Andy Tveekrem, the Brewmaster and co-founder of Cleveland’s Market Garden Brewery, shared an in-depth presentation on pumps at the 2022 Craft Brewers Conference and shared many insights. Near the end he worked on answering a question about getting ahead of problems with preventative pump maintenance.
Grease is Good
Check your motor to see if there are grease fittings.
“Some have permanently sealed bearings and some have a certain fitting,” he said. “If you’ve got those (types of fittings), take a grease gun and give it a shot of grease every six months or so, that will help with the motor life.”
Check regularly to keep your pump clean and don’t shut them off with sticky stuff in it — give a good rinse and allow it to dry.
“That’s not a problem for most of us as we usually are pretty good about cleaning up what we do,” he told the CBC crowd.
READ MORE: The Checklist You Need Before Buying Another Pump
Hose Help
Take a look at your hose connections. If you have an inlet hose, keep it short.
“You want to do a short pull and long push whenever you can,” Tveekrem pointed out. “Don’t hook a pump up with 25 feet of hose draped across the floor feeding into it. If you do that, all those curves it’s basically like adding 90s to your system.”
Look for kinks in your hoses as well.
“If you turn the pump on and that nice round hose suddenly gets kind of flat, you’ve changed the amount of liquid you can draw through that,” he said. “Older hoses especially can kind of be squishy.
“So keep it short, short pull and long push and keep it dry if you can.”
Photo courtesy AbodeStock
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