This morning while it was still freezing, dashed out in my jammies and robe to test the Thermo Cube thermostatic outlet. I had made a trip into town last night to exchange the wobbly junky walmart heater for a name brand. Plugged it in, nothing happens. Come inside to test the heater inside, works fine.   

Try it again out at the pumphouse; unplugged the extension and tried the cube and heater combo out there. Not only didn't work, the connection is so tight on these things, it broke off the prong from my heavy duty extension cord, rendering it useless.

So now I'm panicking, because now there's no heat out there. Couldn't get the rig close enough to help position power close enough. Finally added a shorter extension cord from the house, was able to get enough distance and keep some heat out there. Glad the other cord on hand was a 40', I debated on what length to get.

Looked up reviews online, on Tractor Supply site they have 62 reviews, and 6 of them are 'just doesn't work'. So apparently the company is fine with shipping stuff that maybe 10% of the plugs don't actually work, but it seems like if a store has one bad plug, they have a batch of them. Couple guys report exchanging and trying multiple ones, all failed. If there was ever a product that needs testing at the factory, this one is it.

Home Depot of course has an alternate brand, with 100 they can ship, but not a one actually in a local store in the winter. Not that I have time to make a long buying trip today.

I guess I'm back to the drain-everything plan instead of keeping some heat going in house and pumphouse, though I'm not sure there won't be water trapped if I do that. Hope the guy coming tomorrow morning is knowledgeable and helpful.

Well, back to packing, and getting ready for the online Burns Night at noon here.