As usual I try to get a load of gravel every week, sometimes two times a week. I'm still trying to finish covering the chicken yard in its entirety before moving on to another spot on the premises. I continued to cover the ground along the fence line to the back, covering the area where the old duck coop/chicken tractor was at. I covered the ground all the way to the north fence where the other chicken coops are staged. After running out of gravel and getting a fair amount of area covered, it was time to move on to another small addition for the animals.
Another thing that I needed to do was add heaters to a couple of structures. One of the structures was the Toyota Chicken Truck. I had a heater in there already but despite it having thermostat control the unit would time out after 12 hours. This was no good, I can't always keep going back out there to reset the damned thing. At the same time I had made plans to further automate the chicken yard by putting a dusk/dawn module on the power line feeding the chicken yard so everything would come on at dusk, lights in the coops, fence lights and heaters. Because of this, I would be able to get away with the simple personal heaters that one would use at their office desk or similar places. These heaters are 250w rated and are plenty able to heat up the cab of any of the coops to the point where the birds will probably come out of those bastards if the temps aren't too low. I got two heaters because besides the Toyota I still had to put a heater in the dog house on the porch. I had a thermostatically controlled heater in it too but it would fault out after so long so I said screw it I'll put one of these simple heaters in there as well. I started off with the Toyota first. I had to make a shelf for the heater in much the same way I did for the S10 Ranger Chicken Coop. Instead of welding the shelf in place I cut a large enough piece of sheet metal that I was able to fold up a shelf with tabs on the top and bottom in order to secure the shelf in place on the back of the cab with self tapping screws. Just like with the S10 Chicken Coop when I mounted the heater to the shelf I used zip ties to hold the unit to the top of the shelf so it can't be knocked down by an overzealous chicken. I also routed the cable around the top of the roosting post, keeping the cable tied together with enough cable plug to reach the outlet. With the heater fully installed in the Toyota Chicken Truck I moved on to the dog house. I had to remove most of the shit that was stuffed in there for cushioning for the dog when the temps dropped. I stuck with a couple of pillows, leaving the other shit out so after washing, the blankets and dog bed would serve as spare bedding when the other shit gets too dirty. Another reason I went with these heaters was because the dog house doesn't have any kind of door or covering to trap the heat. The old thermostatically controlled heater would shut off pretty fast when there was a door covering in place but would stay on without it. Since that heater stayed on it wouldn't matter that I'm using these simple 250w heaters. I went ahead and made a shelf the same way as I did with the chicken coops. Since the dog house was plastic I was able to get away with regular screws to hold the shelf in place. I did drill starter holes before putting the screws in place. With the screws in place and the shelf secured, I was ready for the heater. Just like with the chicken coops I used zip ties to secure the heater in place on the shelf. This time I took the power cable and routed the bundled cable inside the shelf, leaving enough cable to reach the outlet. With that, the dog house has its heater set up. Even though the dog house has a heater, I still will have to get power to the dog house. It still has the length of power cable secured from when the dog house was in the back of the yard and plugged up to the outside outlet. My plan is to find the closest outlet, most likely in the kitchen, and remove it in order to drill a hole through the outside siding then add a short length of cable from the outlet through the hole to the outside. From here I'll install an outside outlet box to take the cable and from here I can be able to plug up the dog house in order for it to get power. I might even add a dusk/dawn module in order to turn the unit on at night like with the chicken yard so the heater isn't just always on, only when its needed, which obviously would be at night.
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