Pump motor failure

[Subaru mike]

I'm stumped! So I opened my pool today, I thought "everything worked pretty well" kiss of death. Vacuumed the pool, shut down the pump switched to backwash setting on valve went to start the pump again*** nothing! power at the pump 110 v each leg, figured bad motor, replaced motor with old pump motor from pump with cracked basket, nothing again 110v each leg. What's going on? Anybody have any ideas. I need your help.

[Giants85]

Might be obvious but is there a timer that may be off and or not functioning correctly?

[Mitchell911]

Breaker plug on the wall-push and reset it

[Subaru mike]

Thanks, I checked that. Thinking it might be the breaker between the timer and pump it feels kinda funny when you trip it manually. Chances of two motors being bad are pretty slim. I checked each leg to ground and got 110v but I did not check to see if I have 220 between the two legs.will do that tomorrow

Not a gfci

[PoolDoc]

Checking for 220V was what I was going to suggest.

Keep in mind that a digital multimeter registers full voltage with miniscule current. If the breaker has failed in a high resistance -- but not completely open -- mode, you could register voltage under no load, but that voltage could disappear under load.

If you confirm 220V, have someone switch the breaker on while you are testing voltage, and see if you STILL have 220 under load.

You can also do a rough-n-ready check of the motor windings with your ohm meter. You should see a reading somewhere between 1 and 50 ohms -- that rules out an open winding, but does not verify that it's functional. Keep in mind that with a capacitor start motor, depending on where you test, you may see a fluctuation before the reading stabilizes.

[Subaru mike]

Thanks everyone for the help.

I found the circuit breaker was bad. Took it apart and found that the phenolic case had cracked inside and one of the contacts had broken. Not sure how it was still passing voltage.

But everything is running

[PoolDoc]

Interesting.

It's sort of ironic, that with 'old tech' -- an old-school multimeter with a needle -- you would have likely solved the problem much more quickly, since that meter would likely have shown low, or no, voltage.