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Spa pump noisy, moves much less water than before. What's this sound like to you?


EB66

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Hi all,

I have a hot tub with a single two-speed pump. Sometime over the past week, the pump became much more noisy (both on low speed and high speed) and it moves much less water than before. I don't think it's an airlock because I haven't drained the tub recently. The hot tub is a generic "Jazzi" tub with Balboa internals.

I recorded a couple videos of the behavior.

The first video is me turning the pump on low and then on high. You'll notice the jets aren't moving water all that much despite being on high.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ckycQvIKyIE?feature=share

The second video is filmed right next to the pump (warning, it's loud):

https://youtu.be/edyQd4Re7XY

To the more trained ears on this forum: what's this sound like to you?

Is it ok to keep using the hot tub when the pump is in a condition like this? The pump still circulates water so the hot tub heats up. The hot tub belongs to a vacation rental so I'm hesitant to take it out of commission until it can be repaired.

Thank you!

Edited by EB66
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That is an LX pump wit a tendency to have the face of the impeller shear off, and grind itself to a horrible sounding death.

Count on replacing the "Wet End"

This is of course without actually being there.

You may have also sucked in a toy, or bypass valve or the like.

Either way, the gate valves can be closed with the power off, and you can loosen the front union to see what the deal is.

 

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4 hours ago, EB66 said:

Internal components can spontaneously break off and become lodged on the intake side of the pump?

Yes they can... Usually the spring loaded flapper at the bottom of the filter housing called a filter bypass valve. Scum bugs have a way of mysteriously getting past filters.

https://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.php?/topic/52483-filter-bypass-valve/

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just thought I'd update this with the conclusion of what happened.

@inhotwater called it perfectly. It's an LX pump and something had separated/sheared off inside the impeller, but somewhat miraclously was still allowing the back side of the impeller to spin. So it was still moving around, but only at ~30% the normal rate and sounded pretty bad. The whole wet end needs to be replaced just as @inhotwater predicted.

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