odd electrical issue---looking for ideas

[dmh]

10K gal Gunite pool with spa attached; all Pentair equipment

I had two instances this afternoon in which the Pentair VS pool pump shut off simultaneously with the separate water-feature pump. The breakers did NOT trip on either pump (the pumps are on separate GFCI breakers). The pool pump restarted automatically, and the water-feature pump started immediately when I told it to restart.

Because both pumps shut off simultaneously I am thinking it was some sort of power fluctuation, but I did not see any evidence of a power fluctuation in the house (e.g., my oven panel and clock are very sensitive to them). This would mean a power fluctuation from the main panel to the Pentair sub panel.

Any ideas? Bad pool main breaker in main panel?

 

[Jimrahbe]

dmh,

Are these pumps being controlled by an automation system? If so, that is where I would suspect the problem to be...

Are your pumps the SVRS version of the IntelliFlo?

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[dmh]

Pool: Intelliflo VS. Water feature: Pentair non-VS. Computer board? Power supply?

 

[Jimrahbe]

dmh,

Could still be a power interruption as the Easytouch has no real "power supply" only a single AC step down transformer.

If I had to pick one I'd go with the main circuit card. But, I'd want more proof before I went out and did anything.

Were the pumps running on a schedule? If not, how did you turn them on? How long had they been running?

You say it happened twice, how long between the two issues?

Intermittent issues are always tough to troubleshoot and find..

At this point I'm not even sure what to look for since it is working now.

One thing you can do is make sure all the load center circuit breaker lugs are tight and the same for any wire nuts on the power transformer.

Keep an eye on it and see if you can catch it fail... Possible programming glitch... does anything coincide with the times you had the two failures???

Not much help, I know, but not sure what else to look for at this point..

Jim R.

 

[dmh]

It was not running on a schedule. I had manually turned both pumps on using my phone app. It was about 1/2 hour between incidents.

I have replaced the main computer board once under warranty. In that instance, I came home from vacation to find the spa blower running and water-feature pump on, neither of which should have been on. I had no control through the computer at all. I tried the usual resets, but nothing helped. Pentair replaced the main board at no cost without an issue. Given this past episode, it would not surprise me that the board is failing again. It is probably out of warranty too. If it is out of warranty, I may try to replace the components on the board that look easy to replace by an amateur with a soldering iron. A new board is ridiculously expensive.

In any case, I will wait for total failure before doing anything. Thanks for your help.

 

[Jimrahbe]

dmh,

If you were using your phone and ScreenLogic rather than a schedule, I would be inclined to think it would be a some kind of ScreenLogic/Interface glitch.

If you turn something on manually, it will only run for a set amount of time and then shut off. The time it will run is controlled by the egg timer. But.. this would not account for why it happened again in only 30 minutes????

A real puzzle... I like your idea of wait and see..

Thanks for the feedback,

Jim R.

 

[dmh]

I checked the egg timers. They are all set to 12 hours. This cannot be the issue. I will turn on my water-feature pump today and let it run. If it goes off, I will know that the issue happened again. I will keep you informed if I isolate the problem. Thanks again.