So, the acid test this morning. I deliberately tried to let it freeze, by not running water for over 24 hours. Indeed it did freeze over night, temps near -20c. I plugged in Mike’s device, and within 3 minutes the heat tape would run on the inverter, and 7 minutes later the water flowed, drawing a total of ~45 WH of power! MUch easier than lugging out the genny. I’m going to wire up a dedicated outlet for the heat tape so I can simply throw a switch inside and energize it.
It would probably take ~twice as long if it had been fully frozen throughout it’s length.