Pool Not Running? Start Here

You’re having a smooth route, then you open a gate and everything is wrong: no surface movement, debris sitting still, and water that looks like it hasn’t circulated in days. We break down how we troubleshoot a pool that’s not running without spiraling into guesswork, starting with the fastest visual clues and moving step-by-step through the equipment pad. If you service pools for a living, this is the kind of real-world diagnostic process that saves time, protects gear, and helps you explain the “why” to a customer on the spot. 

We start with water level and skimmer behavior, including why newer skimmers with float diverter valves can hide the real story. From there we get hands-on with common pump startup failures: the classic hum-then-click that often points to a bad start or run capacitor, what to look for on the pump, and why carrying common capacitors can turn a disaster stop into a quick win. 

Then we shift into pool electrical troubleshooting that actually works in the field: using a simple voltage tester, checking the equipment subpanel, flipping breakers that look “on” but are partially tripped, and tracking down a main panel that might be unlabeled, locked, or tucked inside a garage. We also cover why breakers trip in the first place, how failing bearings and overheating motors.

Finally, we get into the sneaky problems that fool even experienced techs: customers hitting the stop button on a variable speed pump, shutting the system off to save money, suction leaks from worn pump lid o-rings, heat-damaged threaded fittings, and even old-school kill switches that override the timer. 

• spotting low water and skimmer problems fast
• understanding float diverter valves and why surfaces can mislead
• recognizing the hum-and-click pattern of a bad capacitor
• swapping a matching capacitor safely and quickly
• using a simple voltage tester to confirm power
• checking subpanels and main panels for partial breaker trips
• catching customer-caused shutdowns like VS pump stop buttons
• diagnosing lost prime from lid o-rings and suctio

