INVENTION & CUSTOMISATION:
...and how, if you can't find the things you need, all you have to do is be inventive.
Our yard had just been poured.
Thank you John so much for all this hard work xxx
John's philosophy to equipment is: if it doesn't exist, design it and make it yourself or customise something that is available to suit your needs. Of course it helps that John is skilled this way and has on many occasions 'invented' special devices for Tom & Henry and their living space, and things that make my life easier too.
I decided to add some of John's work to the blog so if you have needs that aren't readily met by available equipment, you can follow John's patterns and ideas and make them yourself. The cold-weather devices and outdoor haybars are genius.
Even the stable grilles didn't meet John's high standards, and needed customising.
John installed the grilles between Tom & Henry's stables with a galvanised edge as you can see from the photo
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Electric fences: I have a perimeter of electric wire on the top rail of fencing, as you can see from the photo, John has attached it to the facing rail. At several points on the perimeter and the inside fences John has mounted what I call Daleks:
..... they are handy plastic fixtures, shaped like little villains from Dr Who, for wire so the interior of the land can be split up into smaller paddocks, or 'runways' from one field to another where appropriate. At the moment too, we have electric fencing protecting the year-old hedgerow we have had planted along all the fences, to stop unofficial horticultural prunings by horses!!
Here John is fixing electric fence 'points' onto the rails, this way we can be very flexible with where the fence goes and it's all easy and quick because John has already attached all the fix-points I need. We even have a little coral designed for injured horses...IE Henry, so we have a 'bubble' of field into the field for recovery time.
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John has made a protective 'verge' around the
hedgerow, otherwise all the young trees would
get eaten!
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Currently, we have just come out of a very cold snap in Essex, 2 weeks of freezing temperatures and snow which plays havoc on anything that contains water. Water is probably the only natural substance that expands when it freezes, this can make life very difficult when water is essential to animals....and you keep 2 rather large outdoor ones (Tom & Henry).
Water drinkers freeze indoors and out, taps don't work either, and you have to boil your feed-room kettles to get anything to work!
John wrapped seed-tray heated wire around the water pipes and tap. Which means at minus 10 my tap still worked.
THE SCIENCE PART: SAFETY by John Brown
Bacteria can grow in warm water pipes especially if it does
not flow. Only heat water pipes that you use regularly in winter months, AND FIT A THERMOSTAT, SO THEY ONLY HEAT THE PIPE WHEN NEEDED.
All electrical connections must be inside or in fully
weather proof electrical boxes designed for the job. There are plenty of
suitable boxes designed to take exterior extension leads. Garden and pond
centres usually have a good selection.
THE SCIENCE PART: INSTALLATION by John Brown
Follow the soil heating cable installation instructions
except wrap the cable round the water pipe instead of bury it in the
soil. Use a plug in thermostat so the pipe is only heated when the
temperature drops below 1 or 2 degrees C. The temperature settings need
monitoring initially because it is likely the thermostat is in a different
position to the tap and may need tweaking to get right.
I buy a tougher looking soil heating cable with moulded
electrical connections. This is so no water can get to the electrics and
it will survive being bent round the pipes. Be sure to wrap right
up to and round the tap as that is likely to be one of the first bits to
freeze. I found even with the shortest 2m cable I had enough heating
element to start in the middle go down to the ground, back up and round the tap
and back down again. I put normal water pipe lagging over the top all
held on with plastic cable ties. I have mainly blue plastic water pipes
with a bit of copper, some flexible hoses and brass taps. The cables
works with all of those. It does not get hot enough to cause any issues.
Yard tap:
A close-up of the heated cable around the tap.
As you would expect from John, he has added hanging points to the tap-house for a bucket brush, some soap and a ragwort fork.
John has also replaced the drinkers with much wider and deeper ones, inside and out, increasing the capacity of the bowl and giving longer life to a fast freezing surface area.
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Coco |
Lemmy, chasing Coco.
John mounted some galvanised bucket brackets to the outside of the yard. the idea is to offer unfrozen water to the boys in their yard just in case their drinkers are frozen. I can bring water from the house or fill them from my tap. Funny thing is, the boys LOVE these new devices, and drink from them a lot, and i keep having to fill them up......note to self: buy BLACK buckets!!
Haybars: I wanted haybars in my yard, but haybars are only available mounted into a corner, which is fine in their stables, but I needed to have mine mounted to a flat fence. John customised the haybar to fit to the fence. They are mounted firstly onto a board and John has attached galvanised hooks to the back board so I can move them around and reposition, they hook to the top and lower rail of the yard fence. This also means I can empty them easily by taking them off the fence and tipping them upside down.
See this link to John's 'ideas' blog for more detailed instructions:
http://www.discoverthat.co.uk/ideas/
When Tom & Henry demonstrated they wanted hay available in their yard, John decided to customise haybars, well we couldn't let them eat hay out of the bin, they're pure bred Trakehners!!!
John has used marine grade wood to survive for years...hopefully. He cut the top rounded edge to 'bend' the haybar almost in half and fixed it to the back board with galvanised large washers: see photo below.
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Tom enjoying his haylage.
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Simple ideas, but very helpful. And when you don't have much time every little cunning device lends a hand.
