My inground pool pump is making a high pich whine and is leaking?

Question

My inground pool pump is making a high pich whine and is leaking?

Answer 1

probably the bearings are bad and need replacing. we usually send our pumps to someone who rebuilds motors. not sure what stores you have around but we have kirby risk and motocraft where i live. just check around :)

Answer 2

The whine may very well be the motor bearings, especially if you've only just started it up after the winter. Sometimes they settle down, most often they don't. If the noise is still present after 24 hours, it's not going to settle down and it's time to think about replacing the motor. Just replacing the bearings usually costs quite a bit and really isn't worth it in the long run when compared to the cost of just a replacement motor. You don't need to buy a new pump, just the motor in this case.

As for the leak. You don't mention where it's leaking. Is it leaking at the top, where the plumbing goes up to the filter? Or is it mysteriously leaking from underneath?

If it's the first one, then you need to do some simple plumbing and determine why it started to leak. Did you move the pump around? That can cause the threads of the male adapter threaded into the top of the pump to loosen up. Undo it, re teflon tape it and re install. If that fitting looks a little misshapen, then heat from cavitation ( pump running dry) is the problem. You'll have to replace that male adapter.

If the leak is coming from the bottom of the pump or in some models,where you can see the motor shaft, it seems to be dripping down from there, it's a faulty shaft seal. A 16 dollar part that will cost a 60 dollar service call to fix. They usually fail because the pump has been run dry, burning the surfaces of the seal. If you're on a timer and this pool was winterized, I'll bet that the timer power was left on. A common enough mistake. Shaft seals rarely burn out for any other reason other than extended periods of the pump running dry.

Those are the two most common leaks. Add more detail if you need further help.