Espa Iris 500 to fix or not to fix

That is the question that this customer made me, bringing his old Espa Iris 500 to repair.

If the motor is ok, generally it’s ok to repair, especially if are talking about a 1hp pool pump.

In this case, the Espa Iris 500, old pump model by Espa https://www.espa.com/corp-es/recirculacion-y-filtracion-bombas-para-piscinas/ we have a pool pump of 0,45 Kw so the owner can find something similar on the market for less than 200 eur BUT buy a new pump, also means modify the pipes, because the new model has got the inlet and the outlet of different high and different diameter.

So this customer accepted the quotation and we fixed his Espa Iris 500.

First electrical test OK: https://youtube.com/shorts/XUubSKBlN70?si=bZ8QLvFxtuh5z6uy in this link you can see the insulation electrical test.

Second electrical test OK: https://youtube.com/shorts/spoI7odDQ5A?si=ntMzbvBhwveKsB9b in this link you find the “high voltage test”. The machine, send 1000V on the motor, so if we have any little wire not insulated, we definitely can see it.

With all the pieces in my hand, I can see clearly the problem: the old impeller broke and water leaked inside, damaging the mechanical seal, the shaft and the ball bearing.

In this photo you can see the oxidized shaft and the broken impeller of an Espa Iris 500.

More time and work requires to clean the shaft and find the spare part of this old pump. We need a specific impeller for this pump.

https://youtube.com/shorts/q3wmNWm284Y?si=RmKhd5dbS1BDr4R_

Here you see the result of the cleaning. If you don’t clean the shaft you’ll be not able to keep the ball bearing off.

Now we can reassemble the pump with the new spare parts, test it  and give it back to the customer.

You can find more examples of repaired pool pump in our blog:

https://headpumps.com/en/pool-pump-problems/

https://headpumps.com/en/flooded-pool-pumps-sometimes-could-be-better-not-repair/