I have a love / hate relationship with my skimmer. I love the skimmer, but hate the pump. I have an SWC 160 skimmer that has an Atman PH2500 pump. I've lost count how many pumps I've put on this thing...somewhere in the range of ten or so. Anyway, the beast was making noise so I pulled out the pump to find that the impeller was eating itself.
The needle wheel portion is not suppose to come off the magnet portion. And if you look closely you can see the white stick portion of the magnet is partially conical......worn away.....must have been spinning on its own.
The good news is that this is the very first impeller I ever had to change on an Atman pump. That is, the impeller went before the pump went....that's a first! Knock on wood, this current pump has lasted the longest of any Atman I've had. (Probably shouldn't have said that....you know what I'll be doing next week) So I pull out a couple of the busted old spares to get the impellers and find that every impeller I look at is different than the one I currently have. Here's one example:
So I find one that's closest to the one I pulled out (has no white plastic on the backside of the magnet), and put that in the pump.
Reassemble the skimmer with pump and go to put it in the sump and bam! The shelf the skimmer sits on drops down on the right side because the support broke loose. Lousy picture, but the plexi with the half moons is the shelf and you can see it dipping down on the right side.
Upon inspection I find the nylon bolt was sheared off.
Not having a replacement nylon bolt on hand, I decided to use a stainless steel bolt and find the hole in the shelf bracket does not line up with the hole in the baffle. I'm guessing the "grain" of the two pieces of plexi were 90 degrees off and when one swelled from being submerged, it sheared the bolt. The only way I could get the replacement stainless steel to go in was to grind the one end to a point.
Anyway, back up and running with a new impeller on order.
The needle wheel portion is not suppose to come off the magnet portion. And if you look closely you can see the white stick portion of the magnet is partially conical......worn away.....must have been spinning on its own.
The good news is that this is the very first impeller I ever had to change on an Atman pump. That is, the impeller went before the pump went....that's a first! Knock on wood, this current pump has lasted the longest of any Atman I've had. (Probably shouldn't have said that....you know what I'll be doing next week) So I pull out a couple of the busted old spares to get the impellers and find that every impeller I look at is different than the one I currently have. Here's one example:
So I find one that's closest to the one I pulled out (has no white plastic on the backside of the magnet), and put that in the pump.
Reassemble the skimmer with pump and go to put it in the sump and bam! The shelf the skimmer sits on drops down on the right side because the support broke loose. Lousy picture, but the plexi with the half moons is the shelf and you can see it dipping down on the right side.
Upon inspection I find the nylon bolt was sheared off.
Not having a replacement nylon bolt on hand, I decided to use a stainless steel bolt and find the hole in the shelf bracket does not line up with the hole in the baffle. I'm guessing the "grain" of the two pieces of plexi were 90 degrees off and when one swelled from being submerged, it sheared the bolt. The only way I could get the replacement stainless steel to go in was to grind the one end to a point.
Anyway, back up and running with a new impeller on order.