Easy Touch does not respond

Mar 2, 2018
2
OCALA, FL
I have an Easy Touch 4 with a Intellipro VS pump, two light circuits, blower, and a Pentair chlorinator. Pentair controls are not real common in this area due to market share more down south but this is what was at the house I bought and always believe if is not broke, don't mess with it. Always worked well for me.

Recently an Armadillo chewed through my wires going to my intake actuator causing it not to switch when I turn on the spa. I discovered the shorted wires. I turned off all power in the main panel and repaired the shorted wires. Turned power back on put in SERVICE mode and checked the actuators by hitting the valve button. They worked. Put control back to AUTO and pump would not come on. Removed the high voltage cover and check current coming out of all breakers. They were good. None of the three little circuit breakers at the top right of the control panel were tripped. I checked the pump relay high voltage and had no current coming out of the load connections. Had current on the line connections. Checked the low voltage on the relay and discovered that current was going through the relay but the board was not energizing the relay. I swapped the connector on the back of the board from the blower which is on Aux 3 and energized the blower button and the current flowed. That circuit does not have the capability to schedule on a 4. Got out the manual and found that the Intellipro VS was wired through the relay and not direct current to the pump as manual said. I wired the pump to direct current hit the pump button and the pump works, Spa side control works and so does in inside panel, but neither would turn on pump before I rewired the motor. Checked to make sure pump was addressed as "1". However even though pump works the relay still does not energize for the chlorinator. Second problem was Aux 1 which is the pool light was on. I could cut it manually off but it would come back on when it wanted to. Totally went back through the programming and found no errors.However it appears after sitting a couple of days the light circuit AUX 1 has stayed off, which is no major problem. Could wire it with the spa light on Aux 2. After checking the program and relay still did not energize I tried a new relay for the fun of it. Same thing no work. I hit the reset button on the panel, no change, turned power off to control for a day, still does not work. Called Tech Support and we went back through programs and checked voltages and the Tech Guy, who seemed more knowledgeable than most felt that the motherboard had severe issues but could not tell me why one of the circuit breakers did not trip due to the short. We even erased the EEPROM to see what that did. Okay my question:

If I was to set the IntelliPro address to 2 and program pump 2 in the settings menu do you think that the relay would energize by doing that or do you have an better idea. I have been afraid to manually ground the other side of the low voltage relay because I did not want to damage the motherboard. Any help or advice would be deeply appreciated. I usually can help people out with most of their control problems but can't seem to fix my own.
 
hpm,

Welcome to TFP... a great place to find the answers to all your Easytouch questions... :shark:

With the pump running, look at the pump's control panel and make sure it reads "Display not active"... This tells me that the pump is being controlled by the serial cable.

Makes sure that the system shows Auto and either Pool or Spa.. the Pump/Filter relay will not close unless the ET is in either the Pool or Spa mode.

If the pump says "Display not active" and the pump is running, then Pump/Filter relay should have about 24 VDC between the two low voltage connections at the relay. Do not measure to ground.. Measure between one side of the relay to the other... If the voltage is 0 then the main board is not telling the relay to turn on and is most likely bad. If you have 24 VDC, then the relay has to be either closed or bad.

Sounds like you already know this, but just to make sure... On the door it shows the normal location of the Pump/Filter relay.. I have seen several cases where the installed used a relay in a different location and just plugged that relay into the Pump/Filter connection on the main board.. I would double check that the relay you think is the pump filter, is actually plugged into the Pump/Filter connector on the main board.

Based upon what you said above, I also think the problem is with your main board. Circuit breaker wise, if any of the relays work, they should all work.. Each relay has a driver circuit that turns the relay on and off.. It sounds like the driver for the Pump/Filter relay is bad.

Thanks for posting,

Jim R.
 
Thanks for the reply. All of what you asked about is right. Pump does say display not active and I am sure I have the right relay. The relay does not close in either the pump or spa mode. However tech support had me measure low voltage going from ground to the relay. What I did find was if a relay was not active I had 24 volts on both wires coming to the top of the relay. If a relay was closed and working then only one side would show 24 volts and the other would show nothing. So with each circuit using a driver and this one doesn't work then it must be a bad board. In your expertise have you ever come across one that a small low voltage short would affect a different circuit or is it all related since the spa mode tells the actuators to move. Just want to make sure that there is not another issue within the system that might damage a new board. Also in case another problem comes up in the future, can I replace the board with an "8" instead of a "4"? Thanks for your advice. It is much appreciated.
 
hpm,

If you measure 24 VDC between ground and both sides of the relay, then the relay is not being told to turn on. Sounds like a bad board to me.

The circuits that move the actuators are completely different than the ones that control the relays..

If my ET-4 board ever goes bad, I will be installing the ET-8 board...

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
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