Stand back from the impeller!

Our swimming pool pressure was too low, so I called our pool service company yesterday. The eager and knowledgeable pool technician calmly recited, as if from a troubleshooting guide, "If pressure is too high, there is air in the system; if it’s too low, the impeller is clogged." Seemed to me that he was telling me to unclog my own impeller.

This brought back to remembrance an incident I had a year or so ago. At that time, I actually tried to clear out the impeller myself, frustrated by darkness, agitation, and a pool party scheduled the next day for 30 people from my son's high school class. Now, at that time, I had no idea that there was something called "an impeller", or that cleaning it would solve the problem. Frustrated with failure, we cancelled the party and called for the pool service the next day to fix the problem. Of course, it was a 5-minute job for them, and they left with these encouraging words, "You *almost* had it, you were so close to fixing it yourself!"

Fast forward to yesterday, I went out to the pool equipment with a couple of wrenches to tackle the problem, emboldened by the remembrance of those encouraging words from last year, "You were so close!"

Well, I failed again; unable to get the ring secured that holds the impeller housing to the motor housing. To me, the bolt was 1/4" too short, and no matter what I did, I could not get the "custom" bolt to grab.

Of course, being the techno-geek guy, I scoured the web for manuals, diagrams, how-to guides, anything that might help me fix the problem. Someday, I hope to be able to find a “pool technician” among my LinkedIn network of local Metro DC connections. And maybe DodgeBall will someday be able to send an SMS text message to a pool technician in my network who just happens to be in my neighborhood, when I have this problem again.

Of course, I couldn't find help online, and called the pool service again to see if they could finish my unfinished project, which they did yesterday afternoon. There's probably a trick to this, which is part of that secret troubleshooting guide that all new pool technicians get along with the secret handshake, that my eager technician has who first answered my call. But since I never actually SEE them fixing it, I'll just have to call them right away when I suspect that the impeller is clogged.

Or maybe, I'll try to fix it again... I was VERY close!