Intellivalve Not Moving in Spillway Mode w/ Intellicenter

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UtexasChris

Well-known member
Jun 10, 2020
80
Austin, TX
I'm in Austin where we just had an ice storm last week and we lost power for 24hrs so my Intellicenter and all equipment was off during this time. I have a feature circuit setup called Spillway. When I turn on this circuit, the pump speed increases and the return valve is supposed to rotate to change the return to spa which creates the spillway effect. I placed the intellivalve in service mode during the cold snap and manually moved it to return the majority of the water to the pool but also to return some of the water to the spa to keep water flowing through pipes. I've since placed the intellivalve back in Auto mode. I noticed yesterday when the spillway schedule came on to circulate chlorinated water into the spa that, while the pump speed increased per the schedule, the valve didn't move. The valve is getting power and can still be manually controlled. I reprogrammed the valve endpoints to make sure something wasn't going with the end points due to power loss.

I tried rebooting the Intellicenter system as well turning the intellivalve to "off" and then back to Auto and neither of these have fixed the issue. I didn't make any configuration changes and am struggling to determine why the valve isn't moving when the Spillway circuit is enabled but, admittedly, I'm not strong when it comes to understanding how to configure in intellicenter. I don't believe it's a faulty valve as I just tried putting the system in spa mode and the valve DID move. However, it's still not moving when I enable Spillway.

Here are screenshots of the valve setup, feature circuits, and pump setup screens. Can anyone see from here what the problem might be? Is the valve configuration supposed to have another option that says "Rotates on Spillway" or something to that effect? The "Type" only has the STANDARD option that is visible and the "Rotates on Pool/Spa" option is greyed out and not able to be changed.

Thanks in advance for the help and expertise!

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There is a little switch on the actuator that goes from on to off to on. The "on" moves the valve one way or the other.
That may have got bumped and is in the Off position. Or, move the switch between the 3 positions to determine if the actuator rotates. if it doesn't then it could be the connection to the actuator (at the actuator) or at the Intellicenter relay. Check all of that prior to making any changes to your circuits.
 
UtexasChris said:
I'm in Austin where we just had an ice storm last week and we lost power for 24hrs so my Intellicenter and all equipment was off during this time. I have a feature circuit setup called Spillway. When I turn on this circuit, the pump speed increases and the return valve is supposed to rotate to change the return to spa which creates the spillway effect. I placed the intellivalve in service mode during the cold snap and manually moved it to return the majority of the water to the pool but also to return some of the water to the spa to keep water flowing through pipes. I've since placed the intellivalve back in Auto mode. I noticed yesterday when the spillway schedule came on to circulate chlorinated water into the spa that, while the pump speed increased per the schedule, the valve didn't move. The valve is getting power and can still be manually controlled. I reprogrammed the valve endpoints to make sure something wasn't going with the end points due to power loss.

I tried rebooting the Intellicenter system as well turning the intellivalve to "off" and then back to Auto and neither of these have fixed the issue. I didn't make any configuration changes and am struggling to determine why the valve isn't moving when the Spillway circuit is enabled but, admittedly, I'm not strong when it comes to understanding how to configure in intellicenter. I don't believe it's a faulty valve as I just tried putting the system in spa mode and the valve DID move. However, it's still not moving when I enable Spillway.

Here are screenshots of the valve setup, feature circuits, and pump setup screens. Can anyone see from here what the problem might be? Is the valve configuration supposed to have another option that says "Rotates on Spillway" or something to that effect? The "Type" only has the STANDARD option that is visible and the "Rotates on Pool/Spa" option is greyed out and not able to be changed.

Thanks in advance for the help and expertise!

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Click to expand...
Your settings all appear correct. The Spillway command is known by the panel based on the positions of your pool/spa modes. Same with "Drain" so assuming those endpoints are correct, it's indeed odd that they move in Pool/Spa but not in spillway.

We have seen issues with them when they lose power, but it's generally just a loss of position settings. After the tedious reprogram, they work again.

Just confirming you can put it in pool/spa/spillover all in sequence and the first two work but final does not?

Does the status indicator on the valve change? The only other thing I could imagine is that the system thinks the valve is already in Spillover (i.e. it's confused about the polarity). Try placing in Spa and going to Spillover; does the return actuator rotate back to the pool? This would suggest the Spillover is sending a command to the Intellivalve, it's just the wrong one.

You may eliminate all outside (physical) possibilities and if all continues to appear correct despite not working , you may then try deleting your spillway feature circuit and rebuilding it.
 
