Heating failure in farrowing rooms on a December night

Farrowing room with 24 sows and roughly 240 newborn piglets (litters at 7-12 days). Piglets at that age are extremely sensitive to cold: below 28-30 °C in the resting area they fall into hypothermia fast, and crushing mortality spikes as they huddle to the mother seeking warmth.

The room is heated by individual electric radiant plates per litter. December 4 at 04:30, with -3 °C outside. The main differential breaker for the heating zone trips: all 24 plates lose power at once.

Without an alarm, the situation would be discovered at the 06:30 round — 2 hours later, with indoor temperature plummeting and piglets already hypothermic.

Aviot monitors per-room temperature (industrial NTC probes) and the heating panel contacts. Configuration:

• Pre-warn if temperature drops 1 °C below setpoint for 5 minutes.
• Immediate critical alarm if the heating panel contacts report a trip or phase loss.
• Role separation: on-call maintenance tech and veterinarian (health decisions).

At 04:30:18 Aviot caught the breaker trip. Call to the maintenance tech (who lives on the farm). Tech in the room at 04:35.

Meanwhile Aviot pushed alerts to the vet and the manager. Temperature had already fallen from 28 °C to 26 °C, but thermal inertia bought time.

The tech identified the tripped breaker and reset it in steps. Probable cause (confirmed next day with the utility): spike from adjacent heating start-up. Heating back online at 04:42.

Total time without heating: 12 minutes. Minimum temperature reached: 25.4 °C. Recovery to 28 °C: 22 minutes.

Zero mortality. Without Aviot, the incident would have lasted 2 hours (4:30 → 6:30) with temperature potentially dropping below 20 °C in piglet zones — a scenario expected to produce 60-100 losses in a room of that size.

The history was handed to the electrical co-op tech as evidence for a supply-quality claim, and is part of the welfare records required by the integrator.