to tanks. My Ritchie uses pond water unfortunately colder source. Access lid was froze down so I got the wafers loose and dipped cold water out and replaced it with warm. All livestock are locked away from each tank while the warm water is working. As soon as each tank's valve thaws, I let the stock have access.
Added heat to the tanks with a bucket water heater if electricity was available. 2 tanks have no electricity so they were fed warm water in the evening, stock locked out. Some more warm water in the morning and soon cattle had water for the day. The 2 tanks had 40 and 80 adult animals drinking from them. Over the next 3-4 days temps continued to drop some. The bottom was -23*F. But my system held up. Warm water would keep the valve from freezing over night and cattle drinking during the day prevented freezing too.
I could not let the cows drink warm water. They learned to drink when I gave them access. My numbers were too small to give them access 24 hrs a day.
Added chore time to cook and haul warm water was about 2-3 hrs a day.
Would I change my setup? Spending new money on stuff that works 50 out of 52 weeks is tough to do. I had no problem last year. I had 8 weeks of mud instead. If the Ritchey wore out, a Cobett will replace it with a DEEP heat well.
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