Heater bypass switch?

fkong777 · Nov 2, 2009

a friend of mine has a Cal Spa hothub. He is wondering if he can get a heater bypass switch installed so it will not power up the heater in the winter months. This way the water can circulate without heating it. He doesnt want to drain the water all the time and doesnt want to keep it heated all the time either. The Tub seem to always keep the temperature to about 80 or so.

Is this a common practice? Any links to documentations would be helpful.

mas985 · Nov 2, 2009

Why not just turn down the temperature? I'm sure it has a thermostat somewhere.

spishex · Nov 2, 2009

It depends on the tub. Most thermostats can only be set as low as 70-80, but many have an "economy" mode (or something similar) that only heats to within 10-20 degrees of the set temp. He could manually stop it from coming on by opening the high limit or pressure switch circuits, but those might cause the filtration to run 24 hours for freeze protection. Depends on the controls.

If you can post a pic of his topside and control pack I could be more helpful.

fkong777 · Nov 9, 2009

The top panel? There is only 4 buttons. 2 of them are for the jets and 1 say "temp" 1 say "lights" then there is a LCD display.

spishex · Nov 10, 2009

The newer 4-button Cal-Spas have three modes that can be accessed by pressing "Temp" then "Light". Pressing that sequence should scroll through three options:

St - Standard mode, heats until set temperature is reached.
Ec - Economy mode, only heats during filtration.
Sl - Sleep Mode, only heats during filtration and only heats to 10 degrees below set temp.

So what he should do is set it to sleep and set the thermostat down as low as possible. Assuming this is 80 degrees, it shouldn't ever get above 70.

The tub is set from the factory to filter for 4 hours (2 2 hour cycles). If that's all it's running then it may not even get to 70 during the winter months. The other options are to run in 4, 6, or 8 hour cycles. You can alternate this by pressing "Temp" then "Jets 1".

Hope that helps.

geekgranny · Nov 10, 2009

Although I don't have a Cal Spa, many "things" are similar for most tubs.

My spa instructions warn that draining doesn't always clear out water from certain parts of the spa so if one is expecting any freezing temps there could be some freeze damage from remaining water.

The control box on my spa has plugs for each "system" of the tub. Any one, including the heater, can simply be unplugged. That would be nice if his spa has that. That way the sanitized water will circulate to keep the water lines from building up bioslime.

gg=alice

fkong777 · Nov 10, 2009

thanks for you help. the control panel say "OC" and he got it from costco. and the costco web site says "oc hot tub by Cal Spa"

Next time he fills the spa I will help him set it to sleep mode.

It is true, spa cannot be completely drained. my friends spa is drained but there is still standing water in the curvature of the seatings.