"Vacuum-Powered" Portable Water Tank Always Stays Full

"Vacuum-Powered" Portable Water Tank Always Stays Full LIVESTOCK Feeding Equipment 25-4-42 "My trailer-mounted 500-gal. water tank uses a simple vacuum design that's trouble free. I made it from a 550-gal. fuel tank so it didn't cost much to build," says Eldon Marks, Amboy, Minn. Marks uses the tank to water a cow-calf herd on pasture. The tank rides inside a wooden saddle mounted on a 2-wheeled trailer. Marks used 4-in. channel iron to make the trailer frame and welded auto wheel hubs onto the frame. A water trough is welded to the frame on back. A garden hose is used to fill the tank from the top. A discharge pipe runs out of the back of the tank into the trough. Marks says the tank works on the same vacuum principle used by old chicken fountains. As the animals drink they lower the water level in the trough, which causes the discharge pipe to suck air into the tank, releasing more water down the pipe. "The incoming air causes the water to gurgle and also keeps it fresh," says Marks. "It keeps water from freezing as rapidly. It'll work in temperatures down to 20 degrees above zero without freezing up, as long as I park the trailer so the discharge pipe faces toward the sun." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Eldon Marks, 10696 513th Ave., Amboy, Minn. 56010 (ph 507 674-3828).

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