Air In Your Pump - Finding The Source

howdy gang have you ever found air bubbles inside your pump system well in today's episode I'm gonna show you how to troubleshoot and diagnose your system to see why you might be getting air bubbles in it so what do you say we dive right in okay before we get started wanted to remind you to please like this video if you do and subscribe to this channel if you have not done so and share this channel with your friends who might be looking to save a few dollars servicing their pools as well so okay so I've had a couple people actually ask me what do you do about air bubbles in your pump are you in your in your system and a lot of people think they need to hire a professional to do that there may be a time to do that but before you do there are some things that I do that will help you troubleshoot so that you might be able to save yourself some money and save yourself a service call from some pro coming out and checking it out the only time you really need a pro is if you have something major broken or cracked or if you have something in your underground piping or any of your pipes that are buried in that case it gets a little bit more costly and a little more involved but there are a lot of things you can do that will help you check to see if the air bubbles are coming from anything above ground and if it's above ground chances are you might be able to repair it yourself so don't call the pro yet let's go through these steps and see how it goes so I'm gonna take you to a pool and we're gonna walk through it really slow before we get back to the equipment I wanted to just touch on a couple things that may seem obvious when it comes to air possibly getting in your system but I want to be thorough and not miss anything so the first thing that seems obvious is we want to check the water level of your pool I'm gonna turn the video around really quick okay so what you want to make sure is that there's plenty of water in your pool and usually you want to make sure it's covering the highest suction part port of your pool usually that's the skimmer so if you look right over here right by where my pole is right below there you see an opening that's the skimmer opening okay and my usual standard is that the water should be going halfway up the tile line there and covering half of the opening all right so that's what I look for okay so that's the first thing also a lot of pool skimmers inside have a little flap that's a one-way flap that allows water to flow in but then it stops for water flowing out of the skimmer from the opening and that's preventing debris from going back out okay when the system shuts off however sometimes that flap will get stuck closed and then if it gets stuck closed when the system fires back up you're going to start sucking air into your system so that's a possibility right there so make sure that that flap is free and flows and moves back and forth without being hindered if not you might need to replace it or just take it out completely again that's water level the second thing that I want to talk to you about is your vacuum make sure that there is enough suction but not too much suction on your vacuum so that it moves around the pool but it doesn't come out of the water a lot of times people have the suction so high on their pool comes out of the water sucks air and then you get air into your system okay so make sure that those things are in place before you start going through your system now let's go back to the filter and talk about potential leaks okay I am here at one of my clients pools and I've seen you've seen this one before in some of my other videos there's a pretty simple system so it's easy to kind of talk you through all right first thing remember I talked about the suction this is the suction side of the pool and I want to make sure that the valves of the suction are open well and also if you have return pipes like this and maybe even more make sure that the flow is not hinder make sure that the valves are open and that your suction is properly open so that it's not causing a strain on your system okay so make sure your vows are adjusted correctly now with that said I'm going to start at the filter and I'm going to work my way back to the pipes that go into the ground and we're going to check for leaks all right remember you're gonna look for one of two things you're gonna look either for dampness or you're gonna look for mineral deposits both which are an indicator of some kind of leak or seepage somewhere dampness because if the systems been running you might see dampness mineral deposits which kind of look like the light thing right there that's actually paint but it kind of looks like that on a system and that's just dry water okay but again it could be one of those two things or a combination of the two so I'm going to start with the filter and work my way back to the pump and into the pipes all right first thing on the filter I want to check the pressure relief valve now this is a sand filter so it has a head here are a top here that I can open to replace Sam but this is your pressure relief valve so I'm looking around it and I notice there looked like there was maybe some water at one time but it's been a long time and this is all and this is rusted but that's we've replaced that and and reseal that so it's not leaking so I want to check the pressure relief valve to make sure a that it's closed and that also there's no mineral deposits or dampness okay and again remember if you've just opened this and running it to purge it out you might