I purchased two of the FB -15R's from TSC. I used both of them in the month of January last year and they worked as described. Store them for the summer. Went to use them again this January and neither one would work. I ended up calling Farm Innovators customer service, they walked me through a process to reset the thermostat which did not work. The lady I spoke to was very rude and hung up on me in the middle of our conversation. I would not recommend this bucket because of poor design, and even worse customer service.

Bought two of these to replace the Blue plastic heated buckets that last maybe a season before cracking. You would think that if you were designing a heated bucket, you would figure out that it is going to be used in the winter and make it out of a material that wouldn't crack when it gets cold (but I digress). I thought that the rubber design would be better. Well maybe it is, but for a very poor design, we will never know how long it would have lasted. There are three problems. 1) The attachment of the cord is sub-par. As shown in the picture there is no strain relief on the cord where the main outer insulation is present. I'm not sure how that got past the UL inspectors. 2) The plastic cord protector won’t deter a horse from biting the cable any more than the plastic wire insulation would. The one thing that the blue buckets had going for them was the cord, how it is connected and the metal spring wrapped around it. 3) AND THIS IS A DEAL BREAKER; The heating element at the bottom of the bucket is not sealed, and water and crud get in around and behind it (see pic #2). Once there, there is no way to clean it out. Horses are not the cleanest animals when it comes to their food and drink (hence you chew like a horse:-). So all of the stuff that they drop into the buck goes to the bottom, past the heating element with no seal, an stays there for the rest of eternity. Or in our case until you can't stand the smell of the bucket any longer no matter how much you try to clean it. I just brought these out to see if there is any way to fix these. As I looked at them, they both have water from last winter still inside the the heating element. Not behind it, but inside it! I can’t in all good conscience, let my horses drink from these. So once again I’m on the hunt for more heated buckets. I really wish that the folks that design these buckets actually had horses and lived in a cold climate. Maybe then, a heated stall bucket that works and lasts would be designed