We are considering putting out an automatic waterer on one of our places. We have rural water available, but it must be fully automatic and reliable because it is over 4 hours away. Assuming it can be connected to a hose bib and it does not have to be frost free, What are the best options?

These are pretty good.

http://www.tractorsupply.com/livestock/l...t-valve-2170330

I wasn't sure if those were reliable enough to trust, I would hate to pay a water bill for the water running for a few weeks.

These work GREAT, but you have to make a home-made wire mesh cage on the bootom to keep the coons from eating the plastic float. We have 4 of these at our place and they work great.

I would get the plastic version of it rather than the metal one. I have used these for over 20 yrs now. Get you washer/screen like you use for you washing machine to put in the line coming into the float. The openings are not the large and can clog if you water is not very clean or got sand in it. The plastic ones do better in freezing weather than the metal and if you water has a lot of mineral in it they will out last the metal casing over time. Like posted above protect the float with a cover of a board or wire cage. They are water hose thread for the most part so you will need a brass adapter to go from water hose to pipe threads if you use them. They are not a large volume capacity if you are watering lots of cattle though.

So it's best to connect with CPVC pipe? What size of trough do you suggest. We will probably just have it out from early summer thru season and take it out for winter. Are the Rubbermaid troughs OK?? We normally get enough rain from fall thru spring.

Thanks!

The plastic rubbermaid troughs are what we have on 2 of our water systems and they are just fine. The black CPVC pipe is the best to use but you could even use a garden hose. Hope that helps.

Here is the way we are set up.

They are all reliable. What you have to watch out for is the help you get from all the animals that use it. Think about everything coons, deer and what ever else is there can do to screw it up and fix it that way. And have it turned way down so that when they do screw it up you don't have a $500 water bill.

You can also put a cheap inline timer on it with a valve that only cuts it on for so long every day to fill the troughs.

DCS,
Is the wire mesh an escape ramp for small critters?

Thanks for all the info fellas!

And don;t forget all of those pesky sand frac miners! Got a huge bill and voila! The little pesky pedros were coming in and filling up their trailer tanks to use while working on their site. I had a fun day of ground Pedroskeet shooting!