have water here so be careful that you didn't create the water spill and then go oh my goodness there's water leaking okay all right and again I'm gonna check around this cover if it's a sand filter if it's a cartridge filter you've just got a pressure relief valve okay now also cartridge filters and de filters have a band that dried around the middle of the system it's called a belly band okay of the filter and you want to check that belly band and around that entire belly band to see if there's any mineral deposits or dampness if there is chances are you've got some kind of leak going on there and a lot of times that can just be fixed by replacing the o-ring inside of it or you might have to replace the belly band okay all right so remember I'm not talking about how to fix it I'm talking about how to diagnosis now also underneath the filter underneath cartridge de and sand filters this one we notice not in the front it's in the back oh there it is is a drain plug okay now if you check the drain plug you want to make sure that there is no minerals or dampness around the drain plug right so I went from the pressure relief valve on the top to the belly band checking that out down to the drain plug and cartridge filters and some DV filters that plugs a little bit bigger okay now if you happen to see dampness anywhere in the main body of the filter or the container for the filter then you might have a break in the actual fiberglass in which case you're probably going to have to replace that filter or at least the holder for it in which case a lot of times it's just cheaper to replace the filter okay now we're gonna go to what we call the bulkheads okay these right here are the bulkheads it's where the filter attaches into the plumbing or the rest of the system okay one is suction one is return don't worry about that for now what you're looking for is water dampness or minerals and there are none so we're in good shape then I'm going to work my way back and inspect the valve this is the backwash valve if you have a cartridge filter you're not going to have a backwash valve but you might have a water relief valve that if your pool gets too full you can bleed off water so make sure it looks like just a host bigot make sure that that's not leaking okay and I'll try to show you an example of a cartridge filter too but I'm gonna inspect all the joints all the joints and elbows to see there's any water or minerals or anything like that you notice there is nothing on either side okay then I'm going to continue to trace it now this is this here is a hard plum that goes down into the when I backwash the filter and it goes out back gate so it's all the way out there so they don't have water when they backwash their filter in there in their backyard so you don't really have to worry about this it's these right here okay so this one is going from the filter okay this one actually is from the pump it's going into the filter I'm just going backwards so I'm just tracing it to see no leaks okay I'm gonna stop right there because that's the pump alright I'm gonna go back to here to this side these are the return pipes comes up from here it comes out of the filter up and then down into the system and notice no leaks okay so so far I'm in good shape this is the suction side of my system and I'm going to inspect again the elbow joints here the joints where the valve goes in and the valve everything looks good then I'm gonna look at where it joins into the suction side of the pump and look and go well there's no mineral deposits there now watch this I'm going to look at this I'm gonna look at the side that goes from the pump into the filter and check and notice there's no leaks there no evidence of leaks no dampness and no mineral deposits now pay attention to this one I'm gonna look at this area right here this is in yours might be a little different but it's where this might be bolted on but this is the pump and this is the motor you want to look around here and underneath it to see there's any kind of water dampness or mineral deposits around if so chances are you have a leaking shaft seal and that needs to be replaced okay that's when you want to get taken care of pretty quickly because that can get water into your motor and corrode it and ruin your motor in which case you got a bit pretty costly repair but that's pretty much how you troubleshoot it now there's one other area that we want to focus on the pump lid okay this really is where I commonly see most of the leaks for air you notice there's no air in the system there's a little bubble right there that's probably just trapped in there nothing to worry about but you notice I'm gonna fire this up is gonna get a little loud there's a little bit of air and it's gonna push out but the first thing the other thing I check is I check the pump lid okay I'm gonna get my tool and take it off so you can see what I'm gonna look for okay I have taken the pump lid off of this pump all right now it's gonna make that noise I'm gonna move away first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna inspect the o-ring on the lid sometimes this o-ring will stay stuck to the groove here like this okay all of the pump lids have an o-ring you want to make sure it's clean it's not cracked or broken and make sure it's lubricated if it's not lubricated you can get some heavy-duty silicon spray not wd-40 but like an industrial-strength industrial country and get it it'll Lowe's or Home Depot and you want to get that really lubed up I'm also gonna check the room got this seat sent you to make sure