Submersible pump wiring....

[HayZee518]

pump

if you were to take apart the pump, replace the oil with moisture free oil, like the mineral oil used in air conditioners. any kind will do as long as there's no water vapor in it. its function beside lubrication is to draw off heat and pass it to the surrounding effluent water. when you get the housing off you'll see how the wires are connected inside the motor winding.

[Nestor]

CH&E pumps is still in business

Why not just e-mail the info you have to their sales agents in Canada, and ask them to get someone to e-mail you the wiring diagram for the pump. That would be a lot safer than guessing how to connect the wiring.

Google CH&E Pumps and you'll find them.

Also, you should be aware that at least one of the major plumbing wholesalers in your area will have a pump shop where employees will repair and rebuild submersible and circulating pumps for anyone who has an account with that wholesaler, and pretty well for anyone who doesn't have an account, but will pay cash to have the repair done. I'd just phone around to some of the larger plumbing companies in your area to find out which of your local plumbing wholesalers has a pump repair shop and take it down there to have them look at it to tell you if it can be fixed and how much that would cost. If you bring it to them, and they just take it apart to see what condition it's in, they won't charge you anything for the look see.

[mrcaptainbob]

Pump wiring....

Good call, Nestor. I did send an e-mail to CH & E, but since I received no reply after a two weeks I thought maybe I could get better help here. Which I have. I'll keep plugging away on this and will find out what's going on. I did check for continuity on those pump wires. There is no continuity from the red to anything. My question on that is: not knowing how a 240 motor is wired, if I move the armature a bit would there then be continuity from red to neutral? And zero from black to neutral? Does the voltage swap on the commutator plates?

[HayZee518]

pump

moving the armature wouldn't have any effect because there is no brushes inside. it's a regular induction motor. you'd have to physically see where the wires are connected and then you can get an idea of how its wired.

[mrcaptainbob]

Pump wiring....

Thanks, HayZee. Will proceed....

[mrcaptainbob]

Pump wiring....

Lemme ask this: How many wires would be there if it WAS a 120V unit? How many wires would be there if it were a 240V unit?

[HayZee518]

pump motor

Let me try to explain it this way. Here in the U.S. it would be safe to assume all motor windings are essentially 120 volt coils. How they are connected within the motor determines what voltage they will run at. If a motor is wired for 120 volt operation, then all windings will be wired in parallel. If the same motor is wired for 240 volts then the windings would be wired in series.
Let's say coil #1 is designated by T1 and T2, coil #2 is T3 and T4. For 120 volt operation, T1 and T3 are connected to the L1 lead wire and T2 and T4 are connected to the other wire [neutral] T1 & T3 and T2 & T4 are connected in parallel.
Now if T1 is connected to one lead wire, T2 & T3 are spliced, T4 would be the last wire connected to a lead wire. All coils would be connected in series. This motor would operate at 240 volts. Sometimes, the splice point at T2 & T3 is brought out as a motor wire. This is called the midpoint tap. The motor would run at 120 volt between this midpoint tap and either T1 or T4, the other wire just capped off.
Even a 480 volt motor would have 4, 120 volt coils connected in series to operate at 480 volt - 120+120+120+120=480

[Nestor]

Lemme ask this: How many wires would be there if it WAS a 120V unit? How many wires would be there if it were a 240V unit?

Mr. Captain Bob:

You can't say that just because it has a 4th red wire, then it's a 220 volt motor.

If I were designing a submersible pump, I might want to use a capacitor start motor for higher starting torque. But, there are good reasons not to put the capacitor in the pump itself because then you'd have to pull the pump just to see if the motor not starting was due to a capacitor having gone bad. Since a bad capacitor is one of the more common things that can go wrong with a capacitor start motor, it would make more sense to have the capacitor at the surface where you could test it and replace it without having to pull the pump. And, having the capacitor at the surface would allow you to diagnose problems with the motor by being able to test the resistance of each motor winding separately and test for continuity between each winding and the ground wire to see if either winding is shorted.

So, that 4th red wire does not mean that the label on the pump is wrong and there's really a 220 volt motor inside that pump.

One of the best sources I know of to learn about electric motors is your own US Naval Electrical Engineering Training Series, or NEETS for short. Basically, these are the manuals that your boys in blue learn from when they join the Navy and are put in charge of maintaining the electrical systems aboard ships, like air craft carriers and the aircraft inside them. There is a company called Integrated Publishing that makes this information available to the general public, but since these manuals were written and published at US taxpayer expense, the US taxpayer already owns those manuals and the information in them, and therefore Integrated Publishing cannot charge a US citizen for the information in those manuals because you guys already own it. What they can do, however, is charge you for the service of printing off or photocopying those manuals onto paper or copying them onto CD disks and mailing that paper or plastic version of the information to you. And, that is how Integrated Publishing makes a profit; by selling the service of providing that information in a more convenient form for personal in-home use to people without internet access.

