A good friend is lending me his vertical electric releaser with an external pump - it's the D&G one... I'm going to start working on setting it up tomorrow.

I've been using a homemade mechanical releaser but it was damaged in the offseason and even when it was working, it was pretty high maintenance.

Keeping the pump from freezing
I don't have a pump house, and I definitely don't want the pump to freeze... so I was thinking I'd build a little insulated box for the pump - what works best?

I was thinking maybe get some sheets of that styrofoam insulation material, cut them into a rectangular shape, and build a box out of it? drill some holes to run the pipes in and out of it?

I know some have said to have a light bulb in there to keep it warm ... would a light bulb (or two?) really help keep it warm enough on one of those 5-10 degree nights, or should I use a ceramic space heater? (I definitely don't want to freeze this thing and break the pump!) - maybe I should plumb it together with union fittings that I can easily dismantle and bring the pump in if there's going to be an extended freeze?)

Is an ice screen in the manifold an a light bulb or two (or a ceramic heater) in an a box of thick insulation enough to avoid damaging the pump?

Wiring the pump up
The pump will run on 110v or 220v - it says on the side that it draws 14.8 Amps when on 115v (it's a heck of a pump)... I have a 20 amp breaker so I'll double check that my extension cord is good enough to the area I'm running it (my mainline ends less than 100 feet from my garage where my pumps etc are)

Am I an idiot in thinking I can get by with a 100ft beefy extension cord for the pump? I don't have easy access to 220v on the outside of my house to run 220 to it - on 220 it draws far fewer amps (4.8 I think it says)

I think I need to wire from the power -> float switch -> pump, right? (I'll look up wiring diagrams to make sure I get it right)

Avoiding cavitation
He mentioned that he thought having the releaser up higher than the pump by a significant amount was key to give it enough head to avoid it cavitating and going nuts - he said it'd work fine most of the time but every once in a while it would cavitate and not work which is what led him to retire it and switch to a mechanical setup. He said that he talked to someone with a similar setup and they said that raising their releaser up a bit from the pump helped avoid this issue.

I have plenty of vertical drop to work with - I could easily get a 5 foot drop from the bottom of the releaser to the pump, does this sound like a good idea?