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Transcript

Water Level And Skimmer Clues

Capacitor Failures And Quick Swaps

Power Tests And Breaker Hunting

Customer Mistakes That Stop Pumps

Low Water Aftermath And Suction Leaks

Kill Switches And Final Wrap

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm gonna talk about what happens if you arrive at a pool and it's not running. I'll go over some common issues and things you can check right away to get the pool running again, if at all possible. And I'll address some of the kind of odd things that you may run into when you get to a service account and the pool seems to not have been running all week. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. I suppose every field has their kind of things that they dread. And in pool service, one of the things that I think is something that's universally dreaded is getting to a pool. Well, I'll start when you're just going through your route, everything's going great, you're having a really good day, you've knocked out like five pools, then you get to your sixth pool, and you open the gate to get back there, and you go back there, and you can see uh all the leaf debris on top, the bottom has is some debris, nothing seems to be moving, the water is a little bit murky, and right away you know that the pool has not been running for a few days. And to me, this is something that kind of kind of ruins your day because now you know that it could be something major, of course it could be something minor, but it's still an irritant when you get to a stop and everything is stagnant, nothing is running. So, what are the steps you take to get things going again? Well, there are some obvious things when you first look at the pool. The first thing, of course, is the water level. Sometimes the customer let the water level get down below the skimmer, and that would stop, of course, any kind of surface skimming. It may not mean that the pool hasn't been running because the main drains may have kicked in. Depending on how the skimmer is set up, the newer skimmers have what they call a float diverter valve. I call it the UFO device. This goes into the bottom of the skimmer, you pull it out, it looks like a UFO basically, and this will actually divert the flow from the skimmer to the main drain automatically if the water gets too low. So even if the surface looks kind of terrible, the pool actually may still be turning on because of that float diverter valve. But for older pools that don't have that, when the water level gets below the skimmer or gets low enough to where it starts sucking air, nothing's gonna run. And this may even cause the pump to turn off by overheating. It's one of those things where the pump may not even be able to prime during its regular cycle, so it's just kind of running dry the whole time. So just be aware of the fact that it's not always something catastrophic, it could just be low water level. But that's pretty obvious when you glance at it for the first time. You can see that the water level is too low, and that's why the pool has not been running. The next step, of course, is to go over to the equipment and check to see what could be the problem. The first thing I do is I turn on the pump, and if it's off, I turn it on, or if it's running, I turn it off and then on again. And you may hear a humming and clicking noise, it may go click, and that usually is a bad capacitor. I mean it could be the motor seized up and overheated, but usually the classic hum and then the click is a bad capacitor, start or run capacitor. If you look at the pump, usually on top there's like a little container, a metal container that's you know two or three inches long and one inch tall, and that's the capacitor inside there. You just unscrew that, and the capacitor has two wires. There's really no need to mark the wires, they can go on either of the prongs of the capacitor. You want to discharge the capacitor with like a screwdriver so you don't get any kind of surge. And usually there's no problem there if the motor's been off for a few days. And there's just change that capacitor. You have to have the same capacitor. So if you want to carry a couple of common capacitors, if you have a lot of whisper flows or haywood pumps, get that capacitor and have it on your truck so you can swap it out easily, and that will get the pool running again in most cases with that new capacitor. You'll turn it on and right away the pump will start up. So that's probably number one. In you know, it's just one of those things where if the capacitor goes bad, it's just not gonna start the pump, and the pool will look really stagnant all week, it won't be running, of course, all week long. There's occasions where it may come on. I've had capacitors where it just, you know, and then the pump comes on. But usually you have to replace that capacitor to get the pump running. So that's the first thing that I check, and sometimes you'll turn it on and off and you have no noise at all. That could indicate that the motor is definitely burned out. That could also indicate a power issue as well. It's always good to carry the uh electric electric meter that lights up. You know, you can get them on Amazon for like$12, and this is where you touch something and it starts to beep and it lights up green, or actually lights up red, I should say, and that shows you have power to the device. So I always pull that out next, and then you can touch like the timer, you can touch the back of the motor, you can touch the coil, the wires where they're going in, and if it's not having any indication, and you look I like to stick it into maybe a socket by the by the equipment too, and test that as well to see if it's working. I just go all over the place to see any power there. And sometimes there's no power to anything back there. So there's a subpanel usually at the equipment. I always check those breakers, and even if it looks like the breaker is on, by the way, go ahead and flip it on and off because sometimes it'll trip off, but it'll be fractional. So it looks like it's even on, but it's actually it actually tripped slightly. So just turn the subpanel breaker by the equipment on and off, and that may solve the problem. Everything may fire up, but there is also a secondary main panel. Now, here's where it gets tricky sometimes finding that main panel if you never have used it before, typically it's on the