there's no debris in there okay same thing up here and in this particular situation I put this on the lid and it stays on there the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna inspect the lid I'm sure that there's no cracks anyway you know cracks in the slide no cracks in the threads no cracks in the lid at all okay even the slightest crack under pressure can cause air to come through so this one is totally intact servicing that kind closed this and you hear all that air going in there I'm gonna close this okay all right hand tight I don't crank it down okay now I'll just fire the system up and then it'll purge the air out and everything now understand this you can use the pressure relief valve to purge the air out of the filter but you're still gonna have some air in the pipes and everything so I'd pretty much just let it run and the air purge is out through the returns and you'll see air come out of the returns and eventually that air will stop so I'm gonna give you I'm gonna run to another pool and show you an example of a de or a cartridge filter and the belly band to show you how and respect that okay okay I wanted to show you an example of a cartridge filter and the belly band and it's similar to a de filter de filters of a belly band as well see there's a belly band well one other thing I want you to think about also this is a good example this pool this pool has a pop up cleaning system so it has a leaf vac canister and again I'm still inspecting for leaks and for mineral deposits and dampness and this one's good but before I go out and show you something else I want to note you notice this okay so this is a cartridge filter knows that it still has a lid here this is the pressure relief valve so I'm looking for mineral deposits or dampness and this is the belly band okay this is a two-part container top and bottom and so sometimes you might get a leak around there remember this video is not on how to fix those things it's just how to troubleshoot to see where you might be having a leak notice there is the drain plug of that cartridge filter and notice there's no mineral deposits or dampness around it okay now just really quick a lot of times if you have a leak up here in this area here or around the belly band sometimes that can be fixed by just replacing the o-ring inside of that or moving the o-ring it takes a little bit inspection to take it apart you're gonna have to take it apart to check same thing with a pump lid and even in here in between the motor and the pump there is a shaft seal that sometimes needs to replace and there's a rings in there around the inside of this that seal it as well so you might have to check those also these type of valves there's an o-ring in here in between here that helps seal it a lot of rings right so a lot of times it's the o-ring that needs to be replaced for lube okay one thing also this one has an in for cleaning system so this is a good point to make too if you have the gears or the actuator exposed you want to inspect that as well to see there's any dampness or leaks anywhere around it or the lid okay and again this lid this belly band there's an o-ring in there that needs to be lubed and sometimes it cracks or breaks okay so I wanted you to see all that so you can see those areas to troubleshoot on various systems and again remember I'm not going to show you how to fix those those things this is just to help you diagnose it and then from there you can move on so folks that's my video on diagnosing air leaks in your system remember it wasn't an exhaustive thing there's a possibility that it could still be an underground type of leak in which case that's when you might want to call a professional or a company that has listening sound equipment to be able to diagnose where that leaks coming from but at least you can do the work first to see if there's any leaks above ground that are causing the air to get in and even if you hire a professional to come and repair it at that point you'll know what you're looking at so they don't sit there and ickle and dime you and tell you you need to repair a bunch of things that really don't need to be repaired again I didn't talk about how to do the repairs because that's what not what this video was about is just to help you diagnose it so again take your time go through the system you're looking for those potential leaks and hopefully that'll help remember if you have any comments you can put them in the comment section below or any questions or you can email me directly and my email address is going to come right across the bottom of the screen here it's Kenny pool school at gmail.com once again Kenny pool school at gmail.com want to thank you again for watching want to remind you to like this video if you do subscribe to this channel if you have not done so and please share this channel with your friends who have their own pools who are looking to save a buck or to servicing their pools themselves even in the off season because I got a lot of videos on things that you can do during the offseason so that your pools not down during the on season thanks again for watching and remember as always have fun be safe and watch those kids around water always I'll see you next time [Applause] you

Channel: Pool School

Views: 57,788

Rating: 4.898139 out of 5

Keywords: Pump leaks, pool pump leak, air in pool pump, air in pool system, DIY pool service, pool service, DIY pool maintenance, pool maintenance, Pool School, Pool Guy, Pool Equipment Leak

Id: RvRncnBTC-g

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019