EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem!

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phalcon51

phalcon51

0
LifeTime Supporter
Oct 5, 2010
203
So. California
So, I came home from work today and all the power in my house is off. D*mn! Seemed a little early in the season, and not hot enough for a large area outage from everyone using their A/C so I decided to check with the neighbors on both sides - they both had power. Double D*mn!!

Well, after about 45 min. of troubleshooting everything in the house I headed outside. Disconnected the wires to the pool light and sprinkler system - nope. Disconnected the wires to the Intellichlor transformer - nope. Disconnected the wires to the pump - Bingo! After looking a little closer here's what I found:

ShortedWire.jpg


IMG_0002.jpg


It appears the Leslie's tech pinched the wire between the case and the cover after wiring the pump. I can't put all the blame on him, though. As you can see in the picture, the 3 wires come up right next to the hole where the cover hold-down screw goes and they have to make an immediate 180* bend. There's really no way to keep them out of the way of the boss where the cover screw goes in. It would have been nice if they provided a place to tie off the wires with a tie-wrap or something.

Anyhow, I put some heat-shrink tubing over the exposed wire, reconnected the power wires, reset the circuit breakers and turned on the mains. SNAP! went the circuit breaker again! Apparently it fried something on the circuit board or in the motor itself. I tried disconnecting the 3 large wires shown and it still pops the breaker. Oh well, I guess I'll ask Leslie's to replace the pump asap. I may also call Hayward and bring this to their attention.

If you own an EcoStar it would be a very good idea to remove the top cover and check your wiring to make sure none of the wires are pinched.

Other than this I really like the pump so far. Easy to program, fairly efficient, quiet and easy on the kilowatts. I'll post follow-ups and let you know what transpires.

Gary
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

Thanks for sharing that, Gary....But...Why did this result in power being cut to your whole house? It should have just tripped the local dedicated 220 breaker at your equipment pad....Something doesn't sound right...
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

The house was built in the mid-50's and had all the electrical going through the original breaker box shown below. The pool pump is wired to the last 2 breakers on the bottom.

DSC01754.jpg


Here's the new electrical panel. It was the top 2 breakers for the sub-panel that were tripping.

DSC01762.jpg


Sometime in the 90's, I believe, central air was installed in the house and they also installed a new electrical panel. The new breakers are wired to the A/C, the forced air unit and a pair of breakers covers the original breaker box, listed as the sub-panel. There's also a couple of breakers for the main power supply. The sub-panel has everything in the house wired to it as well as the pump, IC-40, pool light and sprinkler system. What was happening was that the sub-panel breakers were tripping in the new electrical panel and shutting off everything in the house and out in the yard. As to why it didn't trip the breakers in the original breaker panel, I'm guessing that the newer breakers are just a lot faster reacting than the old ones and that they tripped before the old original breakers could.

Maybe one of the electricians on the forum can tell me if that's a possibility.

Gary
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

It's definitely possible- but a slow acting 20 amp breaker still should have tripped before a fast acting 200 amp...
That's why each circuit has its own lower level breaker- so individual circuits don't drop the whole box!
I would be more inclined to believe the 200 amp breaker is getting weak, and tripping at lower amperage
(not sure what actual amperage you have, just using these numbers as an example...)
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

Is there any way to test these things short of replacing it? With the older breakers are they more likely to trip at lower or higher amperage as they age? I'm assuming with age they may build up corrosion on the internal parts, but I don't really know how they're constructed.
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

There are instances where the faster acting breakers will trip before smaller rated slow acting breakers even orders of magnitude smaller. That's a large short to ground. The only thing is, that if that were the case you'd find it immediately.

Is the main breaker still tripping or is it the pump breaker?

There is a way to test them but most places, short of an industrial test lab, don't have the knowhow or the equipment to do it and it's cheaper to just replace them on all but large industrial breakers.
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

It was the sub-panel breakers on the newer main power panel that were tripping, depowering the old sub-panel completely. The mains didn't trip.

I disconnected the three large wires coming from the pump motor to the main circuit board and tried again and it still trips the breakers, so it appears to have shorted something in the circuit board I think.
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

It still bothers me that it's tripping the sub feed and not the pump breaker. What happens if you trip the pump breaker, does the sub feed still trip?
 

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Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

Thanks for the pics of the wire rerouting. I'll do the same to mine.

I just had the pump replaced at about 8:30 tonite. The tech arrived at about 6:00. The reason it took so long is because after he installed the new pump and was hooking up the wires he found this:

NewBoxedPump1.jpg


NewBoxedPump2.jpg


This was a brand new pump out of an unopened box! I told him I really didn't want to use that pump and, to his credit, he went out of his way to locate another one and retrieved it for me. Took him an extra 45 min. to get the new pump and get back. We went over the 2nd new pump carefully and decided it was good to go. 15 min. later I was back in business.

I'm going to write a letter to Hayward and include these pictures and we'll see what they have to say. I'll post it here.

Gary
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

Bama Rambler said:
It still bothers me that it's tripping the sub feed and not the pump breaker. What happens if you trip the pump breaker, does the sub feed still trip?
Click to expand...

Not sure how I can trip the pump breaker separately short of causing another short or over-amperage of some sort. What I have tried is to first turn off the pump breaker, reset the sub-panel breaker, turn the mains back on then turn the pump breaker on. It immediately trips the sub-panel breaker. If I turn the mains off, reset the sub-panel breakers, and turn on the pump breaker, as soon as I turn the mains back on it trips the sub-panel breaker without tripping the pump breaker. Go figure. :?:

Gary
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

It sounds like multiple issues going on. I think you're probably close to the load on the sub panel and the feed breaker is probably weak, so when you power the pump on the inrush is enough to trip the sub feed breaker but it's within range for the pump brealer.

How fast does the sub breaker trip? Is it instaneous or does it hold about a second or so?

If you have access to an amp meter you should test the amp draw of the sub panel without the pump breaker on.

Replacing the sub feed breaker is the easiest thing to do if you don't have access to an amp meter.
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

It trips pretty much instantaneously. I have a Sears multi-meter that measures amps, but I think it only goes up to 10 amps. You think I should the replace the sub-panel breaker on the new panel first or replace the pump breakers on the old panel?

Gary
 
Re: EcoStar Owners - Please Check Your Pump for this Problem

I have almost never seen a breaker that would trip above the rating, but have seen plenty that tripped well below their rating. I'd say replace the sub feed breaker.
 
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