Interesting thread. Lots of posts on Monday, and then it went dark until today. I read in Barrons that Heather Zichal of the trade group America Clean Power (can you guess what they promote?) called this "once in a generation cold weather." That's what happens with Millenials writing for publication. A generation is now ten years.
Back to the point. My Pentair VSP pump has freeze protection turned on, and I have a 20kw Kohler standby generator (that started every single time even in 10 degrees, and racked up about 48-50 hours of run time without a hiccup) that kept the pump running. I did discover a weak point, though. Making any changes to settings or speed requires a connection to Pentair servers, so I must have Internet. Electricity is not enough. And apparently Comcast/Xfinity does not have backup power, so when my neighborhood lost power, I had no Internet and no communication to the equipment. I could manually start, stop, and make minor changes to the VSP via the panel, but the Whisperflo pump for water features has no panel. By the time I realized what was going on and got sufficiently bundled to to look, the Whisperflo was frozen. Actually it still is, as my equipment is in an area perpetually shaded in winter. Even though it's 52 degrees now, there is still snow and ice on the ground. I'll just leave the Whisperflo to defrost on its own and then I'll see the damage.
BTW, as someone suggested early in this thread, I was one who lost the backflow preventer for the autofill. Vertical pvc pipe above the T on a faucet snapped, and there was also a nonreplaceable cracked brass part inthe mechanism. Luckily the size of the pvc pip exiting the faucet was just the right size to plug with a wine cork, with zip ties to secure it. I've notified the winery. Maybe they'll send me a case of Zinfandel. New backflow preventer installed. Wallet is lighter than before. Fingers cross on the Whisperflo pump.