Hi,
First of all, thanks a lot for putting great material out there to help make it easy for pool owners like to me to maintain our pools. Unfortunately, I have hit a problem that I can't seem to fix either am not doing something right or worse have a major problem with the pump itself.
My pump is not sucking water from the pool. I disconnected suction cleaner, filled the strainer pot fully with water, close the lid tightly and then started the pump. When the pump starts it drains the water in the strainer pot and then just sucks air. I would let the pump run for around 3 minutes and then turn it off.
I have repeated this process many times (would be more than 20 times over the last couple of days) and still no luck. On some occasion, I can see water raise in the pool cell for a minute or so with bubbles coming out into the cell as well as water bubbles in the return valve but after a minute or two it either settles down and nothing happens or I have to turn off the pump to avoid running without water for too long.
The pump was just running fine until I recently removed the strainer pot to empty debris collected recently. After that the pump suck water at all.
I checked the o-ring and it does not look like there is any wear on it. I havent applied any lubricant on it yet. What would you suggest I look at next to see where the problem is?
Thanks a lot for your help (photo of pool system below for reference)