Recent content by jzelno

The pumps run around $1200-$1300 new. The controller around $800, and the motor around $500. So If I needed to replace the controller and motor, I'd be better off replacing the entire pump. This one was provided free to us by our electrical solar panel company as an incentive (we had a...

Thanks for the picture, James. I did not remove the motor from the seal plate, so I can't see what the brass grommets look like or if they're loose, but the bolts that go into those threaded inserts are all nice and tight, and there's no movement of the motor relative to the rest of the pump...

I did call Pentair, and they suggested I see what happens when I run the pump a little faster or a little slower. So I tried slower at 1500 and 1400 rpms, and the pump shut down faster than at 1600. Then I tried 1700, and it was OK Then I tried 1630rpm. This one was interesting... after about...

I have a 3HP Intelliflo VS pump that is about 6 years old. It just recently started failing at low speeds. The pump will attempt to turn on and prime, then when it switches from priming to low speed mode (1600rpm), it will do fine for maybe 10-20 seconds, then it starts vibrating a little...

Solved the problem. In a nutshell, one of the components on the circuit board was causing the controller to get stuck in a reset state, such that it would stop generating the required voltage to the cell. The explanation below gets pretty geeky into the electronics details, but included in...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing So far, I've traced the problem to the fact that the circuit board 5V regulator will eventually cut out, due to it's input voltage (looks like 12V nominal) drops to around 5V. This causes the on-board processor to sit in reset. This may be heat related...

We've got a set of FAFCO solar water heater panels on our roof that came with the pool when we bought the house a little over a year ago. At that time, we were getting good flow through the system, including the solar panels. Over the last year, we've noticed that the flow through the solar...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing Back to this one again... I just got a new warranty replacement salt cell, and installed it. Everything seemed fine... for a few minutes. I checked the water being injected back into the pool, expecting to see high chlorine levels, but it was just at...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing According to other information on this site, the CYA measurement seems critical to know, so that you can know what your target FC levels are, so that you can know what the proper shock level is, etc. So, then, there MUST be a way to accurately measure CYA...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing The SWG was working fine last year with a different cell, which eventually failed. No electrical changes were made, so I have no reason to believe that the supply voltage is wrong. I have looked at the cell plates, and there's no sign of any scaling...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing OK... we drained the pool to lower the CYA, and it's now at 70. The salt level was measured at 5500, but I don't really believe that it's that high (based on what it was before, how much water we drained, and how much salt we added). At any rate, the SWG...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing I'll get a water test done, and look into SLAMing. After I get CYA to a useful level for SLAMing, what's the cheapest way to add chlorine? Sounds like I should stay away from Chlor-brite for this (will raise CYA), and I'd rather not use calcium...

Re: New ESC48 Salt Cell Underproducing Thanks for the quick reply, jbizzle. We did shock the pool for several days last week, maintaining a chlorine level above 5ppm (in some cases above 10ppm) for at least 5 days. We have not had any visible algae in the past week (we've been maintaining...

First, some history: We have a 23K gallon pool in southern CA that came with the house we bought a year ago. The SWG is an ESC48, and it was not working when we moved in. After getting the pool chemistry right, and checking things out, we found that the cell was clogged with calcium. I...