DIY Chicken Coop Heaters: Flower-Pot and Light-Bulb Builds Checked Against Fire Guidance

What the DIY plans build

Searches for a homemade chicken coop heater lead to two families of plans.

• Flower-pot heaters. One or more tea lights or candles burn under an upturned clay pot, sometimes with a second pot inside. The pot is meant to store the heat of the flames and give it off slowly.
• Light-bulb heaters. A lamp socket with an incandescent bulb is mounted inside a metal can, a clay pot or a concrete block. The housing warms up and is meant to act as a small radiator.

This page gives no building instructions. It holds both ideas against the fire guidance that exists for candles and for coops. A third idea, a bulb under the waterer, has its own page: DIY heated chicken waterers.

Flower-pot heaters: an open flame next to bedding

A clay pot does not change what a candle is. The U.S. Fire Administration publishes rules for candles in the home, and each of them can be held against a coop.

Two of the sources read for this page describe the same setting. The University of New Hampshire Extension gives the fire risk as its reason for advising against supplemental heat, pointing to combustible bedding and to birds that knock things over. The fire inspection supervisor of the Maine Fire Marshal's Office told the Bangor Daily News that straw is a very effective bedding and highly combustible, so heat sources have to be kept well away from it.

On the heat itself there is nothing to report. No source read for this site states how much warmth a pot over candles gives off, and we state none. A related warning from the extension literature does exist for flames in general: the University of Maryland Extension writes that gas heaters such as propane and kerosene can be a fire hazard in a coop.

Light-bulb heaters: a heat lamp by another name

A bulb that is installed to give heat is a heat lamp, whatever it is housed in. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has a one-page tip sheet for backyard coops, and the home-built bulb heater runs into several of its twelve tips at once.

Two extension services speak to the bulb directly. New Hampshire recommends LED lamps for lighting a coop because they produce less heat, and advises avoiding lamps that generate much heat, since they are a fire hazard. Maryland names heating lamps, bulbs or radiant heaters with automatic shutoffs as the safer option compared with gas heaters and adds that even heating lamps can cause fires if not properly secured.

A home build has no automatic shutoff unless the builder adds one. It also has no housing that was examined by anyone, no stated surface temperature and no instructions. What the rules for a real lamp look like is described under heat lamps in a chicken coop.

What a purpose-built panel has that a home build lacks

If you have decided that the flock should get some heat, the same University of Maine Cooperative Extension professor who says in the Bangor Daily News that chickens do not need a heat source in winter names the alternative for keepers who insist: a wall-mounted coop heater designed with safety in mind, which radiates low-temperature heat so that the chickens can move toward it or away from it.

The right-hand column is not a safety certificate. The panel's own instruction sheet says “household use only”, it needs a fixed outlet, and New Hampshire's objection to heat sources near bedding applies to it as well. A panel is the lower-risk device, not a risk-free one. How the bought heaters compare with each other on these points is the subject of the safest heater for a chicken coop.

DIY that the extension services do list

The sources are full of things to build. None of them burns or plugs in.

1. A wind cover for drafty sides

   Maryland describes hanging a thick plastic sheet or a tarp over problem areas where wind comes in. The vent or opening near the roof stays open, so that stale air and ammonia can escape.

2. A deep, dry floor

   Maryland calls three to four inches of pine shavings or straw good insulation. Building the layer up through the winter is described under the deep litter method.

3. A flat wooden roost

   Maryland advises wood instead of metal or plastic pipe and a flat top such as a two-by-four, so that the birds can cover their feet with their feathers.

4. Sealed holes at bird height

   Maryland suggests spray foam insulation for cracks and holes, because air that blows directly on the birds can chill them.

These four jobs are the core of keeping a chicken coop warm without electricity, and the page on the deep litter method covers the bedding in detail.

Does the coop need a heater at all?

That question comes before the choice between building and buying. The extension services do not agree on it. Maryland writes that adult birds protected from wind and wet weather need no extra heat, with bantams and molting hens as possible exceptions, and New Hampshire advises against heat because of the fire risk; others see a case for it in some flocks. Both sides are set out under do chickens need heat in the winter.

Bottom line

A flower-pot heater fails the plainest candle rules, and a bulb in a can fails the NFPA tip sheet for coops on mounting, cover, rating and wiring. Neither comes with a figure for the heat it gives. Put the weekend into wind protection, bedding and the roost. If heat is still wanted afterward, use a device that was built and documented for the purpose, on a fixed outlet, and read the twelve NFPA tips under chicken coop fire safety first. The overview of all heater types is on the chicken coop heater home page.