Hi Everyone- I bought a new VS pump at the beginning of the 2018 season. I ended up going with the Pentair VS Superflo. I installed it myself, ran great, no problems with it throughout the first swim season. In 2019 I go to open up the pool and noticed the pump was leaking pretty bad. I looked and decided it needed a new shaft seal. Replaced it, worked great throughout the 2019 season. Now this year, I go to open up the pool and the pump is leaking again. I take it apart to see what was going on and saw the shaft seal seat was ripped to shreds. It looks like some of the plastic got stripped away. The actual shaft sleeve didn't look too bad at all. I can't understand how these shaft seals are getting chewed up this quickly. I live in MD, so we really only run our pool from May to September. I have a saltwater chlorination cell that I installed in 2017. I thought maybe somehow that was the problem and maybe the salt was eating it up. Bought a new shaft seal but got the "Viton" one that is supposed to be better for saltwater systems. It was the PS-6837. I installed that and noticed the shaft seal sleeve was smaller then the one I was replacing. Need a good push to get it all the way back to touch the ceramic part. Turned it back on and it's leaking way worse then before. Ended up taking it back out and using the sleeve from the original shaft seal since that didn't look bad. Now it's only leaking a little bit, but much better. What would cause this to keep happening? I've seen that it could be "dry running"? The more I thought about it I would always have my pump running for around 12-16 hours a day. I notice when I turn the pump completely off it sounds like air is being released from somewhere. I assume that's not normal. My guess is when the pump automatically turns off and turns back on 8 hours later it would be dry running to get it primed back up again? It definitely seems to take a little while to get primed. I posted some pics below. Also, does anyone know if the PS-6837 Shaft seal works for my pump? I'm probably just going to order the OEM one again and see what happens.
Also, when I removed the old seal the plastic from the seal had to be chipped away from the walls. Some just came off easy, but some of it I had to sand down to get a smooth as possible. See in pic below. could this be the reason why it's still leaking?
Also, when I removed the old seal the plastic from the seal had to be chipped away from the walls. Some just came off easy, but some of it I had to sand down to get a smooth as possible. See in pic below. could this be the reason why it's still leaking?