side of the house. But I've had many accounts where it's inside the garage, and there are some houses where it's actually inside the house itself, it's kind of weird, but that you know, older houses they put the main panel inside the house itself, and it's something that can be tricky to find, you know, where is the main panel? So I can check the breaker to the pool equipment, and when all else fails, just call the customer and say, Hey, I'm you're you have no power to your pool equipment. Where's your main panel? And sometimes they're locked, unfortunately, and sometimes you can't access them. And the same thing holds true with the main panel. And the thing that also adds to kind of the problem is that most of the time nothing is marked on the main panel, or if it's marked, it's marked by a sharpie and it's like all faded, or it's marked where you can't, it's not legible, and you don't want to be flipping breakers on and off, but you can look for anything that looks tripped, and that's a good indicator that that's the breaker for the pool. A lot of times, if it's a 220-volt equipment pad, there's a double prong breaker, and that indicates this pool. Sometimes it's marked clearly. Again, you do the same thing where if it's marked and you looks like it's on, you can flip it back off and then on again, or you can look in there and see a breaker that's tripped, and that's usually the pool equipment. What trips the breaker? It could be a number of things, but typically if the motor starts to get hot, the breaker will trip as a fail safe, and that indicates that the motor may be burning out. You should hear this prior to any kind of trip breaker. You know, when you get to the stop, you hear that the motor is much louder than normal, and then it starts to get even louder and louder, and this indicates that the bearings are going bad, the motor is getting really hot, and that can trip the breaker. It could also just be a really hot day, the sun hitting the motor, the motor being a little old, and that's getting really hot as well. That may trip the breaker as well. It could be something else that is not related to the motor, but typically it is the motor that trips the breaker, and simply turning that back on. And if the motor cooled off over time, it may be okay and it may start up the pump. It may not start up, and that would indicate that the motor is probably shot. There are occasions where I've actually turned on the breaker, and the motor actually sparked and smoke started coming out of the back of it, and that was a clear indicator that this particular motor has been burned out. I actually had this happen in front of a customer. You know, he came out, he was like, Oh yeah, the pool hasn't been running, what's going on? So I turned on the breaker that had tripped, and the motor, the pump came on, and the motor started to catch the flames came out of the back of the motor basically, and then it turned off. That was a pretty easy sell for sure. So obviously, if the pump is not running and there's no power to the system, the pool's not going to be running, so you have to troubleshoot all of that and make sure that you you know diagnose it correctly. There's been some times where people have replaced the motor, get everything set up, turn it on, and nothing happens because there's actually a power problem. And there are some cases where you'll have to call an electrician out. There's been some cases I've run into where the line isn't really giving the full voltage, it could be getting old, and that actually affects the motors and it's it actually burns them out fast faster when they're not getting the full voltage. So you want to make sure that that's not an electrical problem causing that happening. But of course, start with the capacitor if you hear that noise, or start with the powers or the breakers, and get all that out of the way. There may be a very simple solution to why the pool is not running as well. Don't overlook this, the the obvious things, like for instance, with a standalone variable speed pump, a lot of times the customer will use their pool and then they'll hit the stop-start button or on-off button and not re-engage it. And that's a simple fix. You just simply turn the pump back on, and they're designed this way for a number of reasons. There's there's really no way to bypass this on a standalone pump. So you want to make sure that you tell the customer ahead of time that if you use your pool and you turn your pump off because you don't like the noise or whatever reason to turn it off, always hit the start again when they go in. And of course, you're not gonna remember that a lot of times, but at least you as a pool service provider know that that's one thing that it could be. They simply could have just stopped the pump, went inside the house, and not started again, because then it's gonna be off all week, it's not gonna run its normal program cycle. So just be aware that the standalone VS pumps have a dedicated start-stop on-off button that needs to be activated, and if someone deactivates it, that's a problem. I had one customer one time that the pool looked like it was stagnant, but when I got there it was turning on. I was like, what's the problem here? And I couldn't figure it out, but she was elderly, and one day I caught her outside and the pump was off when it was supposed to be on, and I was like, oh, this is weird, because the timer showed that I should be running at that time, and she said, Oh, every day I might hear gardening and I don't like the noise, and so I always turn it off. And so it's like running like one or two hours a day basically, and she's killing it the rest of the day because she's out there in her yard gardening. So that's another thing. Could be something weird like that happening where the customer is actually turning it off. And I had customers a lot of times in the summer say they turn off their pool during the peak time because they don't want the electricity bill to be high. So always think about those odd things as well, even if it's not a VS pump, the customer may be trying to save money and turning off the pump on you, which does happen. Let me go back to the beginning where I talked about low water being a problem. And sometimes the customer will refill the pool and you won't know that the pool ran dry. And some of the telltale signs, of course, is that the pump, when you get there, you turn everything