We have a under two year Jacuzzi hot tub which uses a balboa 5.5 kW heater, 240V. lately with the cooler weather, it seems its been hard for the heater keep up with the lower air temps. Even though its been low 50's at night, we will keep tub heater to 101 so will drop normally 2 degrees, then the heater will come on (by design). So at 99 it will begin to heat again and if we are in it with one or two jets going with the cover off, it may take 30 min to an hour to get from 99 back to 100, and one night when we were having cold Santa Ana winds, the heater could not keep up to 99 degrees and slowly cooled below that.
So, I know the heater is turning on when its supposed to, and I can feel that water being warm when its on and flowing in the tub but my question has been is the heater working well enough to heat the water enough to over come the heat loss. When we cover it after getting out, it will return to 101 so it is heating. I verified the heater is getting 240 volts and assuming its a 5.5 kW heater, and everything is perfect, the resistance of the heater (ohms) should be 10.4 ohms following ohms law. Well, I went to the heater, turned the breaker off and disconnected the leads from the heater to the control box for the hot tub and put an ohm meter on the two heater leads. Balboa says on one of their videos the resistance should be between 9.42-11.52 ohms for the 5.5 kW heater, but when I checked the resistance on our heater, it was around 13.9-14 ohms, and if that is the case then working back to wattage, that means the heater is creating 4.41 kW's of heat and not 5.5 which is about 75% of what it should be doing, and with the way the spa is heating, im kind of believing that is probably the case?
So am I looking at this correctly? does it make sense it may only be putting out 75% of what it should be?
Thanks!
Reese
So, I know the heater is turning on when its supposed to, and I can feel that water being warm when its on and flowing in the tub but my question has been is the heater working well enough to heat the water enough to over come the heat loss. When we cover it after getting out, it will return to 101 so it is heating. I verified the heater is getting 240 volts and assuming its a 5.5 kW heater, and everything is perfect, the resistance of the heater (ohms) should be 10.4 ohms following ohms law. Well, I went to the heater, turned the breaker off and disconnected the leads from the heater to the control box for the hot tub and put an ohm meter on the two heater leads. Balboa says on one of their videos the resistance should be between 9.42-11.52 ohms for the 5.5 kW heater, but when I checked the resistance on our heater, it was around 13.9-14 ohms, and if that is the case then working back to wattage, that means the heater is creating 4.41 kW's of heat and not 5.5 which is about 75% of what it should be doing, and with the way the spa is heating, im kind of believing that is probably the case?
So am I looking at this correctly? does it make sense it may only be putting out 75% of what it should be?
Thanks!
Reese
