hydor L30 self-destruct
 

yesterday, just out of sheer coincidence, i decided to check the water level in my res. to my dismay, no water movement. then i realized that the pump was getting power due to the tell tale 60hz hum but no impeller movement. drained the system, took the pump apart and found that the plasic bearing pressed to the inner magnet had seperated and was binding the impeller to the shaft. i epoxied the parts back together as close to original as i could and re-installed. it's now working fine. the real question is, why the failure in the first place? i run a mix of distilled water and prestone with just a drop or two of water wetter. could it be that i had too much prestone and the viscosity of the coolant was too much for the pump? if you guys have any informed answers i'd appreciate it.

jason


p.s. the pump has only runs when the compter is on and was installed in december.

I doubt the viscosity was too high. I'm willing to bet the impeller was just faulty and broke. I'd keep checking on it though. I'm not sure if that epoxy will hold up for too long.

I suppose every pump brand has failures - but why are we hearing more about Hydor ones?
It's possible that the world of Hydor users is somehow "more connected" and there are more failure reports that find their way onto the web.... but the alternative is...

hard to say really, perhaps it's just the most popular alternative to other higher price pumps. again, before i blame the company, i wanted to make sure that the failure was not something that i caused. anyways, if this this thing dies again within a few weeks, i'll be replacing it with something a bit more reliable.

It's defineately not a viscosity problem. I would look into a pump manufacturing problem. I would also ditch the hydor due to obvious reasons of course.

really, the thing that i liked about the pump was the price/performance ratio. that and the fact that it was quite a bit smaller than a few other pumps making for an easier and cleaner install. i guess i'll have to start searching again for a worthy replacement.

I'm using the "Laguna Statuary Pump 3" by Hagen. Its rated at 384 lph at 6.5 head height (I think). It's small and compact and only 19 watts, and very quiet. I paid $69.00 cdn.
check it out at www.hagen.com