Flushing Salt Crystals out of your Filtration System with Hot Water – DSP 218

In the Daily Solutions Podcast episode #137 Cause and Solutions for a Crystallized Pump, Ashkahn and Graham discussed what causes this, how to avoid it, and some tips for fixing it.

Today, the guys share a more in depth solution on the problem, and specifically talk about the step by step process of desolidifying your pump system by flushing it with hot water.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Ashkahn: All right, welcome everybody.

Graham: Hey there.

Ashkahn: This is Ashkahn.

Graham: And I’m Graham over here.

Ashkahn: And this is the Daily Solutions Podcast, you know I feel like we don’t say that enough.

Graham: Don’t feel like repeating those words during all of our intros. Sometimes horrendously annoying waves.

Ashkahn: I just sometimes think a little extra one would be nice. So this is the Daily Solutions Podcast.

Graham: That’s two extra ones technically.

Ashkahn: Welcome.

Graham: But today’s question is, “I just listened to your podcast about treating a pump that has been stuck by salt and no water flow.”

Ashkahn: That was a good one. That was a classic.

Graham: Big mistake right there. Listening to our podcast will definitely give you a lot more questions. So they say, “But I didn’t understand how you can get the hot water to the pump. Or do I have to take the pump out of the filter machine. Any insights would be appreciated.”

Ashkahn: I like that. I’m going to start calling it a filter machine.

Graham: I was going to start calling you a filter machine. Ashkahn ‘filter machine’ Jahromi.

Ashkahn: You used to call me that in high school. That was my nickname. So how do you get the hot water to flow? For quick reference, we mentioned in our previous episode, episode DSP 137 for you loyal fans out there following along, we talked about salt getting in your pump and crystallizing through various reasons of temperature and that salt crystallization stopping your pump from running. And the solution’s easy, you’re just putting hot water through your pump to dissolve all that salt.

Graham: But you are correct to be confused if you’re picturing somehow getting the hot water to run through your pump while it’s still attached to your system. Because inherently, the problem is it is basically one solid object at this point. The things that would normally be tubes in your pump that water would be flowing through is now just salt. So there is no way to get it to flow through without first removing it.

Ashkahn: So what we do is we create an elaborate system of straws where you kind of connect the straws together to form those super straws and we just kind of blow hot water through it as hard as we can with our mouths.

Graham: Which limits the temperature that you can have of hot water for what’s comfortable inside your mouth.

Ashkahn: To maximum mouth temp.

Graham: So your pump system is frozen with crystallized salt. You need to take your pump out of there before you can actually heat it up. And at that point, you’re just kind of pouring buckets or cups of hot water over that area of the pump. Careful not to get it on the mechanical end or on the electronics.

Ashkahn: Well, I think with this, I think the confusion here is just that you have to actually unscrew your pump. You just can’t do it with your pump connected to the system. So the issue is, it’s not like you’re trying to push hot water through the entire filtration system by running the filtration system. So you have these things called unions usually or some other method like sometimes there’s metal brackets around kind of a rubber gasket section. But there’s usually some sections of your pump that are meant to be unattached. They’re not glued together and ideally the kind of most convenient way to typically build filtration systems is to have those around each component.

So ideally on either end of your pump there’s a kind of dedicated spot where the pipes detach from the rest of the system and ideally same thing around your filter and your UV. And that way you can take these components off piece by piece. So you need to do that for your pump. You need to get your pump off the rest of the system. And often as well, another convenient thing to have in your filtration system is some sort of valve or I guess they’re just all called different types of valves, right?

Graham: Check valves.

Ashkahn: Ball valves, check valves, diaphragm valves. There’s various different mechanisms for sections of your piping that can close off, block it off. So there’s ball valves that you spin, it literally spins a little ball inside of the pipe that closes it off, there’s check valves-

Graham: There’s gate valves I think. I think they might all be called check valves, but there’s the gate valves that come down where you just kind of push a sliding guillotine sort of thing down.

