We drained our Mountain Springs Kootenai (made in 2000) spa in November and just refilled it yesterday. Once we got it full, we turned the breaker on. Within a few seconds, we hear a humming noise and the light for "pump 2" is on but no water circulates and the digital control display starts with flashing the temperature ("55" or "56") and then starts flashing "FLO" over and over. If we push the button for "pump 1" all we get is a clicking noise. After any button pushing, the "FLO" message is constant instead of flashing. After about 20 or 30 seconds, the humming noise stops, presumably the filter turning itself off to prevent damage.

We tried removing the filter, but the problem still remained. I then tried putting the garden hose down the opening below the filter and forcing water through the system by sealing the opening around the hose with my hand. I held it this way for about 20 seconds, until the ~56 degree water got my arm so cold that it started hurting, and it didn't help. We tried opening the plumbing joints on both sides of the pump and on both sides of the heater. All had constant water flow and only the one after the pump let out any air at all and it was only a little air.

We've read the page about removing airlocks from pumps on this page, but I don't see any way to do that on my pump. It's definitely possible that I'm just missing it, though. I also don't know how to set the thermostat to the "off" or "freeze" setting. I tried setting the thermostat down as low as I can, but the water in the tub is very cold (display reads 55 or 56 degrees before the FLO message starts flashing) so I don't know if there is a way to set it below the current temperature of the water.

Here are some pictures that I took of the spa to help with troubleshooting. They show every detail that I thought would be helpful. The spa is on a dedicated single phase 240v circuit with only a single breaker to the spa, and has only one pump that I see.

Here is the control panel.



Here is a wide-angle picture of the system.



Here's a pic of the spec plate on the outside.



Here's a shot of the electrical panel.



Here's a shot of the pump and plumbing around it.



Here's a shot of just the pump itself.



Anyone have any ideas on what to check next? With it being Memorial Day, all of the places that I can think of to call are closed. We started working on this yesterday in hopes of having it ready to use by tonight. Most importantly, we need to have it going by next weekend because we are having a barbecue here and want our guests to be able to use it.

Thanks for any ideas or advice you might be able to provide. Thanks for all of the ideas on here that we've been able to try so far, also.

Jason McCurry
jasonm@speakeasy.org

Small update on this. I did find the vents to try to remove any possible airlocks in the pump. The pump had one on the side and one on the bottom, but didn't have one on the top. The water flow from the one on the side was constant and energetic, and it didn't feel like there was anything actually moving inside the pump while I was venting it. The hum sounded like the electrical motor inside the pump was trying to move but wasn't able to. I hope I'm wrong in thinking that a new pump might be necessary.

Thanks again for any ideas or advice you might be able to provide.

Your first sentance says it all. Sorry to say, but most likly the motor froze up. You could try taking the cover off the back of the motor and spinning the shaft to unstick it.

Quite possibly the shaft seal is ever so slightly leaking, got the motor brearing wet, and they rusted together.

Another update. I finally got time to take it apart. The pump doesn't spin at all when it tries to start up. It just makes the humming sound. If I use a screwdriver in the slot in the end of the shaft to give it a little spin, it's enough to get it going and spin on its own, seeming to work as it should. I thought it might not be spinning as freely as it should (as in needed to be lubed), so I took the pump off the spa and dropped a couple drops of oil on the end of the shaft that I was using to spin it and took the impeller and impeller housing off the other end of the shaft and oiled that a bit. I spun the shaft several times with the end I was oiling up so that hopefully the oil would seep down just a bit. I put it all back together and it didn't spin just a bit more freely when disconnected from the spa. When I hooked it back up to the spa power and ground lines, it behaved the same as before, though. When it initially gets power, it just hums. If I give it a good spin with the screwdriver, it initially resists a little more but something clicks in it and it starts spinning faster on its own. With it completely hooked back up to the spa (both power wires and water lines), it works fine if I give it a little spin. If I turn it off, though, it won't turn back on, just giving me that hum I've learned to hate.

Ok.. with that info, anyone have any ideas of what I need?

Here's a thought that I had while I was sitting here talking to my dad on the phone listening to the pump running just fine after I "kick started" it. If the pump runs just fine once it gets turning a bit, then whatever is supposed to start it turning isn't working right. That something would be the starter on an internal combustion engine, but on an electric motor like this pump has it would have to be a capacitor, right? Lo and behold, there's a big old black cylinder about three inches long and about an inch and half in diameter that looks like an supersized version of the capacitors that I see on computer motherboards every day. If my line of thought is correct, there's a pretty good chance that the capacitor is either bad or just got totally discharged while it sat there from November to June.

It doesn't seem logical that the pump designers would put a capacitor on there that wouldn't be able to charge up and spin the shaft when it was new (before it got a chance to charge for a long time) but I guess it's possible. Since the pump turns itself off after about 20 or 30 seconds of sitting there humming without turning, it might be cutting the power to the capacitor too, keeping it from charging up. To test that theory, I hooked the pump back up completely, reset the breaker, and spun the shaft with the screwdriver to get it going. As before, it spins up and runs fine. I let it run for about 30 minutes to see if the capacitor would charge up and then trip the breaker. About five seconds after I reset the breaker, the motor starts humming that old familiar tune instead of starting back up, just as it has every time. That either destroys my theory that the capacitor has to have some time to charge up (possibly meaning the capacitor has gone bad) or it means that it takes a LONG time for it to charge up. My best is on the bad capacitor, but I started it up again and am going to let it run a couple hours just try make sure.

Ok.. thanks for listening to my rambling if you've made it this far. For those of you who know these spa pumps well, am I close to the mark with the capacitor idea or off in never-never land pretending to understand the problem? Does it sound like a bad capacitor to you? If so, how do I go about fixing it? It looks to be pretty easy to change out if necessary.

Thanks again!

- Jason

Thought I'd post the resolution to the problem here in case anyone else had the same issue. It was indeed the start capacitor on the pump that had gone bad. We got one here locally from a place that specializes in electric motors for seven bucks and change. A couple minutes to switch the new one in for the old one and to hook up the power and plumbing to the pump had us back in business with everything working great.