I keep having issues with pump loosing prime while vacuuming. Really bad with zodiac ranger and somewhat with manual vacuum...i even get in the pool and hand prime the house to escape all the hair...vacuums good for roughly 15 minutes or so then looses prime...what's the point of automatic vacuum if I can't walk away.
Vacuuming issues
- Thread starter deerhunterman51
- Start date
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I had the same problem a while back on my manual vacuum. At first I thought there was a leak in the hose, ruled that out. Then made sure I was getting all the air out of the hose before I started, that didn't fix the problem. Turns out I had a small suction side leak that only became a problem with the added resistance of the vacuum hose. After fixing that I get very little air through the system and never lose suction/pump prime.
There isn't an easy way to find it. I wound up just eliminating possible sources. From reading here the likeliness of an underground leak is slim to none.
First check the pump lid that's the likely culprit. Clean the surfaces touching the o-ring and lube up the o-ring if it's dry, replace if it has cracks. If that doesn't fix it just work your way back from the pump checking each fitting. Pay special attention to the unions and anything that is threaded. Like I said there isn't a great way to check for suction leaks, you can search this site and find a few threads on finding suction side leaks. Any way prior to my leak I replaced my pump and found a threaded fitting I didn't get tight enough. After tightening this down vacuuming worked as intended.
Had I not been able to find it I would have pulled the pump out and figured out a way to pressurize that side to find the leak, glad it didn't come to that. Plugging up the skimmer basket inlet wouldn't have been fun.
First check the pump lid that's the likely culprit. Clean the surfaces touching the o-ring and lube up the o-ring if it's dry, replace if it has cracks. If that doesn't fix it just work your way back from the pump checking each fitting. Pay special attention to the unions and anything that is threaded. Like I said there isn't a great way to check for suction leaks, you can search this site and find a few threads on finding suction side leaks. Any way prior to my leak I replaced my pump and found a threaded fitting I didn't get tight enough. After tightening this down vacuuming worked as intended.
Had I not been able to find it I would have pulled the pump out and figured out a way to pressurize that side to find the leak, glad it didn't come to that. Plugging up the skimmer basket inlet wouldn't have been fun.
I have been having trouble with my unions after putting back on from winter storing I will check on that. Thanks for the help
On the unions check their o-ring as well lube and replace as necessary. I also find them to be pretty particular as well, if the two halves aren't almost perfectly co-planer and very close to touching before tightening down the ring then there is a good chance for a leak.
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