Also remember that you'll be able to sell it somewhere down the road for 40-70% of what you paid. Deduced that from your projected usage rate and from what appears to be your motives to keep things clean and nice looking. Most of the splitters I see, including mine, look like they've been through a ground war but still keep cranking away, thus I suspect that a lot of the ones you looked at from CL and the like were probably fine.
With a little luck and good maintenance and at my guess is my kids will have to deal with it once it isn't needed anymore
