Another Mastertemp turning on during rain

[Fredthepoolnoob]

Hello everyone. I have seen the threads from others and have been experiencing my heater turn on by itself during rain. Pentair has replaced the membrane and board twice under warranty. I'm finally out of warranty and put a board/membrane from Amazon on myself and it turned on during rain that same week. This is the 4th set of membrane/PCB since 2021, seems crazy.

Question: has anyone found something other than membrane/control board as the cause for a heater to turn on when it's raining?

Amplifying information:
-Pool finished in 2021 as a new build with all pentair equipment
-No automation, all manual control
-Located in Las Vegas (low humidity, little rain)
-When it does rain, it's windy and rainy falls sideways
-Pentair boards have conformal coating on PCB to "weatherproof"
-Amazon PCB has no weather proof coating
-I have seen some corrosion on the pins that connect membrane to PCB
-I have not used dielectric grease on the connectors yet, but plan to
I am going to try to seal the Amazon board with hot glue this week...the conformal coating doesn't seem to help

Any insight is appreciated.
Kevin

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

Does your heater have a 5 button or 6 button keypad?

 

[Fredthepoolnoob]

Welcome to TFP.

Does your heater have a 5 button or 6 button keypad?

Thanks for the welcome, I've been lurking for a few years, always found what I needed that way, this place is a great resource.

It originally had the 5 button when new. 2 of the replacements were 6 button. The newest Amazon version is back to a 5 button.

 

[ajw22]

I know little about the Amazon parts mix you now have in the heater. Good luck with it.

 

[Fredthepoolnoob]

I know little about the Amazon parts mix you now have in the heater. Good luck with it.

What about the 3 Pentair boards that failed? I wasn't about to spend $450 on parts that have been averaging less than a year. I'm trying the cheaper made in China parts this time. Your post is a little off-putting, seemingly suggesting I caused 3 years of issues by using off brand parts for the last 30 days.

My question isn't about an "Amazon parts mix" it's about another possibility for water to get into this system besides the membrane or board. In some of my Pentair parts failures, the "off" button stopped working, so maybe the board/membrane truly is to blame.

Back to my original question, does anyone know of any other cause for heaters to be turning on in wet conditions besides the control board/membrane

 

[ajw22]

Your Pentair problems came during the Covid low quality parts era. That cost a lot of people.

We will see if anyone has an answer to your question.

 

[Fredthepoolnoob]

Your Pentair problems came during the Covid low quality parts era. That cost a lot of people.

We will see if anyone has an answer to your question.

That's unfortunate.

I'm actually starting to think it's the humidity condensing on the board rather than rain water somehow entering. If this is true, the hot glue should work until the glue itself fails.

It seems that conformal coating does not work well in some cases, especially with sharp points (a lead soldered to a board). I watched the below video to learn a bit, some decent objective testing for different coatings on a PCB.