Hi
My original w/h was a richmond, 90 day full warranty, 3 year tank warranty, and was installed in 1993 when my house was built. It failed from a leak in 2005. The leak started small, and suddenly ruptured into a flooding leak at 3:00 in the morning about 4 days after I noticed the wet spot. I got 12 years out of this one which was a cheapy, and with extremely hard water (elements only seem to last for about 8 to 10 months even in my new one). My well is a shared well, and we have all been talking about digging a pit and putting in a shared water softener, so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully when this is done, we can all double the life of our heaters.
Rob