While im all for chinese cheapness, you do get what you pay for. A lot of stuff from China is good but i went through like 3 of those 12V DC chinese pumps before i just gave up and got a March pump on sale.
Yes i could buy 8 of those pumps for the price of 1 march pump, but one ruined brew day because my pump decides to **** itself is worth the extra $ sometimes
your opinion, (and your entitled to it) my experience has been completely different
I think that has more to do with how you treat and use them and what you expect of them... I have purchased 7 of the dc pumps (because I upgraded from 12 to 24v pumps) and all but the one I dropped and broke are still working fine 2 years and about 53 brews later....
If you really went through 3 of them, I would have to say you were either doing something wrong or you were not powering them right... Did they seize up? thats a good indication your false bottom system wasnt working well and grain was getting through or plugging your line to the pump. this is why I have the three layers of filtering in my mashtun... the dc pumps are small and cant pump solids. I also believe using a ballvalve to restrict flow can shorten thier life due to additional stress on the impeller and the bushings like I have seen with these type of pumps in the aquarium world.
Like anything here different people expect different things and have drastically different opinions about things here... For $18 a piece 3 of the the little 24v and even the weaker 12v pumps are a better value than one march or chugger for my use. especially since I have absolutely no need for more than 2 gallon a minute flow rate for anything I do in my brewing procedure... 3 smaller pumps work so much better than two oversized chinese chugger or march pumps that I would have to disconnect and move hoses around to use each brew session.
One great thing about having multiple dc pumps for less than the cost of one march pump is you can always swap the pump with another if you were to have a problem and your brew day and mood isnt ruined because your out $130... So your seeing it and justifying it to yourself the way you want to but see how I can spin that right around and make it an advantage? I see threads here all the time were peoples chugger or march pumps have failed on them and its a much bigger problem than if one of these fail since most dont have extras due to the higher cost. your comparing chinese cheapness to the bigger version of chinese cheapness here...
The only difference is marketing and supply and demand... its really no different than the people that complain about the cheap stuff sold direct on amazon or ebay but yet they have no issue buying that very same chinese product for three times the price through an American middleman such as aubrins...
I have "an american" pump company about 4 blocks from where I live where they use to make pumps... now they mostly import them and install American cords and capcitors for 120v and slap a made in the usa sticker on them because final assy was done here. My buddy who makes about $12 an hour spent 5 minutes doing this "american conversion" which enables this American company to now charge $200 for the pump they likely purchased from china for $20 to an unsuspecting american who believes hes just bought a great quality American made pump purchased from a large longstanding American pump company for his $200 not believing for a second its the same pump as the ones sold on alibaba for $40...
It doesnt always work like this but the instances where it does grow more and more each day.... one could argue that by refusing to buy from these fake american "middlemen" will do more to bring the industry back here than it will to line their pockets for taking it elsewhere right?If im going to buy something made in china I would just as soon hand the money to the chinese for it and 4 times as much to a middle man for hypocritical piece of mind..
This topic is a rabbit hole I would rather not take this thread off topic with
BTW if you want to buy these same 12v and 24v pumps from a us company you can buy them from US solar for about $45 a piece... (rebranded as a US solar pump of course) no affiliation with the company I mention above.