I don't have enough posts on here to include other web sites in my post, but you can find Integrated Publishing's home page at:

dubya dubya dubya dot tpub dot com

If you click on "Electronics, Electrical Engineering (NEETS) most popular", that will take you to the NEETS training manuals.

If you scroll down and click on "Module 5, Introduction to Generators and Motors" then on the page that takes you to, you can subsequently scroll down to "Chapter 4" and click on "Induction Motors".

You turn pages in the manual by clicking on the "Back", "UP" or "Next" links at the bottom of the blue section near the top of each page to go back to the previous page, up to the previous directory, or forward to the next page, respectively.

To understand electric motors, you must understand that ALL electric motors work by creating a rotating magnetic field, and that three phase and even two phase electrical power makes that an easy task. Creating a ROTATING magnetic field with only single phase power (that is, 120 volt AC power) is not as easy, but it can be done and there are different ways to do it. And that, in turn, is why there are different kinds of single phase 120 VAC electric motors.

With three phase electric power, you have three separate voltage sine waves, each one carried by a different cable. To make the stator for a 3 phase electric motor, you simply arrange three coils (or "windings") of wire 120 degrees apart on a circle and connect one end of each coil to one of those cables, and the other ends of all three coils together, or to the same white neutral wire. The result will be a rotating magnetic field which a rotor will follow, causing it to turn.

Similarily, with two phase electric power, you have two separate cables each carrying a voltage sine wave, but those two sine waves are 180 degrees apart so that the voltage in one cable is at a maximum or minimum of +120 volts or -120 volts, respectively, when the voltage in the other cable is 0 volts, and vice versa. So you can make a two phase motor the same way as a three phase motor by orienting the coils of wire 180 degrees apart instead of 120 degrees apart. Because the magnetic fields in each coil of wire will develop at different times, the magnetic field produced by the two coils will add together to create a rotating magnetic field that would make a compass spin.

Where you come into difficulty is when you get down to single phase 120 volt AC power because, without something more, connecting it to a coil or a "winding" of wire is only going to create an oscillating magnetic field, not a rotating one. A compass inside that winding won't spin, it'll just get confused trying to decide whether to point north or south every 1 /120th of a second. That is, the oscillating magnetic field that it's in won't induce the rotary motion needed for an electric motor's rotor to turn instead of just vibrate back and forth.


So, all of the different kinds of 120 volt motors out there, like split phase motors, capacitor start motors, and shaded pole motors use different ways of producing a rotating magnetic field from single phase electric power. And, because you don't need to do that with two or three phase electric power, there's no such thing as a three phase "capacitor start" motor or a two phase "shaded pole" motor. There are only three phase motors, two phase motors and a handful of different kinds of single phase motors. That's because there are only a handful of different ways to produce a rotating magnetic field from single phase 120 VAC electrical power.

Probably the easiest single phase motor to explain is the "capacitor start" single phase motor:

If you have two coils (or "windings") of wire connected in parallel, then both coils of wire will have the same AC voltage applied to them and will develop their magnetic fields at the same time. That is, both coils will produce only an oscillating magnetic field, and so we're no closer to creating that all important ROTATING magnetic field. But, to get to that all important ROTATING magnetic field, here's where I have to fly off on a tangent:

If you apply AC voltage across a resistor, then the current through the resistor will be proportional to the applied voltage, and so the current will be at a maximum when the voltage is at a maximum and the current will be zero when the applied voltage is zero. That is, the current through a resistor will be IN PHASE with the applied voltage sine wave. That means, if you measure the current through that resistor, you'll get another sine wave which is IN PHASE with the applied voltage sine wave.

Capacitors are a total 'nuther kettle of fish...
A capacitor works because the voltage applied to one plate of a capacitor causes a current to flow in the other plate of the capacitor. But, if you think about it, the current in that other plate is going to be at a maximum when the RATE OF VOLTAGE CHANGE in the first plate is at a maximum, and that occurs when the slope of the voltage sine wave is at it's steepest, and that actually occurs when the applied voltage sine wave crosses the O voltage line, or at O volts AC.

