Charles Austen ET100 air blower failed again........

[ProDave]

Out in the garden today, I noticed there was no noise from the treatment plant, the Charles Austen ET100 has failed again.

 

I have once replaced the diaphragms in this pump,  I don't recall exactly when and I can't find my previous post about it, but it does now seem very long ago that I replaced them. (if anyone can find my previous post please post a link to it)

 

So the question is, do I replace them again?  And accept this is a design of pump with an inbuilt short design life of the diaphragms?

 

Or are there alternatives available that are better, more reliable and possibly lower power?

 

I know these are generally talked of as good pumps, but to me something that needs servicing so frequently does not seem a good design.

 

How about this:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/315879624105?_skw=100l%2Fm+piston+air+pump&itmmeta=01JJ2C6CWW195RC06F730H2JT0&hash=item498be48da9:g:dOUAAOSwa2VnEMrs&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKm21zAzCS4zNd2jnxfrrOBkOhQYhAk7CosWXuQypC5wJb6PfvsNVkMOBejzWhXwVDjHUnawcrurG%2FiIsbWdtpK%2Fn8IwRJZJP8M7oQQgPTxjf%2BRiq7GH1iDIoBnPZGgGTwO4j0vTT7Wimo9wYGyM0IRgNX79VT%2B0F5RTNeR24E6dCJ86hGQoWhtrDsRU4%2BExDuMp6nvrHeqB6iyjGykP7uwnOH4F0eSd%2BtG3ikLuqrSuKWOLLWQVKQ1ID679iWiY4E4eWE5W00urRUrvWQ%2FZacju8p3mCAHzPjJTq1hBl4CtUw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABFBMzs6ZzJBl

 

An 82L/min piston air pump that consumes 60W of power for £46.99   To put that into perspective the ET100 diaphragm pump is 100L/min and the service kit alone costs £40 each time it goes wrong and it consumes 105W of power.

 

 

[ProDave]

No thought from anyone?

 

My choices seem to be spend £40 to replace the diaphragms in the ET100.  Yes that will get it working again.  BUT you have to buy a kit that also contains a new armature (2 magnets moulded into a plastic armature)  I am not convinced that needs replacing and I have not found anywhere to buy just the diaphragms.  And as for being forced to buy unnecessary parts, there is also 2 sets of flap valves in this pump that do not get replaced with this service kit.  The larger Charles Austen pumps do replace the flap valves as part of the service kit.  So one has to question how many times can you service this pump with this kit before the flap valves give up?

 

OR I can spend £44.99 to buy a completely different but new pump.  It will all be new.  It may be better and last longer, it may not.  But if the "service" cost when it needs it is only £5 more to get a completely new pump next time, it has to be worth a try?

 

Is there nobody reading this that has tried alternative pumps and can post their findings, in particular how long they last and can they be serviced or do they need replacing compete?

[Jeremy Harris]

I don't know if our experience with blower pumps is typical or not, but we are still using our ten year old Secoh JDK pump with no failures so far.  I ignored the servicing instructions (out of laziness) and just bought a spare pump plus a couple of sets of spare diaphragms, so if the pump failed I could just quickly swap in the spare and replace the diaphragms in the old one in slow time.   I ran out of bottle after 7 years of non-stop operation and changed the diaphragms as I was sure they must be about to fail.  It didn't need this at all, as the old ones looked just fine.  The pump's been running for about three years on the new diaphragms and shows no sign of giving up.  The only thing I do annually is take the top cover off and give the air filter a clean, as it tends to collect a lot of dust and dead bugs.  Other than that it's just quietly got on with doing its job.

[JohnMo]

9 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

Secoh JDK pump

We are using the same, our first one failed after 2 years, but it was operating in a near sand pit, so no surprise really. But they are pretty cheap to get new and all parts are available to repair.

[ProDave]

Thanks for the recommendations for the Secoh.    The cheapest I have found for that is £160.  That's still a hard sell when I can get the Chinese piston pump for £45.  It would have to last 3 times as long before needing a service.

[Gone West]

13 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

but we are still using our ten year old Secoh JDK pump with no failures so far

Our Secoh pump lasted eleven years before we replaced it, with another updated Secoh pump, which was more economical to run. I did use to turn the filter through 90 degrees half yearly and replace it annually. I also replaced the diaphragms every three years, just to be sure.

[crooksey]

In theory a diaphragm should be replaced every 2-3 years. If your plant was under a service plan, this is the interval it would be changed at.

 

I order the repair kits from ALI express and keep two in stock. £30 every 2 years isn't a huge expense.

[Iceverge]

I must admit I just turned ours off....

[ProDave]

Well I have made a decision and ordered the £45 piston pump.  It's advantage should be longer life than a diaphragm pump.  but I expect it will be noisier.

 

In preparation for that I am going to cut a board to sit in the pump chamber to sit on some foam.  The default pump chamber in the conder TP is just like a plastic bucket with the pump sitting on what is doing a good job as a drum skin.  You could not design a housing to me more noisy if you tried.

 

The same make of pump as the one I have bought also do these diaphragm pumps that look remarkably similar to the Charles Austen type.  But for those the spares are available individually including the air chambers and the flap valves contained in them, so if I did go back to another diaphragm pump, that would be a good argument for choosing one of those.  It really annoys me that the spares are not available other than in a kit, for the ET100

[Gone West]

This thread has just reminded me that I bought a Secoh full service kit, for the old EL series pump, about six years ago. The part number is K-EL-60/80/100/120W/150W/200W. It moved house with me and it's been sitting around in the house for too long. It it's of any use to anyone I'll send it to them if they donate a tenner to Buildhub. Just let me know.

[ProDave]

The other thing i did today as well as preparing a better base in the pump chamber, was I contrived a long hose from my immovable air compressor in the garage, to the treatment plant, just to blow some air down the pipe to ensure it was not blocked, and it ran free and you could hear the bubbles blowing in the "contents"

[Jeremy Harris]

9 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The other thing i did today as well as preparing a better base in the pump chamber, was I contrived a long hose from my immovable air compressor in the garage, to the treatment plant, just to blow some air down the pipe to ensure it was not blocked, and it ran free and you could hear the bubbles blowing in the "contents"

 

 

I built a remote box to house the air pump and alarm, because I wasn't wholly happy with having it sat in a box dangling over the main chamber of the unit (we have a BioPure).  The main advantage of doing this was that, with the box being by the side of the drive I'm much more inclined to lift the lid and check the pump and alarm:

 

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Harris said:

with the box being by the side of the drive

I did not even notice it when I parked right next to it.