I got my replacement current limiter and I thought you TFP folks would like to see the folksy repair job I did. This is for a Mineral Springs MS10. It's essentially just an older version of an Aqua-Rite unit.
This is my saltwater chlorine generator from the front. It doesn't generate chlorine. According to diagnostics, the voltage varies, and wildly. Seems like something the pool inspector should have caught before we bought the house, but am I bitter? Nooooooo.
Before I got any further, I turn off the power at the breakers, and unplug the cables: there's the thick cable in the lower right that goes to the salt cell, and underneath the box is a phone cable that goes to the flow detection switch on the return.
Remove the two screws and the top of the panel pulls forward and can be lifted up and out.
There are three sets of wires that need to be disconnected to remove the PCB. There are two red/black clips in the upper right. These were a little stuck and took pliers to tug on.
In the upper left are four colorfully-coded wires and they slipped right off for me.
And finally the power to the main unit in the lower left. I took a paranoid moment to ensure that the power was off before unscrewing these and pulling the wires out.
Now, to remove the PCB itself there are four plastic stands that have expanding tips. Squeeze the tips and pull the PCB forward to detach them. I used pointy-nosed pliers.
And finally there are two screws at the bottom. These don't need to be removed, merely loosened enough that you can slide the PCB out of the control panel. These were hard to remove and took some heavy plier action to loosen.
I took the PCB back into the house to work on it. Here's the culprit, which is apparently a current limiter. It's right next to the spot where you remove the red/back wires. How do I know this is the problem part? I don't. But other people have said this is the part that tends to go bad, and would seem to be related to voltage issues, so I'm crossing my fingers.
Here's my trusty dusty soldering tool which I probably haven't touched since the 90s.
On the back of the PCB are two asymmetrical solder points that correspond to the thermistor on the other side.
I don't own a desoldering gun, or solder wick, or solder suction - apparently these are tools that smart people with brain one in their heads use to remove solder. Instead I just heated the solder from the back while tugging on the thermistor from the front...
...and crushed the current limiter. That's probably a good sign, actually; I take the brittleness as a likely indicator of damage.
After removing the old current limiter and clearing away as much solder as I could by wiping the soldering tool on a damp paper towel, I started working the replacement current limiter into the two holes. This was slow-going, since I didn't remove all the solder, but eventually I work it through enough that I don't feel the top of the part will bump into anything.
And a dab of solder on the back to hold the pins in and create contact with the PCB.
I probably should have trimmed the wires before hand. No matter. Wire cutters worked.
And the part is replaced! I put the PCB back in, doing the removal steps in reverse order, and turn the thing on. And I get a high voltage and amps flowing! It's in metric, for some reason, but that's an easy change. Anyhow, it reports low salt. The inspect cell light is indicating reduced electrolytic efficiency.
I add the rest of my salt bag to the pool this morning, and while *I* think it's 3000PPM, the SWG says it's at 2700. Nevertheless, that's enough to keep it happy, for now.
So is it working? I THINK so. I ran it for an hour at 100% last night (before the salt addition) and FC climbed from 5.0 to 5.5, but that's within the margin of error. I'm leaving it on at 35% today and will check it again later to see how it's holding up. I have to deal with my low CYA at some point.
Also, my Intermatic timer trippers arrived. They were missing from the timer. Now I understand why:
The timer doesn't work. It doesn't move at all. So now it looks like I have to get a replacement timer motor or just replace the whole timer. There's actually two timers in the breaker box, the other is for the Polaris unit that broke and they never fixed and just for kicks they cut the booster pump out of the system but left it wired to the breaker box, so it's just sitting on the ground there for me to trip over. I thought maybe I could steal that timer for my filter/SWG pump, but it looks like that one's broken too.
I'm starting to understand why they sold the house...
