Hayward W3SP3010X15AZ Super II Pool Pump, 1.5 HP

When I was a teenager in the '80's I took care of our pool. I remember taking many a Hayward Pump to have motor rebuilt throughout the years. I thought nothing of every couple of years going through this process. When my parents built their new house circa 2000, of course Haywards were installed for the water sheers and the filter. As of a couple of months ago, I had two that were fried and just sitting there since the small engine company went out of business years ago. So after this last one died, I thought I'll get another Hayward from Amazon since it's all measured and plumbed for the Super II. My sister and I spent a lot of time installing. Didn't work. Ended up calling an electrician, then a pool company. The unit was defective. So returned and we re-plumbed for a Pentair (spent hours again, BTW). There were some manufacturing defect issues with the Pentair pump and the Amazon seller was going to help us, but it works and so incredibly QUIET. So I decided I just couldn't muster spending anymore time installing another pump this year. BOTTOM LINE: Take it from someone with DECADES of experience with Hayward pumps, go with another pump manufacture. And if Hayward has issues with this, I have a graveyard of pumps they can have back. To their credit every other Hayward item seems to be of quality and last for years.

I was nervous about getting the correct pump for a direct replacement. I called Hayward and they helped me pick the correct one so that eased a lot of concern. The pump came in and it was exactly as it should have been. Now, to install... I enlisted the help of a neighbor friend of mine to double check my plan for the plumbing would work. We shut off the breakers, disconnected the power lines. We used a hacksaw to cut the PVC line coming into the old pump, luckily the water line into the filter has a hand tightened connection so we removed that whole section leading from the pump to the filter. We were able to remove that whole line by hand. We put new Teflon tape around that connection and put the new pump in place. I bought a 2" adapter connection and we threaded it on to the new pump inlet. We used PVC primer and cement and squeezed the new adapter in the old remaining PVC coming from the actuator. We waited 20 minutes for the connection to dry and bam, it worked perfectly after I restored power. From start to finish it took us 25 minutes then the 20 minutes waiting time.

Tough to rate this pool pump because I replaced a 15-20 year old version of the same Super II pump & motor. Overall the old system was great. The new system is 90% great . . . BUT the new motor wiring design is very poor compared to the older version. Once the 230 v wires barely "sneak" into the compartment, there is roughly one square inch to work with. Bending the red & black wires within that space (including a roughly 1/2 " vertical dimension) and with crimp connectors attached to wire ends was close to an impossible task. By contrast, the old Super II motor had plenty of room to work in. Poor motor design !!!

I have had this model of pump on my pool circuit for 11 years plus a few (don’t know how many) for the previous homeowner. The old one was working but I had rebuilt it and due to location it was hard to overhaul in place. I decided to order this because it was the same as the old one and was basically a drop in installation. Even with some plumbing changes and re-installing the power cable it was a three hour job. I used the CMP hi-temp unions to connect the piping so it will be simpler to pull it out for maintenance.

I work in remodeling and construction of swimming pools, I bought two of these pumps for a client and one is simply useless, it sounds very bad and triggers the protector, I will have to buy another one out of pocket since the seller tells me that he cannot do anything for not be in the United States, if you do not live in the United States do not buy it,,, you simply do not have a guarantee of any kind !!