ETI400 Pentair Heater Help AFS

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orthopod

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Gold Supporter
Jan 12, 2008
139
Braselton, Ga
I am at wit end. I've had 2 Service
People comment in the north metro Atlanta area to try and get my ETI400 heater working.
Both of them when they showed up said they never worked on an ETI 400.

Heater clicks on, fans don't even fire. No gas. silent. The red
Light with AFS comes on. It's been 6 months and we have replaced:
Main control board
Fan control module
Ignition control module.

When the repair people come out, they try to get on with Pentair support and our hold for about an hour. The last Pentair support tech went through the troubleshooting chart with the repair person, and after being on hold for an hour And taking another hour to try to troubleshoot, it got laid into the evening.
That pool repair person said that he was going to get a Pentair tech in the Atlanta area to come and try to work on this but still is having no luck

This unit is 4 years old. It's very efficient and we would like to keep it if we can get it running.

Anyone in the metro Atlanta area good
With troubleshooting these and willing to come to the Braselton area? Northeast Atlanta).

Pentair support has been terrible
 
I might be able to help answering questions in this forum. Do you have the user/installation manual for the heater? The part number for the Fenwal ignition control module shows 2 different variations of the ignition control, so photos of your controls and wiring would be helpful. Do you have a multimeter and know how to use it safely and correctly? A 4 year old heater should have a number of years service still left in it! If you still HAVE to get it serviced by a technician I might be able to refer you to possible companies with NATE certified technicians who are usually well versed in many different systems, although a lot of HVAC service companies do not want to work on pool heaters because of lack of experience in that area and sources for OEM pool heater parts. Also might have info on a company that does not normally like to turn down any service business although they are definately not the least expensive.
 
orthopod said:
I am at wit end. I've had 2 Service
People comment in the north metro Atlanta area to try and get my ETI400 heater working.
Both of them when they showed up said they never worked on an ETI 400.

Heater clicks on, fans don't even fire. No gas. silent. The red
Light with AFS comes on. It's been 6 months and we have replaced:
Main control board
Fan control module
Ignition control module.

When the repair people come out, they try to get on with Pentair support and our hold for about an hour. The last Pentair support tech went through the troubleshooting chart with the repair person, and after being on hold for an hour And taking another hour to try to troubleshoot, it got laid into the evening.
That pool repair person said that he was going to get a Pentair tech in the Atlanta area to come and try to work on this but still is having no luck

This unit is 4 years old. It's very efficient and we would like to keep it if we can get it running.

Anyone in the metro Atlanta area good
With troubleshooting these and willing to come to the Braselton area? Northeast Atlanta).

Pentair support has been terrible
Click to expand...
Has anyone looked at the tubing going into and out of the air flow switches, or replaced either of them? Do both fans run properly? From the manual:

AIR FLOW SWITCH (AFS) There are two air flow switches, (see Figure 2), designed as a safety device to ensure the two combustion air blowers (fans) are operating and are monitoring the differential (negative) pressure within the blower housing. These air pressure switches are factory set. The switches (see page 63 #29) are connected upstream of the ignition module. The ignition module does not operate unless the air flow switches and all safety switches are closed.
 
Blower does not fire. Nothing happens at all
The hoses look fine.

I shorted the blue wires to the AFS (jumped them) and nothing, ads light stays on and blowers don't fire.

Maybe because blower doesn't kick in at all
I'll recheck these, it's one of the first things I I did
-----------

As I was typing this message and fooling around this morning I found a YouTube video where someone was troubleshooting a similar issue

They determined that water had got into their heat exchangers

This ETI 400 vents vertically directly out of the top of the heater. When Terra came out and installed this heater (it was a replacement because the first one failed at one year) they did not install a rain cap. Install installation manual says may require a rain cap if vented vertically.

I just looked down. The ventilation tube in my ventilation tube is almost full of water.
I'll update everybody and then I'm gonna make a post on this because there are a lot of posts on the web about this heater failing
 
This model is a "condensing" heater and there is always water vapor condensing in the heater when it is running and heating. This condensed water vapor is carried away via the drain. The drain includes a trap so that the pressures that the airflow switches sense are not effected. If the drain is plugged at the trap and water builds up in the heat exchanger the heater will not run. I would check and clean the drain trap to see if it is the source of the problem.
 
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Thank you.
I looked further, and I don't know if water has come up enough to get in the heat exchanger.
I will say that the drain tube that was hooked up to the bottom of the exhaust was buried as it was outside the heater and secondly, it was disconnected

I was able to stick something up into the nipple where the drain tube attaches, and there was no clog.
 

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OK, it was just one of the things that I would check. But in one of your previous posts you said that it looked full of water when you looked down the vent. An old HVAC trick to clear an AC drain is to use a wet shop vac at the outlet to suck the blockage out. It also looks like the bottom (cap) with the small outlet nipple can be removed by unscrewing 2 bolts, although I don't know how that bottom cap seals ( OEM O ring ? ) and whether you might need to replace it if available by taking it apart.
 

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