Submersible well pump recs please

[etpm]

There are certainly lotsa folks on this site who are on a well. I am. For a little over 20 years, when I had the well drilled. Now I am looking to replace my pump. Just out of caution because 20 odd years seems like a long time to me and I don't want an emergency well pump replacement.
My well will provide 15 GPM constantly. At about 16 GPM it will start to suck air. I will, rarely, over pump the well. But I haven't done that for at least 8 years. I do though pump very close to 15 GPM fairly regularly.
The pump currently down the 62 foot deep hole is a Grundfos 3 wire pump. It has been doing its job perfectly for the twenty some years since it was installed. I am thinking about once again having a Grundfos. However, I do not want a two wire pump and I don't want electronics down the hole. I am not sure if Grundfos offers a 3/4 22 GPM pump without the soft start feature. Even though I realize electronics can be very robust and last far longer than mechanical components I don't like the idea of them being incorporated into the pump itself. Right now my pump controller is mounted topside and if it fails I can service it. I don't have to replace the pump because electronics failed. And I don't have to replace electronics if the pump fails.
So, any suggestions for pump brands? I am not that concerned about price if the pump lasts 20 or 30 years. 200 bucks extra over 20 years is only 10 bucks a year.
Thanks,
Eric

 

[lman]

I've got a Red Jacket 1hp pump in my well. It's been there 28 years. I haven't had any problems yet.

 

[LittleBill21]

goulds pump are the gold standard here. nothing to see 40 years out of them

 

[Midniteoyl]

Shoot, I have a cheapo Myers Rustler 1/2" 2-wire that is still running after 21+ yrs. It's even ran for who-knows-how-long once with a split pipe that dumped water back into the well to the point the cold water out of the tap was ~80* before it was caught.

 

[etpm]

Shoot, I have a cheapo Myers Rustler 1/2" 2-wire that is still running after 21+ yrs. It's even ran for who-knows-how-long once with a split pipe that dumped water back into the well to the point the cold water out of the tap was ~80* before it was caught.

Yeah, my pump, a couple winters ago, created a huge pond from a broken pipe. It must have run 18 hours straight. If I didn't have a backhoe to dig out all the many yards of mud and to then dig another hole for all the water from the saturated ground to drain into while I fixed the break I don't know how many more hours it would have taken me to repair the break. But I think continuous running isn't really a problem. It's all the starts and stops.
Eric

 

[wheelbuilder]

I used to work for a water well driller and pump installer (quite a while back). I was always told the average life of a pump was 12 years. My personal experience is that if you don't have good water flow or you have poor quality water, you probably won't get close to that number. If you have good flow and reasonable quality water, you may double that. (My previous pump was 32 years old, my Dad had one that made it to 40. On the other hand, my mother in law had a low flowing well and was lucky to get 5 years)
I've had good life from both Meyers and Goulds pumps. Grundfos was the most expensive brand we sold, and supposedly the best.

 

[Boss 302]

Those are certainly good names, what I look for mostly whenever I am pump shopping is something with a Franklin Electric motor. We have installed quite a few and they just seem to last for many years.

 

[jyoutz]

There are certainly lotsa folks on this site who are on a well. I am. For a little over 20 years, when I had the well drilled. Now I am looking to replace my pump. Just out of caution because 20 odd years seems like a long time to me and I don't want an emergency well pump replacement.
My well will provide 15 GPM constantly. At about 16 GPM it will start to suck air. I will, rarely, over pump the well. But I haven't done that for at least 8 years. I do though pump very close to 15 GPM fairly regularly.
The pump currently down the 62 foot deep hole is a Grundfos 3 wire pump. It has been doing its job perfectly for the twenty some years since it was installed. I am thinking about once again having a Grundfos. However, I do not want a two wire pump and I don't want electronics down the hole. I am not sure if Grundfos offers a 3/4 22 GPM pump without the soft start feature. Even though I realize electronics can be very robust and last far longer than mechanical components I don't like the idea of them being incorporated into the pump itself. Right now my pump controller is mounted topside and if it fails I can service it. I don't have to replace the pump because electronics failed. And I don't have to replace electronics if the pump fails.
So, any suggestions for pump brands? I am not that concerned about price if the pump lasts 20 or 30 years. 200 bucks extra over 20 years is only 10 bucks a year.
Thanks,
Eric

I don’t know the brand of my pump. My well pump is sitting at 680’. It’s a 1.5 hp, pumping 10 gpm. We put check valves on the pipe every 40’ so the pipe is charged at all times. One of the key components of my system that I recommend is a variable speed controller. This allows the pump to turn slowly when there isn’t much demand, like a single sink faucet, or faster as demand increases such as lawn sprinklers. My well service guy told me this greatly reduces wear on the pump and reduces energy use.

 

[Roadworthy]

A variable speed controller is a frequency varying switching power supply. The motor in the well is generally a three phase and quite smooth. The down side is the price of that controller. They are not readily repairable and I know of no source for rebuilt controllers. Since my old pump was still working well after twenty seven years I went with the standard single phase motor and controller again. I can replace my whole controller for about $300 to $350 for a Franklin. A similar switching power supply type controller could run ten times that. I doubt I'll live long enough to see another failure - other than the occasional capacitor swap in my controller.

 

[DieselBound]

I seem to recall that I dropped a Franklin pump into my well: I picked it up off of Craigslist for something like $100 (or maybe $150?). That was 8+ years ago. 1/2 hp 10gpm. Shallow well, so pulling a pump ain't a big deal for me.

Pump cycling is the biggest killer (well, there's lightening issues, but that's not a concern for me, here): I am not aware that VFD pumps have any special magic to counter torture from excessive cycling. Large pressure tanks are the way to reduce cycling (there's also the stop-cycle valve, though I am not familiar enough with those to comment on other than I'd contemplated one [couldn't justify because my water use is pretty low- my pump MAY run a total of 10 minutes per day, TOTAL).

I think I ran my pump for 24 hrs non-stop when I was finalizing the cleanout of my well (rehabing). Once spun up they can pretty much run forever: heat is the killer, and once water is flowing and continues to flow the pumps run cool.