Hot Water in a dog barn

[Dan Piano]

We have been carrying buckets of hot water down from our house to our kennel with 40 sled dogs for ten years. The time has come to bring water to the barn. The building is 12x24 well insulated and will be used on a daily basis. I built this last fall and heated it through the winter with a simple oil heater. We house our thin coated dogs in there at night. It did pretty well. I’m going to bring a frost free hydrant into the barn next week along with power. I’ve been reading everyone’s comments about tankless vs tanked heaters and from what I gather it seems like a small tank would be the way to go. In the winter we use about 30 gallons every morning to make breakfast and lunch for the dogs. Here’s my question? Do you think the building will always need to be heated? Do you think I should shut the hydrant off when we’re not using it? Would that need some special plumbing so we don’t draw water out of the water heater? Any thoughts or idea would be much appreciated!

 

[Michael Young]

We have been carrying buckets of hot water down from our house to our kennel with 40 sled dogs for ten years. The time has come to bring water to the barn. The building is 12x24 well insulated and will be used on a daily basis. I built this last fall and heated it through the winter with a simple oil heater. We house our thin coated dogs in there at night. It did pretty well. I’m going to bring a frost free hydrant into the barn next week along with power. I’ve been reading everyone’s comments about tankless vs tanked heaters and from what I gather it seems like a small tank would be the way to go. In the winter we use about 30 gallons every morning to make breakfast and lunch for the dogs. Here’s my question? Do you think the building will always need to be heated? Do you think I should shut the hydrant off when we’re not using it? Would that need some special plumbing so we don’t draw water out of the water heater? Any thoughts or idea would be much appreciated!

Install the heater inside an insulated heater hut
Buy a cheapass $30 space heater with built-in thermostat
Install the little space heater inside the enclosure
set the temp to 35-degrees
nothing inside that enclosure will ever freeze
drill a hole and install your hose bibb
I hear dog-sled. I'm thinking COLD
might want to go the extra step and both insulate
and heat tape all of the piping in that heater hut

 

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[Dan Piano]

Install the heater inside an insulated heater hut
Buy a cheapass $30 space heater with built-in thermostat
Install the little space heater inside the enclosure
set the temp to 35-degrees
nothing inside that enclosure will ever freeze
drill a hole and install your hose bibb
I hear dog-sled. I'm thinking COLD
might want to go the extra step and both insulate
and heat tape all of the piping in that heater hut

what do you mean drill a hole in the hose bib?

 

[Michael Young]

what do you mean drill a hole in the hose bib?

Drill a hole in the heater hut so the pipes supplying the hose bibb are also located inside the heated structure. That small heated space will keep your hose bibb from freezing up. The small heater will create ambient heat. the heat tape makes direct contact with the pipes and has a small sensor built-in so it automatically turns on when the temp goes down. The heat tape will likely never fire because the space is already conditioned. But it's a good backup to the cheapass heater.


if you have gas out there, you might also consider a Rinnai tankless. It has small heaters already built-in so it won't freeze unless you lose power. You can solve that problem with a small UPS.

 

[Dan Piano]

Gotcha, thanks for the ideas. I’m using a frost free hydrant. So when you shut the water supply off it drains the stand pipe back below frost.. 6ft under ground.

 

[Michael Young]

Gotcha, thanks for the ideas. I’m using a frost free hydrant. So when you shut the water supply off it drains the stand pipe back below frost.. 6ft under ground.

there is a little weep hole at the bottom of that hydrant. make sure you use some gravel to keep the weep hole from getting clogged up

 

[Dan Piano]

Just wanted to update on this. So I ended up digging down about 4 feet around the frost free hydrant. I slipped some 4 inch PVC around it and filled it with spray foam. I also put a 1 1/2 blue foam board between the hydrant and the outside wall. It was a narrow piece like 8 inches wide and about three feet down. I also piled up a bunch of snow around the outside of the building where the plumbing is. Worked great all winter no issues. Just thought this might help someone else out!