I bought a house that came with an "old", don't know how old, outdoor hot tub. Appears to be a Garden Leisure GL2934. Electronic topside control. Appears to have stainless flow heater. And I'll add, I know NOTHING about fixing hot tubs!

It worked properly when we moved in (a couple of months ago). I thought draining it would be a good idea, get all that old water out, right!

Of course, I have the situation I've been reading about here. After you drain a hot tub, the jets and heater stop working.

The behavior is: When the electricity is turned on, it hums. When the jets button is pressed, it hums louder, but nothing comes out the jets. The two different levels of humming sound what I would all "right"; they seem to sound as they would if things were working. No heating occurs. All of this worked before the tub being drained.

I tried (1) turning power off, (2) draining it, (3) removing filter, putting hose in filter hole, refilling. The behavior is the same. I can see the moter (sorry, I don't know the terminology) wheel (?) spinning, the post that goes into the pump is also spinning. There are two handles on the water pipes. I don't know if they're close valves or some sort of pumps. They don't seem to make any difference though.

What should I try next? It seems to much of a coincidence over the life of this thing that the motor and/or pump would just "go out" at the exact same time I happen to drain it? Any chance that something is just clogged with debris?

Okay, got it working, so I'll post this in case it helps someone. What I needed to do was to fill it all the way (over the jets, over the intake, almost to the top, don't be shy about it), via the filter hole. Then turned power back on. Then, ran water out the drain at the bottom (thus pulling water, and presumably air through and out of the pump) for about 10 seconds, and voila! Jets came on like the angels singing, and it's heating as well. Then, turned it off to put the filter back in (made me nervous after getting it working to purposely turn it off again!). But all is fine now.

Speedy -

You have the right idea. As I know nothing about your brand, the general rule of thumb goes as follows:

1) Turn on hose.
2) Put in filter housing
3) Stick hose safely in ALL filter inputs -- what this does is adds water to the filter lines and forces air out of the lines to pre-prime the pumps that are used to run your filter cycles.
4) continue to fill by keeping the hose in the filter housing. Water will continue to fill the tub by keeping the filter lines filled and spilling into the tub.

Fill to the highest point in the manual -- maybe just below the pillows if you have them -- if not, 2/3rds of the way up the filter gate (where the water from the tub enters the filter housing.

What this does is it forces air UP through the lines. All the pumps are at the lowest point of your tub so they should all have water in them and be properly primed.

In the event that they don't run correctly, turn everything off and you might need to stick the hose back into the filter inputs with a towel wrapped around the hose end to force as much water into the filter lines as possible -- pushing air out.

Run the tub for a minute or two without a filter and when you put the filter on, make sure you submerge it first and push the air out -- rotate it so that there is as little trapped air as possible.

Should work every time.

AGE