I'm trying to source my pool equipment o-rings by trade sizes and material. I've figured out all the trade sizes; but does anyone know the material?
Buna? Viton? Nitrile? Silicone? Butyl? Does it matter?
If nobody knows, I'm going to go with Viton; but it would be better to know for sure what the OEM material is for pool pump o-rings.
Of the zillions of o-ring reference for pool pump parts on the web, this is the only one I've found, so far, that mentions the material.
This listing also mentions pool o-ring material; but it is confusing at best.
From that, I can't tell if pool o-rings are buna or viton.
This pool o-ring blog implies they're EPDM (but they seem to have their facts wrong on Buna-N so I can't really trust their advice).
I doubt it really makes much difference. Swimming pool water is about as benign a fluid as you can find. When I lived in DC my city water tested "ideal" on a 2 bottle pool tester.
If you are actually in the chlorinator itself, that is a more hostile environment.
This is a reference
I tried calling Aladdin Equipment (941-371-3732) today
I was thinking sunlight + water + chlorine + acid was the environment. Note: Sunlight might be eliminated once installed though.
Wow! Thanks. Comprehensive. A keeper! Mostly for metals though. They list Buna-N (aka Nitrile) & Viton, & maybe Silicone; but not EPDM, nor Kalrez. Note: They list "Silicon" in the rubber section, so maybe that's a typo?
Googling for o-ring materials, it seems the material choices go in this order: a. First see if Buna-N (Nitrile) will work (because it's the cheapest solution). b. If that won't work, use Silicone, c. If that won't work, use Viton (Fluoro-elastomer), d. If that won't work, use EPDM, e. If that won't work, use Kalrez (perfluoro-elastomer). REF:
DDD- If you want to educate yourself to reasonable level about O-rings & O- ring material apps,' go to McMaster Carr catalog and search on O- rings.
If you REALLY want to learn about O-rings
Hint.... my dad & I used o-rings in pools for many years without ever researching materials. Pool O-rings ain't rocket science or PhD work.
"I was thinking sunlight + water + chlorine + acid was the environment. Pool water is nearly drinkable except for the salts / hardness level.
KISS
Calm down....you're over thinking (& incorrectly at that) nearly everything you approach. :(
Ya know...your calls to all the mfr's may seem "free" but the true cost is coming out of the shareholders or owner's pocket. Reduce the clutter......
Get some Buna-N's from McMaster & be done. If they fail (which they won't) replacement with EDPM.
OK. Makes sense. Pool water is practically drinking water. I'll go with the basic 50-cent Buna-N (aka Nitrile) o-rings then.
For accuracy, the one thing I need to better understand are what the trade sizes actually indicate.
The trade sizes don't seem to follow any obvious rhyme or reason.
For example, the tiny drain plug o-ring is a 0-39 but the much larger basket cover o-ring is a 0-12 while the slightly larger seal plate housing o-ring is a 0-240 and the hugely larger filter body o-ring is a 0-486.
They don't follow any order that I can discern.
Is the o-ring trade size merely from an arbitrary lookup table, or is there a definable logic to the trade-size designation?
- ~1" drain plug o-ring (x2) U9-359; trade size O-39
- ~3" diffuser o-ring, U9-37A; trade size O-83
- ~3" filter union o-ring U9362, trade size unknown
- ~2" pre1998: Insert o-ring U9-376; trade size O-113
- ~10" trap cover o-ring, U9-375; trade size O-12
- ~12" seal plate housing o-ring, U9-228A; trade size O-240
- ~25" filter body o-ring 24850-0009; trade size 0-486
I'm still shocked you know I'm an accountant! (I must start counting Huckleberries when you say they're in season!)
The problem with the kits, by the way, is that they're incomplete.
For example, the Aladdin GO-KIT38-9 for my pump is missing the drain plug o-rings; and there doesn't seem to be a filter o-ring kit for the 25-inch diameter Sta-Rite System 3 Model S8M150 filter tank.
Homework assignment....
Did you visit McMaster? Attempt to investigate trade sizes? Or are you asking more questions before doing any due diligence?
I get the strong impression you were the guy (characterization skipped) who asked a ton of questions in class in lieu of thinking.
The guys who regularly post on AHR are pretty sharp....
It would take a major brain injury for most to forget that you're an accountant...... :( Especially since your ongoing behavior reinforces the image MANY times per day.
The plant manager where I work has a saying about "stepping over dollars to pick up dimes"... ponder that.
I think Danny just wants to take the time to make sure he's doing things as correctly as he can. That's what a university education and the principles of accounting drive into a person. I find I'm the same way whenever I start dabbling in anything I've never done before, such as when I started rebuilding my own laser printer toner cartridges. I wouldn't fault the guy for it, he's just wanting to partially compensate for not being formally instructed on how to rebuild that pump by using the best parts he can when rebuilding it. His only other option is to buy a "repair kit" for the pump, and that means paying $25 for $5 worth of O-rings. That's always the case cuz the company making the repair kit knows it's customers don't know anything about O-rings and would be scared they'd buy the wrong ones.
Danny: Your best bet would be to take the O-rings out of your pump down to any place that sells O-rings to the hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder and valve repair shops in your area, tell them they're from a swimming pool pump and follow their advice. My guess is that they'll sell you the same 70 durometer nitrile O-rings that are what everything in plumbing uses, and you'll have everything you need for less than $5.
