I'm just about to replace the engine/LED board in two intellibrite 5g color pool lights. One light lasted a year, warranty replacement lasted just over two years. The other went a little crazy for a while (out of warranty) before settling on one dim color. I was thinking about throwing in one of the little silica gel packs inside the light when I'm replacing the engine to hopefully suck up any moisture inside the light. Would this be dangerous due to heat build up inside the light?
Dry pack inside pool light
- Thread starter Jskiwi
- Start date
Pool Clown
In The Industry
Did you get water in the lights that failed? Not sure if a silica pack would help. Never did something like that. It would more than likely void the warranty just because it is something in the can that the manufacturer did not put in there. Either way, i don't think it would take much moisture to max out that pack, then you would be in the same situation.
There was no water in the light when I opened it, but the circuit board lines/circuits look corroded or moisture damaged
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Pool Clown
In The Industry
I don't think that is water. It almost looks like heat. Once moisture enters the fixture it isn't going to go. Unless you had visible moisture right when you opened it, that isn't from water. Something else is going on there. Is this less than a year, or at the time it began to act up?
This is over a year old, roughly just over two years old. The first one died at 13 months.
I replaced this one with an old Hayward pool light that we had, white only. I was just going to change both of them out for the simple white ones, but the other light cable has a collapsed or broken conduit under a concrete slab (one hundred foot run). So rather than break up the slab, its was change the engines.
Pool lights are both 120v, all hot tub lights are 12v and have had no issues with the 12v.
Killer95Stang
Well-known member
Wow.. didn't know you could just replace the circuit board. I'll remember that when one of my 3 5g lights bite the dust.
- May 23, 2015
- 24,407
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
I have some experience with PCB technology (I spent some time in a Cu plating lab that ran PCBs through it).
That is not water damage. It's a poorly manufactured PCB. Either when they etched the lines or plated the various thru-vias, they did not rinse them properly. The wet chemistries used to manufactured those boards can become entrapped in voids in the materials there.
You see how it looks like circular shaped blow outs along the trace lines? That is trapped plating solution in voids in the Cu trace lines. When the board heated up, the trapped solution will burst out. It will leak into the surrounding multilayers and create those circular patterns.
It's a poor manufacturing process. So Pentair replaces the ones that go before the warranty is up but leaves you stuck with their bad product that's beyond the warranty. Hopefully they have seen this enough times to either correct it at the factory or dump the manufacturer and find a new one.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
That is not water damage. It's a poorly manufactured PCB. Either when they etched the lines or plated the various thru-vias, they did not rinse them properly. The wet chemistries used to manufactured those boards can become entrapped in voids in the materials there.
You see how it looks like circular shaped blow outs along the trace lines? That is trapped plating solution in voids in the Cu trace lines. When the board heated up, the trapped solution will burst out. It will leak into the surrounding multilayers and create those circular patterns.
It's a poor manufacturing process. So Pentair replaces the ones that go before the warranty is up but leaves you stuck with their bad product that's beyond the warranty. Hopefully they have seen this enough times to either correct it at the factory or dump the manufacturer and find a new one.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
Pool Clown
In The Industry