Similarily, the current out of the second plate of the capacitor is going to be zero when the voltage applied to the first plate isn't changing, and that happens when the applied voltage sine wave is at a maximum or at a minimum. That is, when the applied voltage sine wave is at +120 or -120 volts. So, with a capacitor in series with one of the two coils of wire, the current sine wave through that branch will be 90 degrees out of phase with the applied voltage sine wave.

And here's where I come back to the topic at hand:

Continued in next post cuz I'm over 10,000 characters...

[Nestor]

So, by putting a capacitor in series with ONE of those two coils connected in parallel, the curent sine wave through the coil which is in series with the capacitor is going to be 90 degrees out of phase with that of the coil without the capacitor. And, since the magnetic field of each coil will rise and fall in lock step with the current through that coil, the magnetic field of the coil with the capacitor is going to be 90 degrees out of phase with that of the coil without the capacitor.

So, now we can just set those two coils 180 degrees apart as we did in the case of the motor that ran on two phase electrical power, and a compass inside of those coils or windings would see something which looked very similar to the rotating magnetic field produced by two phase electrical power.

"Split phase" electric motors work by the same principle, but instead of having a capacitor wired in parallel with one of the coils, they cause the magnetic fields of each coil to develop at different times by using different kinds of coils. In a split phase motor, one coil will consist of a small number of turns of large diameter copper wire whereas the other coil will consist of a much larger number of turns of a much smaller diameter copper wire. The difference in the "inductance" of those two different coils will cause their current sine waves to be out of phase by different amounts with the applied voltage sine wave, and that means that their magnetic fields will develop at different times too. A compass inside a stator using those two different kinds of coils for it's poles will also turn, albeit without as much force as a compass inside the stator of a capacitor start motor.

Shaded pole motors create a magnetic field by having only two poles, but having a thick wire running around the stator of the motor which causes one side of each pole to develop it's magnetic field earlier than the other side of the pole. A compass inside the stator of that shaded pole motor would see the magnetic field sweep across the face of both poles of the motor at the same time, and follow that motion. Replace that compass with a rotor, and you have the torque needed to start a shaded pole motor.

I just thought I should explain this so if people had trouble following Hayzee's explanation, they could read and follow mine. Suffice it to say that motors meant to run on three phase or two phase power rely ENTIRELY on the voltage in the cables carrying the power to be out of phase to create that all important ROTATING magnetic field. Motors meant to run on single phase 120 VAC power will use some other way of creating a rotating magnetic field, SUCH AS by using a capacitor, or by using different kinds of wire in each motor winding, or by using electromagnetic induction to slow down or accelerate the development of the magnetic field at each pole of the motor.

Anyone who reads through that section on induction motors in the NEETS section of that web site will know very much more about the electric motors they come face-to-face with than the vast majority of homeowners.

[mrcaptainbob]

CH&E pump update....

Took to dinkin' with it again today. Regardless of the info tag on the pump body I could not get past the size and color of the wires coing out of it. Really felt it was a 240 unit. At first, connecting 110 between the white and the black and it hummed. Connecting 110 between white and red and it hummed. No spinning either time. Tied the red and black together, then connected 110 to white and the hot to the combined black/red wires. It spun. Then would click off after twenty seconds and click back on. I figured then that it was a 240 unit. I connected up hot to black, the other hot to red, white to white and YAYY!!! It runs REALLY good!
So....thanks to all for the help and suggestions.
Now I need a way to connect a float switch to it. I don't think there's a float switch that connects to the two hot legs, so I'm thinking I'll run the float switch to dis/connect the neutral white. Effectively shutting the motor off until the water level rises again.

[HayZee518]

pump motor

so, in essence you did find out that there are two - 120 volt windings - black and a white, and the red and a white.
connecting the two whites series (ed) up the windings.
Yah I don't see why not a switch would work in the white wires, just be sure the switch is rated for 277 volt operation.

[mrcaptainbob]

Pump wires....

Four wires, HayZee. One each of white, black, red and green. The lesser gauge wire was the green. I'd bet that pump was rebuilt in it's distant past. Quite possibly because of an outer casing damage and the replacement outer casing came from a 120 unit. The rebuilder just didn't remove that identification plate. At any rate, it's working now and we are pleased. Again, thank you for the guidance.

[HayZee518]

motor(s)

motors can be frustrating especially when the original diagram is missing. even more so when the motor is of european decent. one place I worked used a machine that was manufactured in the netherlands and the motor was a siemens from germany. the connection box had bolt and nut terminations, twelve leads. it could be adapted for 220, 380, 480, 208 and 110 volts.

[mrcaptainbob]

Schematic

I admire those that can design/engineer something like that. A lot of configurations that allow it to do pretty much the same function, depending on where in the world it is!