Waterway Catridge Filter Humming Sound and Small Pump leak?

[bgkob]

After a somewhat hot weekend (for Wisconsin standards anyways) my cartridge filter now makes a decent humming sound when I fire it up. The sound takes a few seconds to kick in when the pump is fired up. This is my first summer with a pool (bought the house in May) so I am not only a rookie pool owner, but wasn't part of the setup that went down in 2012 or so of everything.

My first hunch was air in the system. When I twist the air release valve just water comes out, no air and the humming sound doesn't go away.

To make matters worse, I have a small dripping leak right before my pump, after the basket. Could these be related and is that how air is getting into the system?

I am just perplexed and after about 35 mins of messing around with both the leak and even taking out the filter and cleaning it yesterday...the sound and the leak still persist.

I made a YouTube video of it here if you want to see both problems in action: Waterway Filter and Pump Problems? - YouTube

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[OldPoolMan]

Hi bgkob and welcome. The noise you hear is from your motor. The leak is from the seal in the pump of which the motor is connected to. Sadly, what has happened to you is that the leaking seal has allowed water to ruin the front bearing in your motor, which is causing the grinding noise. Unless, you know a motor shop that does motor bearing jobs, then you will have to replace the motor.

 

[bgkob]

The sound is 100% coming from the top

 

[bgkob]

Hi bgkob and welcome. The noise you hear is from your motor. The leak is from the seal in the pump of which the motor is connected to. Sadly, what has happened to you is that the leaking seal has allowed water to ruin the front bearing in your motor, which is causing the grinding noise. Unless, you know a motor shop that does motor bearing jobs, then you will have to replace the motor.

The sound is 100% coming from the top, inside of the filter. Watch the video again with volume on full, you can hear it. You are saying that the motor is causing the sound heard at the pinnacle of the filter by the PSI gauge?

Tonight I went out there while it was running and where the clean water comes into the pool from the filter, I covered it up for a second with my hand and the sound went away. When I took my hand away and let the water flow back into the pool again it came back.

So a 2012 or 2013 pump motor seal can go bad that soon in Wisconsin, where that pump is run maybe 4 months a year tops?

Let me know what you think....

 

[OldPoolMan]

I'm looking at your video more closely. It could be that the water is dripping from that union. If so, either tightening it up, a new o ring, or Teflon tape will fix that. As to the seal, yeah, seals can fail from many factors. As to the noise, I'm reacting to your video and sound. It sounds like a bad front bearing to me, hence the grinding noise. I've heard that noise many times, but not from a filter. Maybe one of the other guys here at TPC can weigh in?

 

[bgkob]

Thanks OldPoolMan for coming back to me and my noisy pump/filter.

So, i did some serious googling and found this post from 2012, about a Waterway catridge filter making a sound similiar to mine. Buzzing noise from the filter

Could it be that i need a new filter as well?? I took it out and cleaned it when the sound started, and it still presisits. Maybe something is loose on the filter itself causing a jiration and thus the sound?

 

[Bama Rambler]

I remember that thread. A new cartridge would probably fix it, but I'd try taking it apart again and making sure you have it assembled correctly before that.

 

[bgkob]

Huh...cartridges can "go bad" like that even after they were cleaned?

I will play with it again tonight and see if i can get this sound to go away. The leak i will worry about after i get the sound fixed...or if filter cartridge placement (I saw on some other posts people would flip their filter around and a similar sound to mine would then stop) is to blame.

Though I am still slightly wondering if they are related, potentially air could be getting into the system from that leak maybe?? Idk...

 

[bgkob]

Last night I took apart the area where the basket meets the pump to see if there was some o-ring problems going on. Sure enough, there was. In fact, before I took it off, with the pump off and hoses disconnected / water drained out, i ran my finger across the internal fitting where that leak was and i could feel the o-ring all warped and unaligned. You can see it in the picture here, that white o-ring... View attachment 40355

I also played around with the cartridge and I have a sneaking suspicion that it is the cartridge filter itself that is causing the vibration/humming sound, so i ordered a new one last night. The reason I am putting the humming blame on the filter itself is cause I traced my steps back to when the sound began...it was this past weekend after i put some SuperFloc in to try and clear up the cloudy pool. One week prior to that I also ran normal Floc for 2 hours than vacuumed to waste by using the vac hose as a siv (not connected to the filter, but the hose hanging off the side of my pool) all the gunk that gathered on the bottom of the pool. My hunch is the floc seriously gunked up my filter, to the point where I might as well drop the $65 to get a new one and see if that solves the problem.

 

[bgkob]

Ok, using other forum posts and help from this one too, I was able to figure out both the small leak and the humming noise.

The humming noise did in fact go away once the new filter came on Friday and was installed. Water is shooting out into the pool like a fire hose now compared to the steady stream before with the old filter, and the pump/cartridge system is whisper quiet again.

So I assume it was the SuperFloc product that gave an already 3 year old cartridge filter to much too handle, which then caused that horrible humming sound.

Then, a twisted and mangled o-ring at the pump connector after the basket was to blame for the slow drip.

Pool systems are back to normal again!