Heat Pump Service Info

[cjpwalker]

I have an AquaPro Pro-1300.

Does anyone have any service literature other than the homeowner's manual?

Looking for charging info or chart (target subcooling... I have factory charge by weight on the dataplate), and setup/diagnostic info for the board.

 

[poolneophyte]

I hope you have better luck getting info (or someone to work on it) than I did. I posted a question on TFP on 9/9 which had a bunch of views but no responses. I had a really hard time finding a HVAC company to work on the unit. My heat pump was manufactured by Jandy and even they couldn't give me someone to work on their equipment. I was given the name of a local Jandy service company but was told that they "might not do HVAC work". I left a message for that company and never heard back from them. After searching around, I found a small (1 man) HVAC company that was willing to get involved but said that he doesn't know anything about pool heaters but he knows a lot about air conditioning and heat pumps.

He ended up finding the problem which was a poor factory braze that had broken and leaked out all of the R-22 refrigerant. He then brazed the leak, pressure tested the system with nitrogen, evacuated the system with a vacuum pump and recharged it with R-22. Because R-22 is being phased out, the price per pound has skyrocketed. I was given a break on the price because I helped out by disassembling and re-assembling the unit. Hopefully your unit is newer and uses one of the more environmentally safe refrigerants that doesn't cost as much. Because my system had lost all of its refrigerant, they refilled it using the initial charge amount listed on the nameplate and it worked great.

Good luck.

 

[cjpwalker]

Thanks... I am an HVAC guy, so that's not a problem - just trying to find some factory specs. Yes, the heat pump is new and runs the "environmentally friendly" R410A (which is now being targeted as a greenhouse gas, so will only remain environmentally friendly until people forget the million$ of dollars of marketing that Carrier and Allied Signal put into "Puron" years ago... but i digress).

It's funny how some companies won't work on stuff that's outside of their comfort zone - we'll tackle just about anything. A gas burner is a gas burner, and refrigeration is refrigeration. I'm glad you found somebody who wasn't afraid to get out of the box a little - be sure to keep his number handy!

 

[poolneophyte]

Because the pool heat pump is an appliance and not a split system with a line-set to a remote evaporator coil, the company simply filled it to the factory charge listed on the nameplate. He had no other data to go by but told me that the high side and low side pressures were dead on. The heat pump was also discharging lots of cold air and seemed to be working better than it has in a long time. I suspect that it has had a slow leak for years and that vibration finally broke the braze. It really pisses me off that I had to spend so much money to fix a factory defect. Jandy's heat pumps have no service access to the internals and you must disassemble the entire unit if you need to get inside. I was able to tilt out the front panel just enough for the tech to get both arms inside to braze the joint. If the tech couldn't reach inside, I would have had to disconnect every wire in the control panel and cut PVC conduits to completely remove the front. It's truly a terrible design for anyone that has to work on the unit. It's also impossible to clean any leaves or debris out that have accumulated at the bottom.

I hope that your AquaPro unit has better access to the internals. I wish you the best.

 

[cjpwalker]

Well, I charged it to about 10 deg subcooling - took almost a pound of refrigerant... Not a really noticeable change in performance (temp difference), but it does dial in the efficiency of the refrigeration circuit somewhat and hopefully should squeeze a few more btus out of it.

Messed around with the board. Holding set and ^ gives me evap coil temp. Hold "set" for several seconds gets into setup menu.

From there I can turn the separate spa setting on or off,
I can enable the pump timer feature (but I would have to add a relay or contactor as it's not included on this model,
I can calibrate the inlet water temp sensor,
There is a setting called "dEL" which I am guessing is delay. It is a numerical setting, currently at zero. The compressor control already has a delay timer wired in series with it to prevent short cycling.
and there is a setting called "LOC" that I 'm not sure about. Also a numerical setting, currently at zero.

Strangely, the board is set up to allow me to switch to cooling mode, but there is no reversing valve on the heat pump - thus no cooling capability. There is no option to disable that.

Still no word back from tech support.

Oh, I also took off that ridiculous plastic screen. They really serve no purpose but to hide manufacturing imperfections, and catch cottonwood.