After a couple years in action, the watering system on the Mustang Chicken Coupe has revealed itself to be a flawed design. The biggest problem lies with the water pressure going to the drinker cups. These drinker cups were designed to be used with an extremely low pressure, such as that would come from a gravity feed bucket system. The Toyota Chicken Truck and the S10 Ranger Chicken Coupe both utilize the updated version of the watering system that will be incorporated on the Mustang Chicken Coupe. This setup uses a bucket with a float valve, fed from the water line through a 25 psi pressure regulator, which then gravity feeds from an output down to the drinker cups. The float valve is better able to take the higher pressure compared to the drinker cups, which time and again proved themselves unable to hold up.
One of the first things I had to do was cut the water line where it feeds into the car, through the driver's side floor. I left enough 1/2" PVC exposed from the elbow to connect to with the new apparatus. Fittings will adapt the 1/2" PVC to the male thread garden hose regulator, which in turn accepts the male end of a regular garden hose. Once that was done, I moved over to getting the bucket tank/reservoir set up. Since the PVC glue I had dried up, I decided to work on the low-pressure side of the system first. This involved adding another conduit pipe alongside the pipe that is currently used as a roosting post. A couple conduit brackets and screws secured this piece of conduit in place so I have somewhere to set the bucket upon. On the bucket, I had to drill a hole to secure the float valve in place. Once that was done, I drilled another hole in the bottom of the bucket, where I screwed a 1/2" male thread to female slip adapter. Teflon tape helped seal the threads. From here I added some small pieces of pipe, used a 90-degree conduit elbow and some more standard elbows and lengths of pipe. The low-pressure output line going from the bucket to the old water system runs across the driver's door opening, about a foot off the floor, to connect to the old system. Since this is low pressure, no glue is needed here. The bucket was situated on the two conduits with the PVC pipes connected. Next I cut the lengths of pipe that would be used for the high pressure side of the water system, going through the floor to where the regulator will be connected to it. Even though I still need to glue all this pipe together, I ran everything to run parallel to the low pressure lines, so once everything is glued together, I can secure the two lengths of pipe to one another for rigidity. The driver's door was never intended to be opened anyway so once everything is online, the door will be shut and kept shut, only opening for cleaning of the coop. With the Mustang Chicken Coupe's watering system updated, I can move forward with the construction of the Minivan Chicken Coop, post haste, in order to get the whole thing online alongside the other car coops, and work on dismantling one of the old commercially made chicken tractors. The structure is very weak and falling apart and has already been stripped down due to rot already. It's time for this thing to be retired to help clean up the chicken yard. The other chicken tractor doesn't have much longer to go before it too degrades enough to warrant dismantling and disposal. Once this happens all that will be in the yard are car coops and the old firewood shed turned coop, which too, will most likely be dismantled.
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