Need some advice please, Pool service providers responsibilities

My apologies for popping into your forum to ask, but if anyone could give me some idea as to the responsibility's that most pool services adhere to. The situation I have is my pool guy I have had for about 3 years let my pump leak until the pump was corroded internally, pretty much cooked the motor. I was out of town for the summer and when I returned I noticed it had been leaking to the point that mold had built up on the concrete pad.
(it is an inground pool)
I had asked him a couple weeks in a row if he knew what was going on with the leaking, he thought it was a pipe leaking. He seemed a bit confused about it, the pump when he came to service the pool was always wet from the leaking, and only until it was shut down by me, did I notice that the extreme build up of chlorine salts and corrosion under the pump.

My question is should he be held responsible to replace the pump?,
I had just replaced the 7yr old pump a year ago. I was told from the place I got the pump that the seal went bad and needed to be replaced, a simple repair would have saved the pump. They also told me that inconsistencies in the pool levels and excessive chlorine fried the seal in the first place.
Thank you for any information you can give.
Kim R

Hi Kim;

High chlorine levels didn't 'fry' the seal -- it's ceramic and machined carbon, and neither of those materials are much affected by chlorine. So, your repair guys are playing the CYA -- Cover Your A%% -- game, at least to some degree ("It wasn't us; we didn't put that seal in wrong; it's that pool guy over behind the tree!").

So to start, your pool guy didn't cause the seal to fail. That lands right on the heads of your repair guys (which is why they are doing the CYA dance) -- it may have been a defective seal (which they couldn't have predicted) or it may have been a defective repair (it's quite easy to damage seals when installing them -- they are very fragile)

Also, it's unusual for a bad seal to take down a motor. Those motors are MADE to run outdoors, in the rain. Water running UNDER the motor, from a leaking seal, surely won't HELP the motor, but it wouldn't ordinarily kill it, either. I'm not sure what happened in your case, to cause an "extreme build up of chlorine salts and corrosion under the pump".

As to the question, should your pool guy have noticed? Probably.

Is he RESPONSIBLE for not noticing? I dunno -- what's in the service agreement? We have a steady trickle of pool service guys here who barely know which end of the vacuum pole to grab. They may be able to keep the pool clean, and the chemicals adjusted (following the recipe they got somewhere) but that's about the limit of their knowledge. For obvious reasons, those that know a lot more, tend to be more expensive. It sounds like your guy who "seemed a bit confused about it", was one of those inexpensive service guys who knows just enough to get by.

My best guess? You're stuck.

I'd put my money on the fault being your repair guys . . . but I can't prove it. If it's been less than a year, I'd sure try to stick them with the rebuild + seal, and ask for the replacement motor at their cost.

Thank you for your response, I think I am going to speak with the manufacturer, which was very helpful last time. I read through my contract with the pool service company. He has in the contract to conduct regular inspections of pool equipment He wasn't the cheapest pool guy, I prefer quality, but I may have been wrong with this one. How he could come every week for 6-7 weeks and just walk away scratching his head to me is irresponsible.
Thanks again for a different point of view, I agree with your thoughts.
Take Care,
Kim R

If he obligated himself to inspect the equipment, he has some responsibility. He didn't make the seal fail, however.

I've been mulling this over, and want to add another comment.

+ Manufacturers generally wish to expand the number of events and conditions which void their warranty, as long as they can do so without looking like they are weaseling out of THEIR obligations. Thus, in the pool industry, it's common for "high chlorine" to void warranties, even for products not affected by chlorine.

+ However, rubber materials ARE affected by chlorine, and rubber materials suitable for high chlorine environments (such as pools) tend to be at least a little more expensive than ones not suited. This fact is, I believe, behind the poor performance of so many non-OEM rubber or elastic replacement parts.

+ I have frequently published, both here and at PoolSolutions, my recommendation that pool owners NOT purchase generic elastic replacement parts, but instead seek OEM parts.

+ Pump seals usually consist of 5 parts: a ceramic seal (which may have an elastic gasket or O-ring), a machined carbon slip ring, a stainless steel washer which holds the carbon, a stainless spring which keeps the slip ring tight against the ceramic, and a rubber boot and seal which makes a watertight connection against the pump shaft.

+ It's quite likely that non-OEM seals may use low-grade elastomerics, which have poor resistance against chlorine, for the boot and seal. Such a boot can fail due to NORMAL levels of chlorine.

+ If your pool guy used trichlor tabs in the skimmer AND your pool had a pump timer, then your seal would periodically get 'hot shots' of very HIGH chlorine levels due to the slug of very highly chlorinated skimmer water that would circulate when the pump first came back on.

I know this just adds to the complexity of the situation, but these are all factors the likely do apply to your situation.