my solution may not be for everyone, but after many years of changing things around, this is what I have found works best on my dock...
As the posters before me have said, bubblers do very little when the ice is breaking up and large sheets of ice are being blown into your dock! However this time of year it is important to keep the water from freezing around cribs and pilings. Especially with the extremely low lake level, if the ice freezes solid around dock pilings and the lake level begins to rise... the ice will try and lift the pilings along with the water level...
I use a combination of a timer and thermostat (and living pretty much year-round on the island I can adjust as needed). The timer is tied to the outlet, the thermostat next, then the ice-eater plugged into that. This way the bubbler will only activate during the time periods I've selected and ONLY if the temperature hits 30F (and agree with the previous posts that a few sporadic times are better than an extended time). This combination keeps my power bills lower. The "time on" schedule is only during the daytime, my thinking is that it won't freeze up too much overnight, the temps are warmer during the day and if there is sun, it all helps to break up anything.
So far so good, now we just need some ice!!! -PIG
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