Ashkahn: They make some diaphragm ones that have these areas that expand inside of the pipe and block it off. But the basic idea is like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to isolate just a section of your filtration system?” And if you have both of those things, you can do that. If you can stop all the liquid from flowing out if you were to disconnect something that used the valves to do that. And then you need a way to detach it, so you have those detachment points. And so when you have something like that in place, you can just pull the pump off. And then all of a sudden your pump is sitting there and you’re free to pour water through it and take it to the sink or whatever you need to do to make it a slightly less messy ordeal.

Graham: And pretty much scenarios like this are why those other components are there. Sometimes it’s in case there’s an electrical problem or whatever but that is the purpose they serve is, “You crystallized your pump. Great. We need a way to remove that so we can actually get rid of all the salt crystals on the inside.”

Ashkahn: And this, it really can vary a lot from float tank to float tank. Your float tank might not have those disconnection point specifically around the pump. It might have it for just kind of right around the part where it goes into and out of the float tank. So like the whole filtration system can be detached. You may not have those valves. Your pumps can be hardwired in way more significantly from some float tanks to another. So in some scenarios, to actually get your pump really away from the control box in the float room and in the float tank requires unscrewing some electrical wires which is not exactly stuff you want to be doing yourself typically.

So there’s just kind of a lot of different hurdles that could be in place potentially based off of what your filtration system’s like. But these are, in terms of customizing filtration systems, these are not the most difficult things to add. Adding in unions and adding in valves, they’re not going hurt your sanitation or something like that if you like. I don’t know how you could really, really screw it up. It’s just leaks. It’s a lot more points where things can leak and so you have to be really careful about cleaning them and putting them on, making sure they’re all really nice and well sealed when they are sealed.

But as you do encounter issues with these components, if we have a system that doesn’t have those, that’s one thing. We’ll add time by time as we have to take an individual piece off.

Graham: And definitely check in with your manufacturer about warranties and things like that before you just go kind of pimping out your filtration system on your own. But it’s true, these really aren’t hard changes to do and the alternative is to either deal with a lot of water that’s caught in your entire filtration system if you’re trying to disconnect the entire thing and just get your pump off. Or sometimes you actually have to go in and saw off whole pieces of pipe and bring them off and kind of re-glue them on. And that’s one of those cases where if we ever have to saw something, we’re like, “Oh, there should be a union here.” It should be as simple as twisting some parts rather than actually taking a kind of violent toothed mechanism to them.

Ashkahn: And I guess some advice on that sort of stuff. It can be especially tricky with float tanks to make sure these things have a good tight seal when you close them up. Because often, with something like a union, the other kind of metal brackets don’t have threading. It’s like a metal band that goes around a piece of rubber that kind of holds the pipes together. But a lot of times you see these threaded, spinning things that are the unions.

And then those, if you were to be a pool with regular water and you went to close one of these back up, most of the time, you’re just going to spin it on and everything’s going to be great and totally good to go. But with float tanks, if any salt water gets on the threading, then the water will evaporate and little salt crystals will be left in the threading. And as a result, it won’t get a good, tight close when you go to close it back on and that can lead to leaks.

So you really want to make sure to get that nice and clean before you close it up on both sides of the threading. And sometimes there can be little O-rings, especially for those unions. They almost always have a little O-ring kind of in the union and those are easy to misplace when you’re taking off the pump in the first place and everything’s salty and crazy and you’re panicking a little bit. It’s hard to remember that in that process you might be randomly dropping a little black kind of circle O-ring somewhere that is going to become really important in about two hours from when you’re doing that.

Graham: And those things can get deformed over time and because of just different handling and pressure and stuff like that. So when you’re putting the little O-rings back on, also make sure they’re actually fitting exactly into the groove that they’re supposed to go into there. And if not, then having some replacements on hand specifically to be able to fit into not just that, but any of your filtration components that kind of require gaskets or O-rings. It’s great to have a properly sized one to fix it if it is either busted or again, just kind of mal-shapen.

