Works but poorly designed "adjustable" system. Had to modify.

This was a gift for my grandson who does lapidary as a hobby. He wanted something to warm the water pumping over his polish wheels and not freeze his hands while polishing stones. This installed easily and works to warm the water fairly quickly.

This product did NOT have any insulation. Is also did NOT fit on the 55 gal drum. I ended up returning it. Never once contacted by seller, or offered a replacement. My guess is they don't even have this unit pictured on the sales page.

This thing is HOT! At nearly 800W it pulls a serious amount of power and heats up quickly, literally within seconds it's hot to the touch. I don't know how many amps it is pulling but it has blown the 15 amp fuse on our panel a few times when I wasn't paying attention to what other items were running on the same circuit. Even though it heats up quickly it's not very efficient because of the lack of insulation. I notice that a lot of heat is lost to the air around the bucket. It does a much better job with some insulating material wrapped around the bucket after you've placed this on. Just make sure that whatever you use is able to tolerate the amount of heat this thing puts out. Once I wrapped a tarp around the outside of the bucket over the top of the pail heater the contents heat up quickly and stay at a fairly constant temp with the built in thermostat. One other issue is the smell...it smells strongly of machine oil and solvents from the silicone. Over time the smell has lessened but initially I was surprised by the amount of chemical odor when I first turned it on and every time I plug it in.

Too tight and difficult to get around a bucket. We wanted this for warming up honey and it's near impossible to get around a bucket without an extender and heats too slowly.