Well,
, our very first Franklin triseal 1 hp pump failed after just over 2 years in service at our house. It cost 14,500 ฿. It was 40 meters down, with a 34 meter effective water depth. I pulled it, and took it to our Franklin dealer in Rattanaburi. They sent it off to the distributor (I presume), who after about a week sent it back saying it would cost more to repair it than buy a new one. So I did an autopsy, a complete tear-down to see what happened. The pump section (which has 7 stages) was OK. It had a little fine silt inside, but worked ok. The motor was full of water, which means the 'triseal' had failed. We have three wells in service here with Franklin pumps of various sizes, one at home and two at the farm, and this is the only one that has failed (so far). It turns out that we have a 110mm PWA water line running in the street near our house, so while the pump was down, I connected to that as backup. I calculated that pumping our own water costs about 1/10th what PWA charges, so we prefer to irrigate our landscaping with well water. The charges are progressive (go up per cubic meter as your volume increases) so using a lot gets expensive. My naive conclusion is that this is a bit of a difficult pump situation, with some fine silt in the water, and we may wind up having short pump lives. So I'm weighing the total cost/benefits, and this time will give a cheap Nash ¾ hp pump from Do Home a try (3,150฿). If I have to replace every 2-3 years, that pencils out better than Franklin. Do Home was stand up about warranty service on a Longwell 14" steel chop saw that failed at 9 months, so we'll see. Our replacement Nash pump has a 2 year warranty. Interestingly, it notes a maximum actual water depth of 30 meters, presumably to limit the static water pressure on the motor seals (at 30m, the pressure is 2.93 bar or about 43psi). I complied with that by moving my pump up a bit in the well. I presume Nash is Chinese-made, although Franklin may be too
. I've tried talking to Franklin in USA with no success--they don't really want to talk to customers directly. I did notice that USA Franklin dealers can register and get 5 year warranties on the Triseal pumps, but no such thing in Thailand. Splitting my year between a USA farm and Isaan, I am finding that warranties mean less here. I don't much like the design of the Franklin controller unit. It has a 'clever' interlock system to prevent the unit from being open and working, and that makes troubleshooting it difficult. The Nash unit is simpler, with easy access lid.The Franklin uses a relay to disconnect the 'start' capacitor once up to speed, while the Nash does not.