I have 66 faucets in my building; 21 kitchen faucets, 21 bathroom sink faucets, 21 Tub & Shower faucets and three laundry room sink faucets. I can't remember the last time I bought an O-ring in a hardware store or plumbing wholesaler. I buy all of my O-rings from Kepco Sealing Supplies in Winnipeg, and they primarily cater to the hydraulics and pnuematics industries, not to the plumbing industry. But all the plumbing hardware you buy in North America uses standard size O-rings, just like the hydraulics and pneumatics sector of the economy does, so they're completely interchangeable. The manufacture doesn't know which O-ring is going onto a kitchen faucet spout and which one is going into a pneumatic cylinder, he just makes them to the standard size out of the same rubber, and the O-rings he sells can be used equally well in either application.
I have read the o-ring charts and PDFs, e.g., this chart:
And this PDF (starting on page 7):
In these charts, the O-### goes up with increasing size of the o-ring; yet, in the list of O-rings I'm trying to doublecheck, that relationship does *not* hold true.
If nobody can easily explain why, in a single sentence or so, that means that they actually don't understand this any more than I do.
That's OK; but for you to intimate otherwise, without actually providing that single sentence, implies that you're in the same boat that I'm in on this sizing discrepancy.
I should clarify that statement, by saying that for o-ring sizes from O-001 to O-050, the designation increases as the size of the O-ring increases.
Then the size designation jumps, to O-102, where it starts all over again, tracking size up to O-178.
Again, there is a discontinuity, until we get to the range of O-201 to O-284, where, again, increasing size tracks increasing number.
Another discontinuity; and then we start at O-309 to O-395 for the next set ... until we jump to O-425 to O-475 for the penultimate set ... and finally, we have O-901 to O-932 for the final range.
Within a range, the o-rings increase in size with increasing O-### designation. There are six ranges.
I'll have to dig deeper to see what the variants are that determine the six ranges. Probably it's a ratio thing of the key measurements to themselves.
If anyone knows offhand, why the six ranges - let us know in a single sentence if it's not a ratio thing.
Ah, digging deeper, I find the six "groups" are numbered
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 (go figure) corresponding to the O-1##, O-2##, O-3##, etc., designations, for a total of 369 standard sizes.The first five groups are (mostly) based on cross-sectional diameter (ranging from 0.040 to 0.275 inch). Within any one of those cross-sectional groups, inside diameters range from
0.029 to 25.940 inches, counting upward.Just to confuse you, the sixth group is organized by outside diameter in 1/16 inch increments.
REF: SAE Aerospace Standard AS568B
Sometimes it takes more than a sentence or two to explain stuff. Sometimes people who know aren't willing to spend the time.
Sometimes systems that appear to have no consistency .... really do have consistency & sometimes they don't. :(
A lot of the time you try to "delve" into things to look for meaning where none exists. :(
Sometimes things just have to be believed / accepted....
think about the spelling of lots of english word, no rhyme or reason (sometimes) just have to accept it.
DDD-
When it comes to O-rings or anything related to O-rings..... we're not in the same boat, not even on the same continent. :(
If you think I'm going to waste my time giving you an education (for free) about O-rings, you're even more of a DDD than I imagined.
WGAF? You focus on the silliest things...... And how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
< OT warning >
My dad taught me that if it can't be explained, it isn't understood. For example, what a tangent?
Last week, a friend of mine wanted to doublecheck drawings for trapezoidal-shaped windows where he needed an overlap of 1/2 inch all around for the window glass dimensions:
He had the numbers - he just wanted to doublecheck them.
He asked me how, and I came up with this simple formula for the upper overlap (all other dimensions being purely additive) given the symmetry of parallel lines, geometric angles, & high-school trig: Side1=tangent of (90° + angle°)/2 * 1/2 inch overlap Side2=tangent of (90° - angle°)/2 * 1/2 inch overlap
He checked all his drawings with a calculator proclaiming the answer correct. He then googled what a tangent was, and apparently he got the answer that it's the slope at any point of the curve.
He called me back, asking "What's a tangent?" because the fact that it's the slope of a curve doesn't help him understand what it is. Sure, he saw the graph of a tangent on the web - but that didn't help him understand. You know what I told him?
I said draw a one-inch right triangle with a 45° angle & note the sides have a ratio of 1:1. The tangent of 45° is simple the ratio of the opposite side over the adjacent side. Now change the angle to 34° (which was his angle), and you'll see the same ratio holds true. So you have an equation where if you know two of the three components, you can solve for the third. He understood.
I could have waxed and waned with using unit circles and definition of the slope and describing sines over cosines (like math teachers do); but, the answer (for him) was as simple as the relationship of an angle to a ratio.
Note: He then tried to apply the tangent to degrees in Microsoft Excel, which only uses radians, so I had to explain radians to him; but I'll just leave that explanation to your imagination. :)
Point is: If it can't be explained simply - it's not understood.
Back on topic, now that I know the O-ring sizing scheme, I can doublecheck my numbers.
More importantly, for the o-rings that I don't already have the trade size for, I first measure the cross section and that already tells me the series (as long as it's not a boss seal). Then I measure the ID & I have the trade size. It's that easy. :)
Plus, this method works for all o-rings in the household! Learning is all the fun (the rest is just work).
You're forgetting that some people love to learn!
In fact, learning is more fun than actually doing the work.
For example, learning about how unions sealed using boss o-rings while NPT threads seal with goop was more fun than getting that goop all over my fingers.
Specifically, learning that the union o-rings are measured differently than the sealing o-rings is more fun than twisting unions together and not having them leak.
The meaning is in the learning - not in the work itself.
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