on, the pump's not priming. And of course, you could fill it up with water and then try priming it, and that may not work at that point as well. And then you would kind of consider the fact that there may be a suction leak that developed when the pool ran dry. Again, the customer may have filled the pool up, and the evidence of the low water is gone, and so that clue is not there for you. But the pump not priming after, you know, if last week it was fine and this week it's not priming, that could be the case. They filled it up and it has actually been running dry long enough to melt the threaded fitting on the intake or outlet pipe. So if you look at your pool pump, you'll see that the top and the top and the front have threaded fittings, and this is for the either a union or a threaded PVC to go in there, and that's kind of necessary when you go to change out the pump. You can't just kind of cut the pipe, and there's no way to get it out at that point if it's glued directly into the pump. And by the way, I've had an account before where the installer actually glued the threads with PVC cement, and that one was impossible, of course, to get out, but you're not supposed to do that, you're supposed to use a join stick or Teflon tape to do that. And usually it's a schedule 40 PVC going in the front, most unions are schedule 40, and most of the PVC pipe going into the front and top of the pump are schedule 40. So if you've run into this problem and you notice that the pump's not priming, and you may even see water dripping out of the top of the threaded fitting or the front, usually the top of it is where you see the water, you would have to cut that out and replace it. And I would definitely replace it with the schedule 80 PVC. It's a gray colored. They also make I think unions with the gray schedule 80 PVC in there. That has a higher temperature rating, I think it's 120 degrees or something like that, 140 degrees, I think, is a rating. So it's much better to use that at pool accounts, especially when you're installing, to prevent that from happening. The old trick that I used to do is harder in California because we don't have the plastic bags anymore. But one easy way to check to see if you have a suction leak on the discharge is to get a plastic bag that you would get. Home Depot still carries the ones that are pretty good for this, and just tie it around the discharge really tight. You can also use commercial grade electrical tape to do this. And if the pump primes up right away after you put the plastic bag there and tie it really tight, this is right at the top of the pump where the threads are coming into the PVC pipe, or put the commercial grade electrical tape there and it primes up, then you know pretty sh you're pretty it's a pretty short bet that there's a discharge leak because suction leak because air is coming out of the melted threads on the pump. Of course, that to say all this, you want to back up one step, and it could be something as simple as a pumplet o-ring that's warped or worn out, causing the pump to lose the prime that week, and this happens as well. So usually what happens is that you you service the pool, you empty the pump basket, put the lid back on the week prior to this happening, and the o-ring might have been worn, you didn't notice it, and so some air is getting in there, and over time the air builds up to a point where the pool pump lost its prime and can't reprime the pool. And of course, replacing that pump with O-ring will solve the problem. But low water and having a suction leak afterwards is a very common thing to happen out there, especially if there's no float diverter valve on the skimmer UFO device that will divert the water to the main drain. If that skimmer starts sucking air continuously, that pump gets so hot that you probably experience this if you've been doing this long enough. You take the pump lid off and you take the pump basket out, and it's like half the size of a regular pump basket. I had one that was so hot and so bad that the whisper flow basket looked like one of those shrunken heads from the cannibals. And you know, I was gonna take that pump basket and make a necklace out of it. It was, you know, that's how shrunken it got from the heat of that pump running dry. So that to me is one of the main causes of the pump not priming. You have a suction leak of some kind and air is getting in there because it has to be a completely sealed system to pull the water through and back out into the pool. And I'll end with this last one that you may run into this problem. It's usually pools that were built in the 80s that had this installed, and that's a kill switch for the pool. If it's a if it has a attached spa to it, some builders back in the 80s put kill switches in so that the customer can, if they're using a spa, they can just go inside and turn off everything without having to turn all the valves back, and the next day they can go back out there, put the valves back in pool mode. And so the kill switch might even be in like the living room. I've had that happen before where I got to the pool, there's no power to the equipment, but there's power to the equipment, but there's nothing running. And this kill switch was actually right by the back light where you turn on the back sliding door light, and someone had flipped it down and it actually turned off the pool, it wouldn't it bypassed or it superseded the timer. So I had the innermatic timer and I kept on trying to figure out why it's not working. There's power, but the kill switch actually bypassed it, and you wouldn't be able to turn on and off the timer because the kill switch was in the off position. Sometimes the kill switch is out there by the equipment, there'll be like a little regular light switch, and you may have that, someone may have flicked that down or use their pool and spa or use their spa and flick the switch off. So that's rare, but I notice a lot of 80s pools had the kill switch, so check that as well. If you notice like a switch somewhere by the equipment, that could be the kill switch to the timer. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can go to my website, swimmingprolearning.com, and then you can of course click on the podcast icon at the banner. There'll be 1900 podcasts you'll listen to there. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at poolcoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week. God bless.