How to replace a hot tub pump
I’m going to be changing a pump here, today, and just giving you guys step by step on changing a pump. So might as well get going.
*Don’t need to replace the pump? Learn how to diagnose and fix an air locked pump instead, here.
*Looking for basic hot tub pump terminology and troubleshooting, go here.
Pretty much the only two reasons you ought to be changing the pump is if the pump is tripping the breaker or if the bearings are shot and you need to take it back to the shop and change the bearings over, just replace it because the bearings are shot. To change the pump, the first thing you want to do is close the ball valves so you can get a small flow of water. To close the ball valves there will be one on the pressure and one on the suction side of the pump. The ball valves are just right here. Ball valves run in the manner that when they cross the line they’re off, when they go inline they’re open. So there are national standards for how ball valves works. So we have both the ball valves closed, so there needs to be a little bit of residual water left inside of here. Get a couple tools out here.
Right off the bat, we have a ground wire. Disconnect the ground wire. And get some side cutters and cut the zip tie. [Inaudible 00:01:10] the pump power cord in. Then we’re going to go down and right down here is your mounting nut, that’s holding the whole pump mount system together. So pull some cords out of the way, pull the mounting plate out, and undo the unions. Try to make note of where your O-rings go, cause they might float away with the little rush of water that you have. And there you have your pump out.
Now what I’m going to do, because when you change a pump out there’s nothing wrong with the wet end, in this case. So we’re going to take the wet end off. Now there’s only one set lock screw on this pump housing, so we can spin it off to the side here. I’m going to take a 9/16 wrench and hold the pillar still, and I’ll loosen that impeller off the shaft. Eventually, you can pull that end right off. And again we’ll be able to take off the pump mounts because they’re reusable and there is nothing wrong with them, take these off and place them onto the next pump.
Now, we’ve got a brand new pump, I’ve got the pump mounts almost installed fully on it. So we’re gonna get this new pump back together, put the wet end back on it and put it back into the spa. Now this is actually a bit easier, for putting the wet end on is to take these screws completely out. Set the impeller on the shaft, set a screwdriver or wrench down on the fans on the bottom, then you can just spin it. [Inaudible 00:03:50] facing straight up, if not, so the impeller is tightened. You want to make sure that the impeller is snugged right up to the shaft, if the impeller is not snug up to the shaft when you turn the pump on for right off the get go in the first place, it spins freely, gets some RPMs up before it actually gets tight onto the impeller itself, it will blow all the threads out of the impeller. So make sure it is actually snug and tightened up right up onto the shaft.
Okay, so we have the impeller back onto the pump, got our pump mounts on. Now set the pump back into place, get the pump mount. Put our unions back on. Now what I’m going to do here is I’m going to snug up the suction side, leave this pressure side just a little bit loose to bleed some air out. Bleeds the air out of the wet end so we’re just sure that we’re not going to have an airlock to fire it up again. Open up the pressure side.