A new pump

Right around the two-week mark on my AeroGarden unit, I noticed a huming sound. There is usually a very quiet hum coming from the reservoir, about as loud as a fish tank aerator pump, but this was a lot louder than that. A visit to the AeroGrow website suggested two solutions:

The first was to disassemble and clean the pump, and the second was that it was possible that I had a bad pump, and that they would have to send me a replacement unit. I cleaned the pump, and the humming didn't go away. While I had it open, I took a good look at it, and figured out what was causing the noise problem - it was a design flaw rather than a part failure, so while it looked as though it would continue to make noises, it didn't seem as though it was in any immediate danger of total failure.

Having eliminated the first option, I called the number on the company's website, told them about my problem, and they said they would send me a free replacement pump, no problem. The operator even gave me instructions on watering the plants in case the pump died completely before the replacement got here. Apparently, some number of AeroGarden units were affected by a bad batch of pumps, and they were replacing them as people called in about them.

[ Time passes. ]

After about two weeks, just about the time that I was beginning to wonder when I could expect the replacement pump to arrive, I received a box in the mail from AeroGrow. Inside was my new pump, and a sheet of paper with illustrated instructions for replacing it. These were unnecessary as I had already been through the process with the cleaning, but they were pretty thorough, and would be good for anyone who needed them, I guess.

When I had cleaned the pump at the two-week mark, the tomato plants had hardly been anything more than little sproutlings, a couple of inches high, with three or four inches of roots hanging below the deck of the AeroGarden unit. When I opened it up to replace the pump two weeks later, I saw that things had changed considerably. The plants had bulked up a some, and were still a little bit short and stocky, but that was because they had apparently been putting all of their energy into growing roots. All three plants had a root mass more than a foot long when I pulled them out of the growing deck so that I could get to the base of the support column where the pump lives. Fortunately, it was easy to tease the roots apart and move the plants without causing very much damage to them.

In looking over the new pump while unpacking, I noticed that they had redesigned the pump so that it is now pretty much impossible (or at least very improbable) for it to fail in the same way again. Replacing it was a quick and easy process, and I had the unit disassembled, reassembled, and back in action in well under ten minutes. Ever since then, it's been humming along very quietly, as it should be, and the plants have been growing well.



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