EasyTouch 8 with VS Pentair Intelliflo random shut off in Spa mode only

[Wjmcfarl]

So happy to have found a forum with such impressive wealth of knowledge. Hoping I can tap into some of the expertise to help me figure out a problem I have been having for about a year with our pool/spa system.

System:

1. EasyTouch 8 Pool and Spa shared equipment control center (legacy version 2010) P/N 520540
2. Intelliflo Variable Speed Pump, VS, 2017, P/N 011018
3. EasyTouch Wireless Controller Kit for 8 Circuit System, IC: 4249A-EZHNDHLD

Problem (Basic): The Intelliflo pump randomly shuts off only in Spa mode with or without heat on.

Problem (Detailed): About 1 year ago we started to notice that our spa would take a long time to heat up to desired temperature. I am a hospitalist in a relatively busy 45 bed ICU hospital in semirural Texas and we were inundated with Covid patient's with transfers from as far as New Mexico to our facility. Needless to say, figuring out the spa issue was not first priority or even 100th for a long time.

We had a local pool company that does our regular cleaning and chemical maintenance come out and the service tech thought the issue was the speed setting on the VS pump was too slow or not setup correctly, details are a little vague, and he said that he fixed the problem and everything was working.

Tried the spa after the first fix and again could get it to heat but would take forever to reach temp and then while using the spa I noticed that the pump would shut off randomly and then come right back on usually within 20-30 seconds. Heater would stop heating each time the pump would shut off then would wait until the pump restarted and pressurized the system. I did some trouble shooting over the next couple of days and found that the first time I would turn the Spa mode on each day the pump would run for about 5 to even 30 minutes then it would start a random shut off and restart cycle about every 1-5 minutes but would always restart without any additional interventions. Eventually it would reach desired temperature yet still the pump would shut off randomly.

I called the pool service company and they sent a tech out. I described the shut off issues in detail and again the tech evaluated the system and said the programming was wrong and that they spent a while on the phone with Pentair tech support and again said everything was fixed. The same problem persisted. 4 service calls later over the course of the past 6 months and about $1000 in service bills later I still have the same problem. The pool company has recommended replacing the board to the tune of about $3000-5000 depending on how advanced I want everything. Crazy in my opinion.

I spent the past 2 days aggressively troubleshooting the problem with Pentair tech support, each representative was phenomenal by the way, and unfortunately we were unable to get the issue resolved. In researching online I found TFP and figured it was worth asking the question here to see if anyone has similar issues. I searched the forum and found some similar complaints but nothing seems to exactly replicate my scenario.

Completed Troubleshooting:

1. Reset EasyTouch control board using on board reset button
2. Power cycled control board by shutting off breaker to panel
3. Reset Intelliflo pump using the factory reset function
4. Disconnected comm link cable to Wireless Control Link antenna (this thing doesn't really work well in our setup anyways)
5. Cut back and rewired J20 communication cable to pump at EasyTouch board
6. Disconnected J20 communication cable and ran pump manually at 3050 RPM while in Spa mode on the EasyTouch board with heat on and was able to run pump for an hour without shut off. As soon as I reconnected the J20 cable to the pump and let the EasyTouch control take over and restarted in Spa mode the pump started the run stop cycle again.
7. Pump runs fine in Pool mode with or without heat on and will run for hours with no random shut offs but as soon as I switch to Spa mode the run stop cycle starts again
8. Used different speeds for Spa mode from 2000 RPM to 3450 RPM
9. Deleted all schedules and speeds and reprogrammed everything
10. Programmed an Egg Timer for Spa mode to see if I could force pump to stay on

Multimeter Testing:

1. continuity across Pump Aux relay does not change when pump shuts off (relay remains active)
2. 24VAC is sent to Pump Aux relay even when pump shuts off

Since I can manually run the pump with the J20 comm cable disconnected with Spa mode on and the heater going I feel I have eliminated the pump as the problem. Initially I thought maybe a thermal protection circuit could be the problem but it seems to be a programming/communication issue.

Pentair tech feels we have eliminated all variables and that either the J20 comm cable is bad, unlikely since everything runs fine in pool mode, or the EasyTouch control board has malfunctioned and I need to replace.

Any additional insight or troubleshooting recommendations from the forum experts? Anyone with similar issue find a solution?

Thanks,
Will

 

[Jimrahbe]

Will,

Do you have ScreenLogic? I assume not..

What happens if you turn on the spa, but not the heater??

When the pump stops, does the pump's display still say "Display Not active"??

When the pump stops, does the little LCD still show the system to be in the spa mode?

Your troubleshooting sounds logical and well thought out..