Ashkahn: Replacements are great.

Graham: Super awesome.

Ashkahn: Remember to not over-tighten things. That’s an easy thing to if you’re like, “Okay, I really don’t want this thing to leak.” And so you just crank it, crank it closed. Or if you’re ever using tools to tighten this you’re going to far. This should just be kind of comfortably hand-tightened when you’re using unions and stuff like that.

Graham: Kind of like closing a refrigerator door. At no point should you actually have to put your full force against the refrigerator door. Hopefully the gasket provides a good seal.

Ashkahn: You can kind of just let go of a refrigerator door and it closes itself.

Graham: That’s all you have to do with these gaskets too. Just let it go, take your hands off it and-

Ashkahn: It’ll spin itself closed.

Graham: Kick that pump to overdrive.

Ashkahn: I have noticed sometimes if we have trouble opening one of our unions, spraying it down with vinegar. Just getting some of that, we usually just use distilled white vinegar diluted with water and we’ll just spray a whole bunch, as much as we can, kind of into the threading of that union and just wait a couple minutes and that usually helps loosen things up or prevents if there was any little bits of saltiness in there. It kind of breaks them up a little bit.

Graham: And separate from this, but if you guys ever have trouble opening a pickle jar, here’s what you do.

Ashkahn: Call me, I’ll come over. It’ll be great.

Graham: So assuming you get your pump off though, the other part is now how the heck do you get all of the salt out of there? Which is kind of what I had jumped to at the beginning of this episode.

Ashkahn: Oh, I see.

Graham: Right.

Ashkahn: So there’s a system of straws where you connect-

Graham: So there’s kind of two ways to start. One is, I mean, theoretically the salt crystals are going right up to the top of where the kind of piping or the tubing going into your pump is starting. So you either need to very carefully chisel away at that so you can get some water to kind of sit inside and start to dissolve.

Ashkahn: It depends. Sometimes if it hasn’t been too long it might not be totally solid.

Graham: That’s true, it might be kind of slushy versus completely crystallized but I’ve totally seen pumps where it’s just, it is one solid brick. And pouring hot water over it. And the first few batches of hot water you’re pouring over, you’re just trying to get that level of salt down to where hot water can actually sit inside the pipe and kind of work its magic. And from then it’s just really taking your time.

You pour hot water in, starts dissolving salt, starts cooling off, kind of dump it out, pour some more hot water in, it turns slushy, starts dissolving things, kind of mix it around and at some point it starts just kind of going faster and faster and the process gets easier. And then you’re able to actually just kind of flush the entire system out but it can be a time-consuming process getting all of the salt out of your pumps. Don’t think there’s a five-minute quick way to just blast hot water through and it’s done, you know?

Ashkahn: Unless you get these straws in which case you can go pretty fast. And you should be careful about splashing water onto the motor and kind of electronics end of your pump. And that also can vary from pump to pump. Most float tanks come with pumps that are at least splash-resistant. There’s different ratings to the dry end of the pump from splash-resistant to you could literally just be completely spraying them with a hose and they would be okay. And almost every float tank I see comes with the splash-resistant version. So more than just a normal kind of whatever pump but not the version where it’s like you could literally be hosing it down and it would all be cool.

Graham: But some do.

Ashkahn: But some do occasionally. Very rarely.

Graham: At least one.

Ashkahn: At least one. And so just something to keep in mind. Be careful with the dry end of the pump.

Graham: And I think that about wraps it up.

Ashkahn: We do sell the straws on our website. You guys. Which you can go to floattanksolutions.com/straws.

Graham: Slash podcast if on the other hand you just want to send us a question. Well I like this one. It’s great getting questions that are kind of follow-through questions on previous episodes. So if you’re confused by what we’re saying right now like, “Is it /straws or /podcast?” Go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and let us know.

Ashkahn: All right, we’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Graham: Bye, everyone.

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