CH pump stuck?

[PoP]

I've been asked to look at a CH system where the pump has got stuck. I'm aware that I can close the taps either side of the pump and replace it in-situ, but I'm wondering whether it might free up if I give it a bit of welly?

Apparently the house has stood empty for several months since last winter, and when the CH was fired up very recently the boiler did what it is supposed to do (water got hot etc), but water wasn't being pumped around the system.

Do these pumps seize up after a period of not being used? And is there a handy method for getting them unstuck?

PoP

[Grunff]

Mememe!

Very common. Unscrew the big silver cap at the front (big screwdriver/coin/whatever), and use a small screwdriver to free

• spin the impeller. Should free up fine.

[Neil Jones]

Or, in my wife's case, the judicious application of a hammer to the pump case.

HTH

Neil

[Grunff]

Typical female behaviour.

(really hope swmbo doesn't read this)

[Neil Jones]

To be fair, it had the desired effect! I assume the tap was sufficient to dislodge whatever was stopping the pump from spinning. More answers will be forthcoming after next week's CH/DHW overhaul...

Regards

Neil

[PoP]

Thanks guys! I thought it must be possible but it's such a long time since I played with a CH pump.....

PoP

[Christian McArdle]

It is called percussive maintenance. It was even covered on my engineering degree, which means I'm fully qualified to hit any malfunctioning device with a hammer.

I remember doing IT for Oracle many moons ago. Whenever there was a power cut, the hard drives in a particular model of Sun would rarely spin back up. Standard procedure was to remove them from the machines and throw them against the wall, or drop them from about 2 metres on the floor. They would then be reinstated in the machines and never failed to spin up. No such much as a bad sector.

Christian.

[Neil Jones]

In the engineering department of the "snotty uni" I attended there was a complete series of hammers lined up from the smallest rock hammer to the largest sledge. The sign is said to have read along the lines of "If at first you don't succeed, use a larger hammer"

Neil

[Jonathan Ward]

Agreed!

[Suz]

Grrrrr.. Just logging onto the swmbo underground network.... Suzanne