Joined: Apr 2012
Posts: 104
We have been there....hope this helps! :-)
12/31/2017 at 6:05 PM
It most likely is frozen from underneath the water bowl maybe two or three feet down in the ground. You can put heat under the waterbowl such as a ceramic heater and wait, but that can take a bit of time. You can take a three or four gallon garden sprayer, the ones you buy to spray weeds in the garden that you manually pump up with the spray wand, and get some 1/4" hard plastic line, such as air brake line, and adapt it to the wand on the garden sprayer. Then fill the water sprayer with hot water and pump it up and then insert the hard plastic line into the water bowl line and let the hot water spray down while slowly putting a bit of pressure on the hard plastic line. As the hot water cuts thru the ice blockage, you will feel it slowly going further into the pipe. You can add salt to the hot water if you want as it can help get thru the block sooner.
Once you get the line flowing again, if the line is inside a 4" pipe, you can get a 7 or 8 foot piece of 2" ID poly pipe same type as the water line feeding the water bowl, (presuming the water line is 1 1/4" which is most common) and tape a 9 foot heat tape to the outside of this 2" pipe as you coil it around the pipe and down. Then slide this 2" pipe with the heat tape on it over the 1 1/4" supply line going down into the ground. This will keep it from freezing again. You can also use a TEE fitting and the small wire type of heat cable that goes right inside the water pipe. We have used both and they both work okay. If you don't have a garden sprayer, you can also use a metal container and solder a 6 foot piece of 1/4" copper tubing to the bottom and then do the same basically as using the garden sprayer, slowly push the copper tubing down the pipe while it gravity flows down...but this is a bit more clumsy to use.
Let me know how you make out....we have a lot of cattle so have years of dealing with these things unfortunately...lol. :-)