Winter bowls

[KimitsuKouseki]

So last winter I had heated water bottles, they worked great exept they were rly expensive to buy and in less then a year the nipple leaks on all of them.
Since then, I've expanded and even if I bought new nipples for the bottles, I'd still need to buy 6 more to cover the remaining cages. That's a lot of money I dont have right now.
So for this winter everyone will have bowls, issue with that is my rabbits tend to use them as litters or toys and they'll freeze over.
I'm curently working on some insulated holders to fix those issues. On the pictures I only placed the pieces in position, they arent screwed together yet. The larger back panel will have holes with butterfly screws to allow me to fix it to the sides of the cages anywhere I need it to be. The bowls are pipe covers wich is cheap, durable and will resist freezing well. Also, unless there's babies, I can put it high enough that the rabbits shouldn't use them as litters as easilly. Finally, coupled with warm warmer twice a day, the insulation should provide non-frozen water for a good period of time. The water will freeze on the surface faster, but the bunnies can break that.
What do you think?

 

[Ozarkansas]

It looks like it will probably work.
What are the measurements? Because in the picture it looks like it will take a lot of cage space. But, that could just be me because not being able to tell how big something is in a picture

 

[KimitsuKouseki]

It looks like it will probably work.
What are the measurements? Because in the picture it looks like it will take a lot of cage space. But, that could just be me because not being able to tell how big something is in a picture

It's not your imagination. This one is big, the bowl is 4 inch wide so with the insulation and frame it's 7inch ish wide. Most my cages can spare the space for em. For the ones that cant I'll be making smaller ones with smaller bowls. They'll still be pretty big mind you so my smallest cages will get the remaining working heated bottles for now. Once I've sorted my bunnies some more those small cages will be replaced with 2 medium ones so the smaller bowl will work for them then (or I can buy the new nipples and those 3 small cages can still use those)

 

[alforddm]

These may not work as well as your hoping... I'm thinking that the water is going to freeze just as quickly because the water is still exposed to air and will drop temps just as quickly. I could very well wrong though. It would be an easy thing to test. Try putting a bowl in the freezer without the insulating box and check it every so often to see how long it takes to freeze. Then try again with the box. If the box does indeed take longer to freeze then your golden. Just no sense in making more if they don't work as planed.

 

[KimitsuKouseki]

I know how the bowls normally freeze from last winter. They'll freezy all around from the walls and the top leaving a pocket of water in the middle. The bunnies would acess it by breaking the ice but since the ice was coming from the walls too, soon they'd end up with just ice cause of it. I know these will freeze too, especially from the top, but the insulation should reduce the walls freezing leaving most of the ice coming from the top. I'll still give warm water twice a day, but my guess is with warm water they should have at least a couple hours extra before the bowl completly freezes.

The point is to reduce freezing as a bonus, main goal being to keep the bowls in place so they dont just lose all their water outright from spilling.

 

[alforddm]

I know how the bowls normally freeze from last winter. They'll freezy all around from the walls and the top leaving a pocket of water in the middle. The bunnies would acess it by breaking the ice but since the ice was coming from the walls too, soon they'd end up with just ice cause of it. I know these will freeze too, especially from the top, but the insulation should reduce the walls freezing leaving most of the ice coming from the top. I'll still give warm water twice a day, but my guess is with warm water they should have at least a couple hours extra before the bowl completly freezes.

The point is to reduce freezing as a bonus, main goal being to keep the bowls in place so they dont just lose all their water outright from spilling.

That makes sense. Thank you for explaining your reasoning.

 

[Shea]

Did you end up using this design? I am thinking of trying something similar only with maybe leaving room for something like this https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... SY400_.jpg under the bowl. It would just need to keep the bowls from freezing solid if im not home on my lunch break.
*FYI dollar tree soup mugs and bowls work great as water crocks!

 

[KimitsuKouseki]

I am using it right now. At -10celcius there it still a pocket of water under the ice after 12h and, this, the rabbits can reach by breaking the ice. At lower then that it freezes over as expected though. There is 1 major flaw, but I found a way to help it out. Basically what happens is that when I pour the water, some times I spill some on the side and then that freezes between the bowl and holder gluing the bowl to it. When I can take out the bowl I can easilly break the ice by smashing it on a rock, but when it's stuck in there it's much harder to deal with. I have to use a smaller rock to break it by hand and thats not easy especially in some of the cages where theres less room. I took off the holders and tawed them inside using running hot water until I could take the bowls out. I found that by leaving a small rock under the bowl, if I do spill water, it falls to the bottom and the bowl has less chance of getting stuck. There's a couple I need to widen the hole in the wood though cause they get stuck too fast just cause they are too tight.
So overall I'm happy with the design, but it requires some tweaking. Adding heat pads would most likelly be a tweak that'd make it work even better too.

 

[Shea]

Thanks for the feedback its good to know the design works. I did find some Fortex 1qt for cheap that I want to try first but I do forsee making at least one of these for the growouts.