[Banbury Window Cleaning]

all was working fine with the above until the end of last week, we had a big job which involved the equipment being used for around 10 hours constantly a day every day
and on Friday it started playing up, pump kept cutting out. I have found this is usually due to either the battery low or a air lock. both were checked and it kept working for a bit until today.
pump again kept cutting out and after taking the pump and varistream apart to have a look and put it all back together it now doesn't seem to switch on or off at all the pump just stays on. it is wired correctly this has been checked several times. I do not have another varistream to check if it is a fault but the pump seems to work fine.
Any ideas what could be the problem as I would rather only replace one of them if I can get away with it lol

[Dave Willis]

Sounds like the pump is wired to a permanent live wire to me. You could of course wire the pumps pressure switch back in and remove the varistream if needed.

Pump must be ok 'cos it's turning.

Your original problem is most likely the battery running low thus shutting the pump down. Although you should check all the connectors.

[Tom White]

I strongly suspect the original problem will be that your battery has degraded to below what the varistream finds acceptable.  It's a very common problem.  Does your varistream work okay in the mornings after the battery has been charged, but then mess you about later in the day?  If so, definitely battery + varistream.

If you hadn't buggered up your flow controller when you took it apart, you could've purchased a new battery and all would have been well, or you could just chuck the varistream, wire up your pressure switch back to the pump - wire in a £2 on/off switch from Wilkinsons - and off you go with your old battery.

My 'old battery' has been going for another year and is still works no problems after I dumped our flow controllers.

[Banbury Window Cleaning]

battery was checked and all ok and ran the pump for a further 2 hours this afternoon on a urgent con roof clean
battery is wired upto a split charge relay but I may take it out and charge it over night and go from there

[Banbury Window Cleaning]

also any links for what I have to do to the shurflow pump to run it with just a on/off switch?

[Spruce]

If you had the pump battery wired to a split charge relay, running the van when the cut- out occurred would indicate if the battery is faulty or not (our experience).

You shouldn't have the varistream wired through the pressure switch - the pressure switch should be by-passed. If you have wired it through the pressure switch, then a faulty contact in the pressure switch could be playing games with your controller.

If you are removing the varistream, then you reconnect the wires to and from the pressure switch. The connector/terminal furthest away from the motor is the power supply and the inner connector/terminal is to the motor. This is how the original pump is set up. These are the red cables. The red cable is connected to the + terminal on your battery.

The on/off switch Tosh is talking about would be fitted on the red cable between the battery and the pressure switch. (So the cable run is - the red cable from the + battery terminal to on/off switch, from on off switch to pressure switch, from pressure switch to motor. The black cable from the motor goes to the negative terminal of the battery).

If you are using the latest varistream (as in the make - this is the one the indicates battery charge condition) then you should fit this on/off switch before the Varistream and switch it off at night. Our experience is that the latest Varistreams consume power even when switched off. We found that a fully charged 85 amp leisure battery lost 25% of is charge in a week of being idle. Once the isolator switch was fitted, this ceased to happen.

If you do a search on "isolator switch" under my name you will find several posts regarding this as well as a link to the on/off switch we use from Screwfix. The same switch can also we purchased from any electrical supplier and places like B&Q.

From our experience I would say this sounds as though your battery is in need of replacement. Its always difficult to identify faults like this as it could also be a poor connection from the battery to your Varistream. Places to check are at both battery terminals and your fuse holders.

[Spruce]

battery was checked and all ok and ran the pump for a further 2 hours this afternoon on a urgent con roof clean
battery is wired upto a split charge relay but I may take it out and charge it over night and go from there

We have found that we have to regularily bench charge our Leisure battery as the mileage we do isn't enough to fully charge the battery.

On son in laws van he travels around 22 - 25 miles per day which just about keeps his battery going. Every couple of weeks he has to take the battery out and charge it over night.

Our experience doing around 10 miles a day is that we have to supplementary charge the leisure battery every couple of days, especially as we have the 2 off us working off my van at the moment.

[supernova77]

I've had similar problems before and it's always been down to a bit of wiring - either a dodgy connection or a corroded bit of wire... Try replacing some of the wiring between the pump and controller if that doesn't fix it work your way back towards the battery.

Andy