I can't see how it would cause the problem only in the spa mode, but we saw an RS-485 connector at the pump that was full of corrosion the other day.. Take off the back shell of the cable connector and inspect it, just to make sure.

I have no idea what the problem is, but one of the things I would do is to shut off or disconnect the Intake and Return valves and see what happens.. Do this when in the pool mode and then switch to the spa mode.. Obviously, the system would think it was in the spa mode, but would actually still be in the pool mode. Just grasping at straws here, but if one of the valves was bad and intermittently loading down the system transformer, the system would reboot and it would shut the pump off for a 30 seconds or so..

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Wjmcfarl]

Will,

Do you have ScreenLogic?

What happens if you turn on the spa, but not the heater??

When the pump stops, does the pump's display still say "Display Not active"??

When the pump stops, does the little LCD still show the system to be in the spa mode?

Your troubleshooting sounds logical and well thought out..

I can't see how it would cause the problem only in the spa mode, but we saw an RS-485 connector at the pump that was full of corrosion the other day.. Take off the back shell of the cable connector and inspect it, just to make sure.

I have no idea what the problem is, but one of the things I would do is to shut off or disconnect the Intake and Return valves and see what happens.. Do this when in the pool mode and then switch to the spa mode.. Obviously, the system would think it was in the spa mode, but would actually still be in the pool mode. Just grasping at straws here, but if one of the valves was bad and intermittently loading down the system transformer, the system would reboot and it would shut the pump off for a 30 seconds or so..

Thanks,

Jim R.

Screenlogic: No, all original 2010 technology for now

Does not matter if I turn Spa mode on with heat on or with heat off the pump still cycles on and off

"Display Not Active" never goes away on the pump LCD screen even when the pump shuts off

Yes, still shows Spa mode on the EasyTouch LCD the whole time

The troubleshooting is driving me insane but I love a good challenge.

I just finished swapping out the communication cable between the Comm port on the board and the Intelliflo pump. I have been calling this a J-20 comm cable but I assume this is the RS-485 you are referencing. Unfortunately the problem still persists after the cable swap. The old cable did not appear damaged or corroded in anyway.

With regards to the Intake and Return valves, I believe this problem started only after the pool service company swapped a valve out that had started to malfunction. I told them we did not have this problem before they swapped the valve out and they said the valve does not communicate back to the board but the timing of the pump cycling on and off in Spa mode and the valve replacement seemed too close to be mere coincidence. Overloading the low voltage side of the board seems like a very logical possibility! I will go troubleshoot the valve now!

 

[Wjmcfarl]

Unfortunately, even with the valve actuators complete disconnected from the EasyTouch low voltage board the problem persists. Should I go ahead and flash the EEPROM and set everything up from scratch? That’s the only thing I haven’t done yet. Even pulled the PCB board and used a soft bristle brush to clean off a few sugar ants that died on the control board but all the circuits look good.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Will,

If you have not already done so, I would erase the EEPROM and reprogram...

I would not program much to start...

I would set the Pool and Spa circuits to run at 1200 RPM.

Schedule the Pool circuit to run 24/7 (8 am until 8 am)

Intake and Return are preprogrammed from the factory.

Then run some tests...

Just so we are both on the same page.. The reset button on the front panel is just like rebooting your PC.. It does not really "reset" anything.. You can't "flash" the EEPROM as it takes special equipment. Erasing the EEPROM just deletes the programing that you, or the pool people have done, it does not remove the operating system.

After you get all this figured out, you really should get ScreenLogic. Makes programming almost fun and much easier and more intuitive than the little 3" LCD.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Wjmcfarl]

Sorry

Will,

If you have not already done so, I would erase the EEPROM and reprogram...

I would not program much to start...

I would set the Pool and Spa circuits to run at 1200 RPM.

Schedule the Pool circuit to run 24/7 (8 am until 8 am)

Intake and Return are preprogrammed from the factory.

Then run some tests...

Just so we are both on the same page.. The reset button on the front panel is just like rebooting your PC.. It does not really "reset" anything.. You can't "flash" the EEPROM as it takes special equipment. Erasing the EEPROM just deletes the programing that you, or the pool people have done, it does not remove the operating system.

After you get all this figured out, you really should get ScreenLogic. Makes programming almost fun and much easier and more intuitive than the little 3" LCD.

Thanks,

Jim R.

Sorry, yes I will erase the EEPROM and reprogram to see if that helps. I was just using the reset on front panel after some of the other troubleshooting attempts like a reboot.

If I can get this board working then my plan was to get and install ScreenLogic. If there truly is an issue with the Spa mode on this board and I would need to replace that then my plan is to replace the whole board with the IntelliCenter upgrade.

