Even the best of pumps require maintenance. A pump that begins to buzz is telling you something is impeding movement. While it might be an electrical problem or bearings, you can't tell unless you dismantle it and see if something is wrapped around the impeller shaft or if there is something jammed in the casing around the shaft. This is like running the car engine as fast as possible while standing on the brake. You don't need to open the motor. That is permanently sealed. just remove the cover around the shaft and check to see that the shaft and the well around it is clear. Once I found long blond hair that I had to cut with an Exacto knife( I have short red hair) and another time it was leaf debris and small gravel from a pot the raccoons had dumped in the water. This year I am fighting a squirrel that likes the quilt batting filter material. I think he wants it for his nest. Small pieces are sure to wind up around the impeller. It's always a surprise what turns up. I regularly check it every year and anytime the water flow seems to slow or if the pump feels warm or noisy. It should just hum at the most.

Hi Mike, OK, Im glad I understood its the red one. Something right! Whoo To Mike, buyorsell888, and calamity_j, The kitties are totally stressed out right now, but I think they'll be OK. The one black cat seen in the pix above, had some teeth pulled, but he seemed almost fine the next day. His brother on the other hand - totally freaked out. The anesthesia didn't wear off, he was scared, and probably in pain all night, so I stayed up with him. Ever since, he's been sleeping in kitchen nightly, which is unusual for him. (The outside boys aren't allowed in any further than the kitchen - long story). The girls indoors - well the one with recurring cancer is acting very needy and wanted to be close *all the time* *every minute of the day*. I cant blame her, shes stressed. Shes had a several surgeries and doesnt like the vet much at all As you can imagine. The other girl had to have some tests, but after a few days, we found they all turned out all right. Shes still feeling a bit crabby with us about having been taken to, The Awful Place. (She holds a grudge, as many of you with kitties will probably know what I mean!) Thanks for asking and well wishing. :) Even though the girls are in their senior years now, theyre like my babies and I stop everything when they are ill. Its so hard that they are getting old! As to the pond, our plan is like something out of a slapstick movie, though we are hoping it might work anyway. Were going to hook up the hose, as Mike suggests, and weve got a tarp weve put a slit in and will place the fountain through, then duct tape, so that any runoff from inside the pipes and fountain gets funneled over the tarp and out to the trees not into the somewhat clean pond water. Its about 105-110 degrees out there today and neither of us are looking forward to working on it!

I personally have no problem with a customer following me around. I prefer to educate them on certain items they can do themselves. A little communication goes a long way to make a user feel warm and fuzzy as long as they don't get in the way. I have clients that only need me or one of my techs. to come around every 3 years or so to do real maintenance and checks. The residential maintenance agreements do help me keep technicians busy during gaps in the schedules. I actually have clients who want someone to come out and change their filters. Most are elderly or afraid to touch anything. We usually try to schedule those when a tech. is going to be passing by and we can do it gratis if the customer provides the filter. It's amazing how that "value added" service has helped business. But as you can see, for some people those maintenance agreements are worthwhile to some while others can save their money and do certain things themselves. Of course, for commercial clients, it's cheaper for them to buy an agreement than it is to hire someone full time to do it. And what's great is they can call the shop, ask questions and if the office Administrator can't answer a question (she does great), a tech. will call back. Even many handy types buy the agreement just to have resources (we also sell parts). These extras have allowed me to pretty much lock in whole neighborhoods.

Personally, I would not trust any tool from a manufacture that is trying to sell you a pump. That is why I developed my own spreadsheet using the data published by the California Energy Commission. The manufacture tools generally use gross approximations and tend to use unrealistic scenarios plus they don't show you how the calculations are done. You can download the CEC data yourself or you can download the spreadsheet below and do the analysis yourself. Unlike the manufactures web site tools, I built a completely transparent tool open for full review so I am not trying to hide anything from the user. But it really only takes simple math to prove the case of a two speed pump in some situations. Assuming decent plumbing and using the CEC data from Curve-C, a Whisperflo WFDS-24 will produce about 42 GPM @ 380 watts while an Intelliflo will produce about 30 GPM @ 140 watts for a difference of 240 watts. This may seem like a big difference but the money saved is not all that great. In a 15k pool and a turnover per day, the Whisperflo requires 357 minutes on low speed while the Inteliflo requires 500 minutes for the same turnover. So the Whisperflo uses 2.3 kwh/day and the Inteliflo uses 1.2 kwh/day or a difference of 1.1 kwh/day. Again, it sounds big until you apply the electrical rates. So if your electricity rate is $0.07/kwh to make up the $500 cost difference between the two pumps you would need about 6500 days (>200 months) of run time before the Intelliflo starts to be more cost effective than the Whisperflo. However, you can make the case for the Intelliflo by changing some of the assumptions. For example, if the electrical rate is $0.30 like in CA and the user was running two turnovers per day, then the Intelliflo will become more cost effective than the Whisperflo after only 750 days (25 months) which makes the Intelliflo the better choice. However, some POs need to run their pumps at higher speeds for part of the day to run cleaners and/or solar so that can diminish some of the benefit. Even though we have high electricity rates here in CA, I chose the two speed because much of time I run the pump at higher speeds for solar so the benefit of the VS was not as great for me. You can see my situation in Scenario 3 of the spreadsheet. I modified a 1 HP Northstar pump to create a 1/2 HP two speed pump but was able to do that for only $120 so it would be hard for any pump to beat that lifetime cost. Anyway, you can run all of these different scenarios using the spreadsheet. Here is a link that might be useful: Pump Cost Calculator