Every time I turn the pump off (to backwash, rinse, waste etc.), the pump primes again. I have gone into settings and changed the sensitivity setting from factory 1 to 100 but it still primes when the power is turned back on. I have also changed the priming delay to 10 minutes and it still primes. I can disable the prime feature but don't want to. I do not have any leaks and the pump is full of water. The reason this is an issue, I inherited the pool and the hose to backwash/waste has a couple of leaks in it and I don't want to replace it yet and I have to add more hose to it and the union place has to be held in place when it primes or it comes apart and becomes a firehose! Any advice or help is greatly appreciated.
Intelliflo VS Pump Priming every time power is turned off
- Thread starter otter86753
- Start date
I think you can change the pump prime speed, maybe you can turn it down. You don't need to cut power to it, just push the start/stop button. Does it still prime when you push start again? I can't remember.
It does still prime when I push start again. I like the prime speed as it is, but I suppose I can alter that if nobody else has a solution.
Priming just means the pump runs at max speed -- if you go into Settings->Set Max Speed, and set that to a lower value, it will prime at that lower speed. I set mine quite a bit lower than max because I was replacing a 3/4hp pump and it's currently sharing a 20A breaker with the boost pump for now, so I didn't need or want it ever running at 3hp.
I think you can also disable priming altogether, but it's probably better to let it prime at your max usable speed before dropping, just in case you do lose water in the pipes for whatever reason. If it's enabled, I believe it will do so on every start. The pump has no way to know before starting if it has prime, only after sensing flow once it's started.
I think you can also disable priming altogether, but it's probably better to let it prime at your max usable speed before dropping, just in case you do lose water in the pipes for whatever reason. If it's enabled, I believe it will do so on every start. The pump has no way to know before starting if it has prime, only after sensing flow once it's started.
I have lowered the max speed to 2000, but sometimes I do like to put it at 3450 to clear the top of the pool of palm berries etc.. Anyone else with a better explanation why the priming settings I altered don't work?
Pretty sure they always prime first no matter what. You probably never noticed your 3/4 priming because it only ran at one speed.
I had the same issue on my old pool. Had 2 Intelliflo VS pumps, one for water features and one for filtering. The one hooked up to the water features would never prime when turned on. The main pump would sometimes prime despite having full water in the basket, other times it would not. When it primed, it would often suck air from one of the skimmers depending on water level in pool, which then caused the SVRS to trip, shut off pump, repeat. Very frustrating.
I tried all the settings from the remote, control panel, and on the pump itself and could not get the priming settings to work as they were supposed to according to the manual. The priming sensitivity seemed to do nothing. Guessing there may have been a bug in the firmware, pump was installed in 2009. The only way I could get it to stop priming was to disable priming, but then when I emptied pump basket would have to change settings to get it to prime again.
I tried all the settings from the remote, control panel, and on the pump itself and could not get the priming settings to work as they were supposed to according to the manual. The priming sensitivity seemed to do nothing. Guessing there may have been a bug in the firmware, pump was installed in 2009. The only way I could get it to stop priming was to disable priming, but then when I emptied pump basket would have to change settings to get it to prime again.
I have a feeling that is what I am going to have to do; disable the priming every time I want to backwash or vacuum to waste. Not the end of the world, but I too can't see any difference in changing any of the settings for sensitivity or delay the onset of prime.
fix your union, easy solution 
i like that it primes every turn on, although i've not played with the sensitivity much.
i like that it primes every turn on, although i've not played with the sensitivity much.Ahah, I'm glad you posted; I misread how priming works in the manual before, now I need to check mine because I seem to have the same issue. I was thinking it was always supposed to go to max speed on startup (and mine does, like yours), but that's not the case -- it should ramp to 1800 for 3 seconds, then check for primed and ramp to max only if necessary. From what I can tell:
- Setting the delay higher definitely isn't what you want -- the settable delay is how long it runs at max speed if the 1800/3 sec didn't detect primed. There doesn't appear to be a way to change that 3 second time.
- It doesn't seem possible to set either of the prime speeds directly -- always 1800 then max-allowed for "delay" if not sensing prime
- Setting the sensitivity *should* make it more likely to sense being primed at 1800 and not ramp to max; I haven't tried that on mine yet but it sounds like you have and it doesn't help. I'll report back on my results.
Turning off priming may be your only choice; maybe do an experiment: Disable priming and do a basket clean (including opening the filter relief), then start the pump on lowest speed and see if it manages to prime itself well enough. If so, then leaving it disabled should be safe.
- Setting the delay higher definitely isn't what you want -- the settable delay is how long it runs at max speed if the 1800/3 sec didn't detect primed. There doesn't appear to be a way to change that 3 second time.
- It doesn't seem possible to set either of the prime speeds directly -- always 1800 then max-allowed for "delay" if not sensing prime
- Setting the sensitivity *should* make it more likely to sense being primed at 1800 and not ramp to max; I haven't tried that on mine yet but it sounds like you have and it doesn't help. I'll report back on my results.
Turning off priming may be your only choice; maybe do an experiment: Disable priming and do a basket clean (including opening the filter relief), then start the pump on lowest speed and see if it manages to prime itself well enough. If so, then leaving it disabled should be safe.
Thank you and I await your results. Like I said, disabling the prime when I want to backwash etc isn't the end of the earth, but the sensitivity setting makes absolutely no difference so your test will be good for me to see. I have the model 011018 just to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.
Yes, same pump, 011018. I tried it tonight, and same results as you -- setting the priming sensitivity to a number of values between 1 and 100 made no difference. Each time, the pump ramped to 1800 for 3 seconds, then to 2800 (my max) for 20 seconds before dropping to the selected speed. I'm not sure how it detects primed or not, either that mechanism doesn't work well or it really doesn't get enough water at the lower speed to get started. So it's not just you.
An older thread (Priming intelliflo VS+SVRS and setup question) talks about it indirectly using current draw to determine prime; it's possible that some pipe configurations just will never get that to trigger. I have a 1.5" suction line from the skimmer transitioning to 2" with a U-turn to align (I did end up with the recommended amount of straight pipe into the pump), so perhaps that's why. Other threads from the same google search look like the same question/no solution.
Not a big deal for me, but I'd prefer it to not ramp like that if it's not necessary. If you disable priming, you can still manually start it at a higher speed after emptying the basket etc. And I believe the pump will still trigger an error if it's truly sucking air.
Thank you. I will just disable the prime feature when I want to perform any of those functions that I don't want it to prime. The sensitivity setting seems purely superflous and one more electronic to go bad at some point!