How To Troubleshoot a Pool Pump That Is Not Fully Priming

hey it's rob with inyopools today we're going to figure out why my pump is not fully primed or full of water as you can see there's a gap in between the lid and the water level in that pump it should be all the way to the top went on vacation came back and found this you know so it's not a case of the pump needing water you know normally you take the lid off fill it with a garden hose put the lid back on start it it's not the case because this system hasn't been opened so we're gonna figure out why this has happened so i'm going to start with the easy things i'm going to make sure my valves are open nobody's changed them so you can see the the skimmer is wide open as well as the main drain so it's it's definitely should be getting enough water the next thing i'm going to check is the water level of the pool it should be at least halfway up the skimmer opening which it is another uh thing you can check is the weird door and make sure that that is down sometimes these things get stuck in the up position it doesn't allow the skimmer to get enough water but it's it's not stuck in the up position okay then you want to check the baskets i'm going to start with the skimmer basket which there's a lot of debris in here my crepe myrtles have dropped all this stuff around the pool and so the skimmer basket has caught it and it looks like my basket is very full so i'm going to start by emptying this and then i'm going to go to the pump basket and be that all right so i'm going to go ahead and clean out the pump basket it's not too bad but a decent amount of stuff in here okay so i've emptied the pump basket at this point if you know you want to you can try putting the garden hose in there and priming the pump we have a full video on that which we can link if you want to if you want to know how to correctly prime the pump but we're going to go ahead and start it and for this video you know we'll see if that cured the issue so i'll go ahead and start it i'll give it a couple minutes and i'll come back and see if it primed fully okay so i let the pump run on a higher speed for a few minutes to see if it would prime it did not it's actually the water level is lower now so i'm moving backwards that's great but the next thing i'm going to check is the pump lid o-ring which is probably the most common issue when your pump's not priming normally you could do this when you empty the pump basket but you know for the video i wanted to rule out each thing one at a time so we'll go ahead and turn off the pump and we'll take a look at that o-ring okay so pull the o-ring out um i've got a hayward tri-star pump and the o-rings kind of hard to get to so i just used a little flat head to kind of get in there and be careful not to damage the o-ring but once you get it loosened you can pull it out then what you want to look for you know look for cracks um if it's leaving black stuff all over your hands it's probably a sign that the o-ring is deteriorating so if it's cracked or deteriorating i want to go ahead and replace it it still has a good shape to it sometimes you'll see these round o rings will become square um in shape so what you want to do at this point what i'm going to try is just putting some lubricant on it which i've got this magic lube which is like a teflon lubricant and i'll put just a little bit on just enough to make the o-ring shiny so you don't put a lot on all right put this back on the lid here push it into place make sure it's in its groove again you don't want to press too hard and damage the o-ring all right let's go ahead and put the lid back on and see if it'll fully prime all right so it looks like the pump is fully primed now so the lido ring was the culprit which is the case for most people i just have to run it on a high speed for about five minutes to to purge all the air uh but looks like we're good to go now there are a couple other things that it could have possibly been sometimes you'll have a suction side leak so the suction side is going to be anything before the pump and it could be the o-rings and these valves there's a main o-ring here and two on the on the stem there that can go bad and draw air uh same with this fitting going into the pump what you can do you can there's a couple different methods you can use you can run the garden hose over the suspected areas and then you'll notice that the air will start to dissipate from the pump because it's drawing in water instead of air i've seen people use um plastic bags from the grocery store wrap that around the suspected area and so then it can't pull it in the air but we also have a guide in a video on that if you want to check that out we'll link that as well other things it could be is a clogged impeller which we have a video on that as well on how to free that so the impeller is inside the pump after the basket sometimes that gets clogged with small debris and so then it can't pull the water that it should also you might have a clog somewhere in the suction side of the system so what you could do is get one of those rubber bladders and you'd basically with the pump off you take the lid off you put the bladder uh you know in through here turn the hose on and what it does is it expands and then it blows everything out back towards the skimmer usually your clog is going to be close to the skimmer one of those first 90s so it'll blow right out but if you have any questions on that or none of these things helped you leave a comment down below we'll try and figure it out or if you have any questions poor spa related visits over inyopools.com thanks for watching

Channel: Inyo Pools

Views: 46,892

Rating: 4.881041 out of 5

Keywords: how, to

Id: pkrVtTOyVYQ

Length: 6min 59sec (419 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021