On the surface, pumps seem like pretty simple things. But combining electrical and mechanical operations to move water from one place to another is complex and can be rife with problems. In this webinar, instructor Wade Heisler helps take some of the mystery out of basic pump maintenance. We'll discuss maintenance strategies and techniques to help keep pumps from failing in the first place.

Video Transcription

Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us. Today we're going to talk about basic pump maintenance, but I wanted to get a little bit of housekeeping items out of the way before we get started. Probably the most frequent question that we get when we do these webinars is, "Are attendees able to get a copy of the presentation?" And the answer to that question is an emphatic, "Yes, absolutely." At the conclusion of the webinar, you'll receive an email from us. Simply respond to that email if you wish to get a copy of the presentation, and I will send that out to you very, very quickly. Also, if anybody you know happens to miss the webinar and still wants to view it, this will be up on our YouTube page within likely the next 24 to 48 hours. So if anybody happens to miss it, we can always have them take a look at that recording. But with that being said, I'd like to introduce Wade Heisler, TPC Trainco instructor, who specializes in mechanical, and he's going to bring us through the wonderful world of basic pump maintenance.

Wade: Morning...so that being said, welcome to, "Basic Pump Maintenance." In the wide, wide world of pumps, we tend to, in our facilities, kind of ignore the pumps until they become a problem. So, you know, the topic that we got showing up here on the top page, "Basic Pump Maintenance: Trying to Keep a Problem from Happening in the First Place." As we go along, like John said, my name's Wade Heilser, I'm a mechanical instructor for TPC Trainco. I've been doing this for quite a while. I spent some time working for a quaint metropolitan maintenance supply organization technical support for pumps and plumbing. I was also a maintenance instructor for United Airlines for 13 years. I did everything but airplanes, so if you can imagine things that take place, the things that happen at an airport facility, my specialty while I was at United Airlines was I taught the icers and the icing equipment. So that got into glycol-mixing and all that kind of fun stuff. So I've been around a lot of pumps, seen a lot of problems, and one of the things I learned over the years is that people tend to ignore my pump, or ignore our pumps, until they really start giving us problems. So that being said, I understand you guys are all here to try to find out some mysteries of, "What happens inside my pump?" and "Why the heck did it just decide to crap out today on me?" So, as John points out here, and I don't know if John's going to jump in and say a bunch of things for us, but TPC Training Systems, like it says here, we're the leader in industrial training

We offer a great lineup of training solutions to help build a better, safer, more efficient workforce, and I actually work for TPC Trainco. I do some work for TPC, Ischematic, I do some mechanical reviews and drawings and such and stuff like that. So I basically teach pump repair and maintenance, pumping systems, I teach hydrolics. I also teach generators and emergency power systems, it's on the mechanical side of the world. So it's kind of fun. I get to meet a lot of fun people. I get to see a lot of things. So, anyway, what we do at Trainco specifically in an open seminar is we kind of cover the generics. However, if you should select us to do an onsite, we can specify and drill down and be more specific to the equipment in your facility, point out some things to help you avoid problems in the future, point out some things that might point out what you can do to improve your maintenance on your pumps, how to prevent problems from occurring, okay? So while this is all going on, you might want to just think about some questions to throw out there at the end of this thing. We'll be here to answer as many as we possibly can. And so, as far as TPC Trainco goes, we offer a lot of courses on different types of mechanical and electrical products. So that being said, looking at our training solutions, the better, safer, more efficient. As far as in the industrial, mechanical side, I think safety's probably the most important thing when working around any type of a piece of equipment.

So our emphasis on safety and understanding and where to find that information while you're out there trying to figure out what's going on. So, let's see, come on. There we go. So when we start to look at pumps in particular in our facilities, I always ask the question, "What type of pump is it you have? What is it doing?" Okay? On the far left-hand side, you'll see a rather large white pump in the picture there. And I was kind of remiss when I took that picture, because standing next to it my head was just about underneath that Allis-Chalmers logo there in the picture. I don't know if you can see that or make that out. So this is quite a large pump, and when I asked the question, "What's this pump doing?" This pump is actually one of two pumps on a waste treatment facility out in California, and just to give you some kind of an idea, this thing pumps somewhere in the near neighborhood of about 186,000 to 196,000 gallons an hour. It was a mixed-flow pump, it pumps effluent. So it's bringing inbound sewage into the facility and spreading it around.