Stuck Impeller

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njech

Active member
May 30, 2020
43
South Jersey
I have a Hayward Super Pump 1.5 HP. Over the last week, I really felt the motor/pump did not sound right. A bit of a metallic sound. But everything seemed to be operating normally. Good pressure on the filter, good flow, vacuum worked fine. I was researching some threads though and I went and checked the impeller. I was able to stick my hand in and move the impeller. Not freely, but it moved with just my finger tips getting in there. Figured it was good. That was probably 4 or 5 days ago.

I came out yesterday to no water moving in the pool. No noise coming from the pump. Turn it off and back on, nothing. No humming, nothing. Flip breakers just in case, turn it on, nothing. Finally did get it to hum for about 2/3 seconds and then nothing. At that point, I left it off. Went out this morning to start fiddling and tried to see if I could move the impeller. Nope. Got a small enough screw driver and I do not feel any obvious impediments (barely anything in the basket). With the screwdriver I think I got the impeller to rotate a bit but it's really difficult to do so.

I tried researching other threads for next steps, but there's enough differences for each situation, I figured I'd ping the experts. What are my next steps? Thanks!
 
I suspect your next step would have to be pulling that motor away from the basket/seal plate to investigate. You might get lucky and find something obvious in there obstructing movement. Or if the pump got hot at some point perhaps the impeller warped a bit. But if you do decide to do some exploratory surgery, you might want to have a Go-Kit/seal kit ready to change everything along the way while you're in there.
 
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Texas Splash said:
I suspect your next step would have to be pulling that motor away from the basket/seal plate to investigate. You might get lucky and find something obvious in there obstructing movement. Or if the pump got hot at some point perhaps the impeller warped a bit. But if you do decide to do some exploratory surgery, you might want to have a Go-Kit/seal kit ready to change everything along the way while you're in there.
Click to expand...
And that's the 4 bolts connected to the black (wet) part of the housing, correct? I do believe it got "hot", but since I never felt it before, I did not know if normal or not.
 
njech said:
And that's the 4 bolts connected to the black (wet) part of the housing, correct?
Click to expand...
Correct. There should be a seal/gasket between the two, so be sure to have that seal kit in advance. The old one may not be good anymore once you pull them apart.
 
Ok, so I pulled her apart. And was like yep, impeller definitely stuck. I start looking pretty closely at it and there was this tiny piece right at the tip of one of the ridges and the impeller housing. I removed it and the impeller was free. Shocked at how tiny this piece was to really gum up the works. I was able to get it turning what I feel is well. So I need to get the GOKIT picked up hopefully from Leslie's later today and get it reset and see if we're back up and running. Thanks for the assistance.
 
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So I decided, let me make sure this whole impeller thing is actually working properly. So I lubed the gasket that connects the motor to the wet side (black frame) and bolted it back together. Put water in the basket area to prime, turned it on, and horrendously loud buzzing. :( I banged on the motor surround with the wood handle of a hammer and no change (still buzzing).

Turned everything off and stuck my hand to see if the impeller would move, and no, not really. How easy should it be to move the impeller? Could I have screwed something up getting the impeller to move when I had it apart? How easy would it be to tell if the impeller is warped?

Could this be the capacitor or the contacts need to be sanded? Any help in the right direction would be appreciated.
 
Little concerned about the "horrendously loud" buzzing. A bad cap can hum, but your description almost sounds like the motor shaft is hung-up from either end - inside the motor (bearings) or at the front end (impeller). You mentioned before that the pump may have gotten hot at one point. Perhaps that small piece of debris jammed it up long enough to cause that excessive heat? If so, it's possible the impeller was damaged/warped a bit. @mas985 would you have any other recommendations?
 
If you can't move the impeller by hand, then it is still binding somewhere.

When it was disassembled, did you notice any scrape marks on the inside of the wet end?

Did you run the motor when it disassembled?

The motor shaft may be bent.
 
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I did not notice any scrapes but I also did not take a good hard look, so I will. I did not run the motor when it was disassembled.

I'll take a close look at the motor shaft but I didn't notice anything outside of the ordinary.
 

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Very loud "buzzing" is often the result of very worn bearings allowing the rotor to be grabbed by the stator in the motor when the magnetic field is induced. You can spin the motor by hand, but as soon as it is energized the magnets grab hold and release 60 times a second.
 
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Yep my motor looked like that too and was getting a bit noisier. Replaced it with a 2-speed motor.
I wanted a vgreen variable speed but there wasn't enough room for the control box, so 2 speed was an easy out.
 
You're probably fine. The original installer plumbed the pump right next to the sand filter with hardly any clearance, hence the control box on the vgreen not clearing the space. it would hit the sand filter tank.
 
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