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Perfect timing for my pump (or entire system to stop working) Merry Christmas!

rchorbagian
rchorbagian Member Posts: 3
in A-C, Heat Pumps & Refrigeration
Woke this morning at 3am to a thunderous clanking noise from the boiler room downstairs. Ran down and realized to noise was coming from my Bell & Gossett 118844 pump. I turned off the system at the switch. Quickly saw that the spring coupler had blown apart. I went and got the replacement part, put everything back together....all went fine. But then I went to flip the switch back on and.....nothing. At all. Furnace doesnt fire up, pump doesnt come on. Just silence. There are two apartments in the building. The other unit is working fine. I checked the breaker marked "boiler" for the second floor and its not tripped. 30 amp fuse for the switch is good. At my wits end here. One thing I'm unsure about...if the motor is bad, would it prevent the rest of the system from kicking on as some kind of safety feature? By the way, the furnace is a Weil-McLain. Anyway thanks for any and all help.

Comments

  • Zman
    Zman Member Posts: 7,611
    Do you have a multimeter? The first step would be to verify that it is getting power.
    "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"
    Albert Einstein
  • HVACNUT
    HVACNUT Member Posts: 6,283
    edited December 2018
    How did you go about changing the coupling without verifying the power was off in the first place?
    You coulda lost some piggies.
    Depends on the controls if the boiler maintains temp or not.
    With the power off, does the motor shaft turn freely?
    What about the impeller side?
    Sometimes the coupling just breaks, but sometimes it does what it designed to do and that's break if something else locks up.
  • rchorbagian
    rchorbagian Member Posts: 3
    I turned off the switch that controls the furnace before I replaced the coupling. Yes, with the power off both the motor shaft and the impeller side turn freely.
    First time home owner here and very uninformed when it comes to electrical stuff. I just went down with a multimeter and checked the wires going into the switch for power. Nothing read on the multimeter (set for 250 dc volts), but I did get a little jolt unfortunately when I went to put the wire nuts back on. Yes, I know Im a moron. But Im a pretty good damn carpenter.
  • Zman
    Zman Member Posts: 7,611
    edited December 2018
    You will want to set the meter to AC. Check voltage hot to ground and hot to Neutral. They should both be 120 +/-.
    The coupler may have locked up the motor when it failed, damaging it.
    "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"
    Albert Einstein
  • kevink1955
    kevink1955 Member Posts: 88
    While you were swapping couplers could your apartment have warmed up and is no longer calling for heat also do you have an electronic thermostat, some of them have a time delay after power failure before they come back on. Leave the power on for a while and see what happens.
    rchorbagianSuperTech
  • HVACNUT
    HVACNUT Member Posts: 6,283
    If it's one of those old switches that clicks when you flip it on or off, it probably wont close anymore.
  • EBEBRATT-Ed
    EBEBRATT-Ed Member Posts: 16,364
    After you get it runing you should also get the 30 amp fuse out of their. It is most likely way to large for the wire you have.

    #14 wire 15 amp fues
    #12 wire 20 amp fuse.
    #10 wire 30 amp fuse
    kcoppSTEVEusaPA
  • rchorbagian
    rchorbagian Member Posts: 3
    kevink1955 said:

    While you were swapping couplers could your apartment have warmed up and is no longer calling for heat also do you have an electronic thermostat, some of them have a time delay after power failure before they come back on. Leave the power on for a while and see what happens.

    This was the problem. Thanks all for the help. We're up and running.
    DZorokcopp
  • kevink1955
    kevink1955 Member Posts: 88
    Glad to hear it was something simple. Thanks for returning to let us know, many times we never hear what the outcome was.
    DZorokcopp
  • unclejohn
    unclejohn Member Posts: 1,833
    I love happy endings. It's like finding ZuZu's petals in your pocket.
  • kevink1955
    kevink1955 Member Posts: 88
    Funny extra to the story, My son called me last night, he was helping a friend install a smart stat. They ran a new thermostat cable to add a C wire and now nothing works including the 2 zones they did not touch. He was going home to get his multimeter to test the transformer on the assumption that they had a short and burned up the transformer. I agreed that he should start at the Xformer looking for 24v.

    He called me laughing about an hour later, they had found the problem, his friend had turned on a light switch instead of the service switch that they had turned off earlier,

    Moral of the story is always make sure it's plugged in before tearing things apart.
    DZoroSuperTechErin Holohan Haskell

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