Black & Decker (Blue Torrent) Pump Automation

[hairlesshacker]

I have had the B & D pump for a couple years, and have the automation setup for relay control.
3 relays lets me control High/Medium/Low and off.

However, I've noticed occasionally that the pump doesn't start when the automation comes on, unless I go manually press the start/stop button.
Was just wondering if anyone else has encountered this, and has any tips.
Thanks.

 

[Rancho Cost-a-Lotta]

@FloridaGary uses the automation interface for control with relays. Let's see if he has any input.

 

[FloridaGary]

I have had the B & D pump for a couple years, and have the automation setup for relay control.
3 relays lets me control High/Medium/Low and off.

However, I've noticed occasionally that the pump doesn't start when the automation comes on, unless I go manually press the start/stop button.
Was just wondering if anyone else has encountered this, and has any tips.
Thanks.

Hello - Sorry I am seeing this so late, but I have the same setup and no issues. If your automation is being controlled by an app, do you have the pump programmed and set to “Manual”?

 

[hairlesshacker]

Yes it's set to manual. And it's been working for over a year, so I don't know why it started acting up recently. (I recently plumbed in a SWG, so maybe I changed/lost a setting when I had it powered off, or perhaps it's always been finicky and I didn't notice).
But in the past week, it's only failed to come on once. And if I turn it off and back on (remotely via relay), it runs.

For now, I setup an alert based on temperature differential to check if it starts, and let me know if it doesn't. So I can create a workaround to cycle the relay if it doesn't start
the first time, but I'd rather figure out why it doesn't start in the first place..

 

[FloridaGary]

The only other variable I can think of is I learned that this pump has software for freeze protection like all VSP motors. However, the seller informed me that this software has caused some erratic behavior with the start/stop times, so I turned it off. If we get weather that drops below 40 degrees, I just schedule the motor to turn on for the overnight hours until the temp is above 40.

 

[FloridaGary]

To access the freeze settings:

• Make sure the pump is STOP'd (light above start/stop button is OFF)
• press and hold the + and - arrows together until the LED's on the screen respond to enter the freeze protection menu settings
• While in this menu, you can use < and > to cycle between the options (similar to using DISPLAY for other settings, the LED next to the screen will show what setting you're changing)
• The speed setting is what RPM the pump runs at when it thinks it should be in freeze protection mode, default is 1000 RPM's
• The duration setting is how long it runs once freeze protection is triggered. If you set this to 0, this should disable the freeze protection mode.
• Hold DISPLAY to save the new settings and exit this menu

 

[hairlesshacker]

I have freeze protection in my software which runs the pump automatically based on temp. I thought I had read before that the built-in freeze protection doesn't work when relay controlled, but I may be mistaken. Looks like it was still enabled on my pump too, so I disabled that.

The temps have not been below 70 here though, so I doubt that is related, but thanks for the tip.

 

[FloridaGary]

Hopefully disabling the freeze protection on the pump resolves your issue.