Water Pump Repair for Dummies

Maybe Anna meant a dishwasher pump housing?

In early 2014, so-called "title drops" dried up at eHow.com, and the local freelancers became positively desperate for something that would earn them a stipend. Many of the more... scrupulous? writers (the ones who sometimes had a notion of what they were talking about) gave up and left, but those who stayed behind often found themselves far, far, FAR! outside their comfort zone when attempting to "answer" some poor schmuck's Google search. They were, however, lucky that the remaining content editors were every bit as desperate, not to mention clueless, as they were, That's probably how Sincerity Anna managed to get "How to Repair Electric Water Pumps" published, eventually landing at Hunker.com.

There is 50:50 chance that the OQ was asking about electric water pumps for a car engine, not for a home with a well. Anna, though, was pretty certain that the topic was a pump for a water well, and more to the point, was a pump sitting at the surface. Why she thought that, we'll never know... but she did, and she barfed up this comment:

"An electric water pump is almost always by the pressure tank, or cold water tank. If the pump freezes with water inside of it the housing can crack. When this happens water will spew forth from the pump."

We're reasonably certain that, when the pump for a well is installed, it will be protected from freezing – either with an integrated heating circuit or in a climate-controlled well house. That suspicion is borne out by Sincerity's inability to cite a reference for the bit about "spew[ing] forth." More to the point, she can't produce a reference for her claim that, "This can be fixed by replacing the housing for far less than you'd pay to replace the pump."

Yeah, sure... just out of curiosity, we looked online and you can't buy a pump housing¹ – not the kind of housing she claims you can, anyway. Take a look at Wayne Pump's website: they sell repair kits with gaskets and jets; even replacement impellers. But a replacement housing? Hell to the no, Sincerity!

Of course, Anna found instructions for some pump replacement somewhere and conflated them with general instructions. Take a gander:

"Use a wrench to remove the 4 bolts on the outside of the water pump. Set the bolts aside, then pull the outer casing off the pump. Remove the pump housing by squeezing the small clips that hold it in place to release them. "

Wait, what? She thinks there's both an "outer casing" and a housing? Su-uu-ure....
When some freelancer comes up with remarkably specific instructions – that are probably wrong – for a general question, you know they've been digging in forums again and pretending that they know what they're talking about. Based on the "outer casing" bushwa, our Dumbass of the Day did not know what she was talking about. She was just thrashing around looking for another fifteen-dollar stipend, and in the process contributed mightily to the stupidification of the internet. Feh.

¹ Well, you can buy a replacement housing for some hand pumps and strainer housing for pool pumps, but for your water well pump? Naaahhhh...

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