Last edited:
HermanTX said:
There is a little switch on the actuator that goes from on to off to on. The "on" moves the valve one way or the other.
That may have got bumped and is in the Off position. Or, move the switch between the 3 positions to determine if the actuator rotates. if it doesn't then it could be the connection to the actuator (at the actuator) or at the Intellicenter relay. Check all of that prior to making any changes to your circuits.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I didn’t realize there were switches on intellivalves and will check to see if I can find it tomorrow when it’s light out. I just took a look at the intellivalve online manual and couldn’t find anything called out but I’ll check the actual valve tomorrow. Do you know where on the intellivalve the switch is located by chance?

The valve does rotate when I engage spa mode and it’s also lit up which tells me it is for sure getting power and able to be controlled at least in some capacity by the Intellicenter.
 
Very helpful. Thanks for the troubleshooting recommendations and thoughts. I’ll give this a try tomorrow and report back. Maybe I also need to try to reprogram the endpoints one more time. I thought I did it correctly but it’s probably worth me doing it again just to be sure after I try your other suggestions.
 
UtexasChris said:
Thanks. I didn’t realize there were switches on intellivalves and will check to see if I can find it tomorrow when it’s light out. I just took a look at the intellivalve online manual and couldn’t find anything called out but I’ll check the actual valve tomorrow. Do you know where on the intellivalve the switch is located by chance?
Click to expand...
You're correct; they don't have this switch. 👍
 
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UtexasChris said:
Thanks. I didn’t realize there were switches on intellivalves and will check to see if I can find it tomorrow when it’s light out. I just took a look at the intellivalve online manual and couldn’t find anything called out but I’ll check the actual valve tomorrow. Do you know where on the intellivalve the switch is located by chance?

The valve does rotate when I engage spa mode and it’s also lit up which tells me it is for sure getting power and able to be controlled at least in some capacity by the Intellicenter.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected. There is no switch on the IntelliValves. Sorry for the misdirection. However, it is good that the valve is rotating, so you are getting a signal to it. I would proceed with the plan you outlined to reprogram.
 
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UtexasChris said:
Very helpful. Thanks for the troubleshooting recommendations and thoughts. I’ll give this a try tomorrow and report back. Maybe I also need to try to reprogram the endpoints one more time. I thought I did it correctly but it’s probably worth me doing it again just to be sure after I try your other suggestions.
Click to expand...
Before going g thru all of that, confirm that your intellicenter did not upgrade to firmware 2.06. If it did, you will want to rollback to 1.64 as spillway does not work in 2.06
 
Ahultin said:
If it did, you will want to rollback to 1.64 as spillway does not work in 2.06
Click to expand...
Spillway does work in 2.06, however you have to have the pool circuit enabled for it to work. You can't just hit the spillway feature button only, and have it work.

--Jeff
 
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Thanks, @Ahultin . I just looked at my version and I am indeed on 2.006. It sounds like this might be the issue and I just found the post on reverting back. Have any of you reverted back using the panel and had issues with configuration? I saw a few posts where it looks like people had some issues but they may have used a USB process to revert back rather than the process outlined in this post.... Roll Back Firmware @Turbo1Ton are you saying Spillway should work as long as Pool mode is enabled? I'm running a variable speed pump which runs 24/7 on pool mode and spillway isn't working.

@bradgray I just went through your troubleshooting steps.
  1. Confirmed I can put it in pool/spa/spillover all in sequence and the first 2 work but the final does not.
  2. I also reprogrammed ("set") the valve and tried again to be sure and same result
  3. The status indicator on the valve doesn't show any errors
  4. I tried placing spa and going to spillover and the intellivalve doesn't move
  5. I also just tried deleting the spillover feature circuit and recreating it and assigning it to the pump. No change.
I'm beginning to think this might be the firmware issue @Ahultin mentioned as this issue came out of nowhere outside of the power loss that occurred to the ice storm. I didn't make any settings changes that could have caused it and I'm wondering the power outage caused the firmware update when I received power and the intellicenter came back online.

@Turbo1Ton Can you please elaborate more on your statement to make sure I'm following and have this setup correctly? If I can avoid rolling back through some type of workaround, I'd love to better understand it.
 
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With 2.006 you must already be in POOL mode with the pump running before the SPILLWAY schedule begins.

If you are not in POOL mode the SPILLWAY will not start.

Directions to revert versions is at Pentair Automation Systems - Further Reading

2.006 is buggy enough you should go back to 1.064.
 
@utexasfor me the pool mode trick didnt totally work but reverting back to 1.64 did. I was able to get one schedule to start spillway but it wouldnt stop and the other daily spillway activation didnt want to go no matter what i did. I also had issue with the spa spontaneously disapearing. Roll back via the posted directions sans usb worked for me.
 
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