If I still have the problem after reading the EEPROM what other “tests” should I consider?
Thanks,
Will

 

[Jimrahbe]

W,

I really don't know, as you seem to have looked at all the stuff I would recommend.

I can't think of any logical reasons for the pump to shut off only in the spa mode.

Let's see if Tom has any new ideas... Calling @ogdento

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[ogdento]

I'm not sure what could be going on, but I vaguely recall someone complaining in the last year or so that their pump shut off in spa mode. Unfortunately I can't find any posts. Does something about a bad temp setting/sensor or maybe another circuit turning on and killing the pump ring any bells for anybody?

Will appears to be on firmware 2.080 - and I'm not sure if this is the problem - but in the notes for 2.090 I found this:
Fixed issue that occurred in some configurations with newer pumps (VS+SVRS, VST, VSF) packets would sometimes get dropped due to timing. If a few in a row were dropped it would cause the pump to stop until packets were no longer being dropped.

So maybe an update will help? Will, with the amount of money you've spent troubleshooting I'd hope they'd come out and update your board for cheap (or free!). PM me if you can't get anybody to do it. And you can see the notes by downloading the latest firmware zip from Pentair and opening the master readme.rtf

Hmm... but I'm still thinking somebody else had this issue and I don't think it was a firmware thing.

Tom

 

[MSchutzer]

Is it common to just have two wires connected on the RS-485 for the Pentair systems? While RS-485 is differential signaling and has a wide common mode range it’s usual practice to have also have a common connection (usually ground) between the devices on the bus. I’m a little surprised that pin 4 (the ground connection) on the RS-485 connector isn’t wired up in the connection to the pump.

I don’t know how a missing ground would manifest in the symptoms seen, but that bus wiring seems non-standard. In theory everything is bonded so the pump and controller should have a common return potential so you may not need the common connection in the interface cable, maybe that is the way Pentair does it?

Mark

 

[Wjmcfarl]

Thank y’all both for the replies and suggestions! I’ll look into getting the firmware updated. I went ahead and erased the EEPROM and rebuilt the Spa mode and Pool mode and at first it ran great for about 30 minutes then started cycling every 5 to 10 minutes now it’s right back to the original problem with regular shut down and restart only in Spa mode. I’m honestly at a loss!

I hate to replace the board unless necessary but I’m about out of options other than a firmware update. If I did upgrade to an IntelliCenter board which one do I need for my current setup?
Thanks,
Will

 

[Jimrahbe]

Mark,

The Pentair manual specifically says to NOT connect the two voltage lines.. I suspect it is because the pump is using its own voltages.. The cable for the IntelliFlo only comes with the two wires..

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[mknauss]

If I did upgrade to an IntelliCenter board which one do I need for my current setup?

I looked at Polytec Pools website. The only Intellicenter upgrade kits are i10ps. They have legacy (pre 2012) and current system kits. From what you said above, you have all ready spent as much as an upgrade will cost. They are not shown in stock, however.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Will,

When you say it is "cycling every 5 to 10 minutes" do you mean it is switching back and forth between the pool mode and spa mode, or is it the pump cycling on and off..

If it is running on a set cycle, then that sounds like it thinks your spa is an in-floor cleaning system..

Do you have an in-floor cleaner??

Jim R.

 

[Wjmcfarl]

Will,

When you say it is "cycling every 5 to 10 minutes" do you mean it is switching back and forth between the pool mode and spa mode, or is it the pump cycling on and off..

If it is running on a set cycle, then that sounds like it thinks your spa is an in-floor cleaning system..

Do you have an in-floor cleaner??

Jim R.

Sorry for the lack of clarification. The pump shuts off completely and then turns back on. The YouTube video I linked is exactly what is still happening.

Pump was replaced in 2018 so it is a newer pump maybe took a while for the packet error to develop?

There seems to be no real rhythm to the power cycling from the pump. Sometimes it shuts off after 5 minutes sometimes it barely primes and then shuts off again. I do not have an in floor cleaning system and I do not have one programmed.

 

[Wjmcfarl]

Uhhhh! So I switched the valves then turned them off and turned the Pool mode on with heat so we could use the spa in “Pool mode” and the pump shut off even in Pool mode so I guess it is a panel issue. Either needs a firmware update or replacement. I’m going to see if I can get the panel firmware updated tomorrow. It does not seem to shut off as often in pool mode but still shut off at least once while we were in it tonight.

 

[Crabcruncher]

Try programing your pump to run at 2000 rpms while in spa mode. I know that the pump isnt supposed to cycle with the heater overtemp, but somethings crossed up.