Cob Jockey

A different kind of product review, this time, something for the farm.

Disco and Connor's field is one of two fields on the property that don't have an automatic waterer or power. In years past, we have broken ice twice a day, sometimes needing a sledgehammer to get through it, and just crossed our fingers that it wouldn't freeze back over during the day. Since it has a spigot, I did look into non-electric autowaterers, but those were a no-go for several reasons that are pretty specific to my situation.

Then I 80% solved that problem for $29.95.

(And to be clear, I still want an autowaterer out there, but this is a pretty darn good solution for the price).

Nelsons: A love letter. They are incredible. There are no downsides. They just work. They are little miracles.

Freeze Miser kept hitting me with targeted advertising, and it sounded too good to be true at first. A dumb little gadget that keeps hoses, pipes and stock tanks from freezing? Prove it.

So I bought it. And it proved it.

It got down to -5F air temperature overnight this night.

It's basically a dumb thermostat. There's a wax plug inside of it, and when the water temperature coming out of your hose (not the air temperature) drops below 37F, the wax hardens and a piston inside of it allows the release of a steady stream of water. More at lower temps, less at higher temps. You can put them on a float valve, but I chose not to.

My camera roll is full of pictures of the tank that I send to everyone else like "OMG I can't believe this thing works!" all the time

I am on a well, and I have mine hooked up to a 5 foot hose that comes off of the spigot and is then bungeed onto my fence to keep curious ponies from messing with it. You have to have the brass end pointing level or down, not up. I have mine high enough out of the tank that even if the tank completely filled past the overflow outlet (more on that below), it wouldn't touch the brass end and potentially cause it to freeze up.

I was worried my Curious George Welsh Cobs would play with it, but so far, so good. It's been running continuously for about three weeks now, and no issues. (Don't take that as a challenge, Disco). It has also been nice to not have to worry about filling the tank - if it's cold, it's continuously filling itself.

On a heavy snow day, it still kept a hole big enough for a muzzle, and that's just slush sitting on top of the water, so they could (and do) easily break a bigger hole to drink from.

The only struggle so far has been figuring out how to divert the overflow. I added an outlet a couple inches from the top and attached a hose to it that I intended to use to send water into the ravine a few feet away, but that hose froze because the outlet water flow wasn't strong enough over the distance of that extra long hose. 

Since that tank is against the fence and the outlet is on the far side where people don't walk, I've simply let it drain out the back and create a little skating rink back there, and this has worked fine, although I'd still like a more elegant long-term solution.

Hose outlet that my SO built, minus the hose

So, we are still breaking ice, but even on the coldest nights, it's never sledgehammer thick anymore, just a quick whack and skim. And even if someone forgot to break ice, the horses would still have drinkable water, which, since I set the co-op up to accommodate for all kinds of human failure modes (we're all human, myself included!), I really like that. All in all, it's been a success.

Original outlet hose design, back when you could still see grass (Remember that, grass? I don't, at this point). I think it might have worked with a shorter hose and if I had waited to connect it until there was a stronger outlet flow.

Bottom line: It's no autowaterer, but it solves many of the headaches of providing drinkable water without a power source in winter, and I can definitely recommend it.

What: Freeze Miser

Price: $29.95 for one, multi-packs available at a per-unit discount price

Where: www.freezemiser.com