Taco seems to be a well-respected name in water pumps. The 00 series is especially popular. These range from an 003 to an 013. Triangle Tube instructions recommend both the Grundfos and the Taco pumps. For a system the size of ours, they listed the 009 as having the right flow and pressure for the job.
These pumps are fully serviceable. They are easy to take apart and put in a new rotor and motor housing, however, the parts are a bit less than half the cost of a brand new pump.
Taco Pump Interior–this pump is cast iron. Ours is the stainless steel model.
The ceramic shaft, plastic wheel and metal casing are the replacement part, along with new bolts to hold the pump together.
Not all their 00 series pumps are flanged, some have pipe fittings instead. We have two Taco pumps with pipe fittings, the 009 which is the primary pump and the 006 that is the hot water recirculation pump. Flanges are easier to attach and detach the pump, but the flanges are an extra cost, while the threaded pumps don’t require that extra part.
I bought all three pumps from vendors on ebay. They all pumped water when I hooked them up. I even set up a system for testing them since the pump that I took off the old hot water recirc system does not pump water. So I tested the other two with the same hose/bucket system. But after installation the 011 stopped running. It seemed that it was “burned out” by running it when the boiler pump was not running. That was because of the way I wired it which I will explain in a later post.
Then I burned it out a second time! The first time I purchased the rebuild kit and did the simple repair, but when I bought the kit, I also bought a brand new 011 pump. I figured I could use it on the wood fired boiler system AND have it as backup. Before a week was out, the backup pump had to be installed and now I have another broken one. The question is whether it was overheating because it was not getting enough flow through it, or whether I should also have replaced the capacitor. I have not decided whether to buy another rebuild kit and capacitor yet or not.
I have read that these can go out after 7 or 8 years and having an extra rebuild kit on hand is a good idea. Because it is always when the temperatures are coldest that the heating system breaks down. Murphy’s law is part of owning a home I think. For right now, there is a brand new 011 in place in the system. The only difference that I noticed between the older and newer pumps that I could tell was that the older one had a metal information label on the electrical box and the newer one has a paper label on the bottom.