Hello, Trouble Free Pool'ers!
For those of you who have been around for a little while, I moved into a home in 2014 with my first ever pool. It's an older, massive in-ground concrete job.
Anyway, the pool has come with a Sta-Rite 400NA heater which has been tons of fun.
Background thread here: Sta Rite Pool Heater
So, the heater has never really worked properly. Through all the various trials and tribulations (and tons of help from knowledgeable folks around here like ps303 and PoolClown), I've replaced most of the obvious parts along the way - the HLS, the bypass, and whatnot. I've torn it apart, squirted water in all the heat exchanger tubes, and basically have sort of lived with the heater to where it'll run for a couple of hours, then die out on me. With that and the solar blanket, it has been enough to get the water to a temperature that the family is happy with, so I've kinda limped along.
Opened up the pool this week and tried firing up the heater today, and have a new, interesting problem.
After running for a little bit, the LCD flipped to E001. The underside of the board had nothing (though there's a light on J5 - but I think that might just be showing the connection?). Anyway - I looked around and saw that more often than not, that's the thermistor. Being the one thing that I haven't personally replaced (previous owner did it in 2012-2013), I bought one at a gouging rate from my local pool store and did it today. I fired it up again, got E001, and then power cycled it again, cleared the E001 and it ran for around an hour, then slipped to "Service Heater" with the AGS light. No other lights. Pool is running well, good pressure on all of the jets going into the pool, and very few bubbles showing in the pump "window" (which is pretty good for a pool of this age).
I did replace the AGS in 2014. I can do it again, but I'm sort of torn between just starting the cycle again of throwing random switches at it to see, and seeing what would work. I know the switches DO go bad, but that's only 3 years which doesn't seem like a long time. Is that, like, a typical thing for a switch like that to fail that quickly?
No noise when the unit fails this time (ie. not a water boiling issue as I'd had before). As a side note, I did have some suction leaks in the pool in the past and repaired those right near the end of last pool season. The heater seemed to work really well at that point - maybe the previous issues were related to the amount of air getting into the system somehow? Dunno.
I do water chem every other week at the pool store, and I legitimately do follow their recommendations on chemicals to balance levels within their specs, so I don't "think" the heater should be having issues with that kind of thing, but I don't know.
I'm terrified of having a technician come and look at this thing, as I've personally spent a dozen hours at least, along with countless recommendations from the really helpful folks here, and I worry about 50 visits with parts being thrown at it. I'm honestly coming to the point where I may just replace the whole heater if I can't figure it out. I definitely don't have that kind of cash, though, so it'll be a heck of a bite from the family vacation budget.
One last kick at the can: Starting with the basics, given the symptoms I describe... is any kind soul able to take a crack at suggesting the right way to approach this?
Thanks so much.
Dave
For those of you who have been around for a little while, I moved into a home in 2014 with my first ever pool. It's an older, massive in-ground concrete job.
Anyway, the pool has come with a Sta-Rite 400NA heater which has been tons of fun.
Background thread here: Sta Rite Pool Heater
So, the heater has never really worked properly. Through all the various trials and tribulations (and tons of help from knowledgeable folks around here like ps303 and PoolClown), I've replaced most of the obvious parts along the way - the HLS, the bypass, and whatnot. I've torn it apart, squirted water in all the heat exchanger tubes, and basically have sort of lived with the heater to where it'll run for a couple of hours, then die out on me. With that and the solar blanket, it has been enough to get the water to a temperature that the family is happy with, so I've kinda limped along.
Opened up the pool this week and tried firing up the heater today, and have a new, interesting problem.
After running for a little bit, the LCD flipped to E001. The underside of the board had nothing (though there's a light on J5 - but I think that might just be showing the connection?). Anyway - I looked around and saw that more often than not, that's the thermistor. Being the one thing that I haven't personally replaced (previous owner did it in 2012-2013), I bought one at a gouging rate from my local pool store and did it today. I fired it up again, got E001, and then power cycled it again, cleared the E001 and it ran for around an hour, then slipped to "Service Heater" with the AGS light. No other lights. Pool is running well, good pressure on all of the jets going into the pool, and very few bubbles showing in the pump "window" (which is pretty good for a pool of this age).
I did replace the AGS in 2014. I can do it again, but I'm sort of torn between just starting the cycle again of throwing random switches at it to see, and seeing what would work. I know the switches DO go bad, but that's only 3 years which doesn't seem like a long time. Is that, like, a typical thing for a switch like that to fail that quickly?
No noise when the unit fails this time (ie. not a water boiling issue as I'd had before). As a side note, I did have some suction leaks in the pool in the past and repaired those right near the end of last pool season. The heater seemed to work really well at that point - maybe the previous issues were related to the amount of air getting into the system somehow? Dunno.
I do water chem every other week at the pool store, and I legitimately do follow their recommendations on chemicals to balance levels within their specs, so I don't "think" the heater should be having issues with that kind of thing, but I don't know.
I'm terrified of having a technician come and look at this thing, as I've personally spent a dozen hours at least, along with countless recommendations from the really helpful folks here, and I worry about 50 visits with parts being thrown at it. I'm honestly coming to the point where I may just replace the whole heater if I can't figure it out. I definitely don't have that kind of cash, though, so it'll be a heck of a bite from the family vacation budget.
One last kick at the can: Starting with the basics, given the symptoms I describe... is any kind soul able to take a crack at suggesting the right way to approach this?
Thanks so much.
Dave
