Replacing a motor on a pump, and getting the correct size for your pool?

[CarlD]

I cannot answer your questions but when I had my pool pump wiring installed, it was 10 gauge wire. And when I extended it, I used 10ga as well with no problems.

[mitchryan912]

I borrowed an ammeter today, and measured a draw of 19A on high and 4-5 on low, on each leg. I don't know much about motors, but that seems excessive. I could see a startup draw spiking really high like that, but not a sustained draw 3x higher than the motor rating.

[mas985]

Yes that is excessive and likely due to interference somewhere in the wet end. If the pump was run without water flowing through it for too long, the water can heat up and deform the wet end causing an interference issue with the impeller. But usually you will hear that when running the pump.

[mitchryan912]

I did just take everything apart to get things ready for a warranty replacement motor to arrive tomorrow. I did notice the above, that this seal was slightly crooked. Could this cause a major problem?

I never noticed any odd sound until just after I hooked up the pump to some plumbing I re-did (took out two shutoff a and replaced them with a pair of 3-way valves.) Everything seemed fine until a few minutes after running the pump. It was struggling to reach full prime, and it might have been because the water level was too low (pulled all the water out of the skimmer), so I shut it off and filled the pool up a few extra inches over the course of 3 hours. Turned it back on later that night and it sounded really funny, with a sort of him to it like it was seizing up.

FWIW, the pump had run fine for a full week up until I decided to change up the plumbing in an attempt to convert a vac line to an either/or line (vac or return.) There may have been a problem in the height of the new plumbing to the first valve, which was about 8-10" above the pump intake port.

[mas985]

I think you may have the seal in backwards. The ceramic end (white) goes into the motor mounting plate with the ceramic facing towards the impeller. The carbon side (black) faces the ceramic on the impeller side.

And yes, the surfaces must be perfectly parallel and flush or it will ruin the seal and cause friction issues.

[mitchryan912]

This is exactly how it was on the original seal with the pump, from the factory. I just put a new seal in when I got the 1st replacement motor.

I think my wet end has it configured backwards, with the seal part with the spring mounted into the motor mounting plate.

[mitchryan912]

Here's the motor mounting plate. The portion of the seal with the spring is installed here, and the ceramic (white) side faces this half of the seal.