Signal for Jandy Actuator?

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Spocksail

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May 14, 2012
5
I have had a Suntouch controlling a pool/spa combination and a waterfall for the last year, all switched with Jandy actuators. I am now adding solar heating. The Suntouch has only 3 valve circuits and the waterfall will be displaced by the solar valve. Pentair does not offer an expansion module for this controller, preferring you to buy their larger 8 station controller at 2X the price of the Suntouch.

I would like to still control the waterfall (on/off) with the existing actuator, even if it is just with some sort of home brew switch/module not controlled by the Suntouch since the valve is difficult to get to, but I need to know the type of signal that drives the actuator. There are still "feature" circuits open on the Suntouch, but they are relays and are on/off only. My thought is to build something that when a feature relay is activated it will drive the actuator from off to on and on to off.

According to the installation instructions the actuators are 24 VDC, but there is no indication about how the actuator is triggered to move? What sort of signal or voltage switching is required to signal the valve to move and how does it know when to stop?
 
Actually the Jandy valve actuator operates off of 24VAC. The actuator has a three-wire input. Black = common, red = switched, white = switched. Both the red and white leads connect internally to the motor. If the red is switched on the motor turns in one direction, when the white is turned on the motor turns in the other direction. When the valve has reached the limit of travel an adjustable cam opens a microswitch disconnecting the motor preventing it from turning further. The cams are adjustable, so you can select the desired open or close postion of the valve.

The board mentioned above converts a signal used for the relay open and close to the required three-wire signal.
 
OK, I have the Jandy Relay Board in hand. The connectors (plug to go into the controller board and socket for the actuator) are standard items so they plug right into the Suntouch, but the Jandy and Suntouch use different low voltage systems in the controller box - the Jandy has a separate compartment and the Suntouch has the functions all intermixed.

The supplied wiring diagram for the relay board shows that it is designed to go in the 24v line from the transformer to the controller board with a socket and connector that match the Jandy system while a diagram shows the 24V connection going directly to the transformer. Looking at the wire traces on the PCB, it looks like this just splicing the relay board into a pass through for the 24V. Since I will be connecting right to the 24V tap on the Suntouch transformer, I don't need the pass through so I will cut off the plug and use those wires. Unfortunately, neither the three wires going to the transformer or the socket are labeled or color coded. Since the transformer wires are AC there is no polarity issue, but I want to confirm that the third wire is an earth ground and that I have correctly identified the two supply legs.

I tried calling Jandy Tech Support and the recorded message said it would be a 45 minute wait for assistance!! Can someone with some experience with the Jandy system confirm that the center wire in the 24V plug system is an earth ground while two outside wires are the two voltage carrying legs from the transformer?

S//
 
The "third" wire would be a return to neutral, not ground. I'm not sure why there is a 3-wire supply from the transformer to the board/relay. The way the actuators work is that there are two control wires and a single neutral/return wire in common. If power flows in one control wire, this causes the motor to turn clockwise until it reaches its limit (a normally open microswitch is turned off). If power flows in the other control wire, the opposite occurs. The control board simply has a SPDT relay that is controlled by the Aux circuit. If not energized, power flows to one of the two control wires. If the aux circuit energizes the relay, power flows through the opposite control line to the actuator. In theory, the power side of this could be powered by two lines (e.g. 24V and neutral). So, if you have a 24V transfomer, both line wires would be tied together at the transfomer. Alternatively, the 24V transformer may have a center tap so that the two control wires have opposite polarity and the 24V is referenced to the center tap (or 48V from line to line). It might be worth investigating the output voltage of the Suntouch 24V transformer.
 
Looking at the board itself on the web (not easy to do), it appears that:

TB1 (3 pin socket) is out to actuator
TB2 (2 pin socket) is parallel with the Aux control line (so you could switch more than one circuit by adding an additional relay board)
TB3 (3 pin socket) is parallel with the 24V AC power line

Common is the top wire in TB1, followed by the two control lines. This would equate to Black, Red and White for an Intermatic actuator. My guess is that for the power wire, you could wire the two outside wires on the power line entering the board (J1?) to your 24V AC tap and the neutral wire coming from the Suntouch's transformer and this would work fine. Since this is on the switched side of the transformer, you don't have to worry about frying any electronics on the mainboard. Just run the J2 wire to the free Aux circuit and it you should be good to go.
 
BTW, when I said neutral on the Suntouch, I meant the neutral that is in common with the output/stepdown side of the transformer. In the Suntouch, this transformer is multi-tap and has 24 and 18V taps, and a low-voltage neutrals. For 24V, the RED/WHITE wire is the 24V and the RED is neutral. You would need to splice the J1 wire into these.
 

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From the post CraigMW referenced:
Looking at the wiring diagram, it looks like the Red/White wire comes out of the circuit breaker. Based on my experience, you place the circuit breaker on the power leg and not on the common leg. This transformer could be setup with a floating common for the 12VAC, 18VAC, and 24VAC. From what I see the Red Wire is Common and Red/White is Power. Based on this information, you are going to want to connect the Black wire from the Valve Actuator to the Red Wire (24VAC Common) going to the Motherboard from the transformer. Then you are going to splice (add) a wire from the Red/White wire (circuit breaker to motherboard) to terminal 5 on the relay base. This will be the power for actuating the valve.
Click to expand...

I had the other connections figured out, but the key part that I was missing was which wire coming out of the transformer was the neutral.

Thanks.

S//
 
Thanks. Very useful. On TB3 which you say parralels the 3 black wires, can you tell which wire is what? I will have to cut that connector ( with the three black wires) I imagine to hardwire to the spare transformer in my easy touch box.
 
From what I could see in a closeup of the circuit board, TB3 is a socket, not a wire. It appears to parallel the three input wires that would come from the Jandy transformer's 24V tap and neutral. When you say you have a spare transformer in the EasyTouch, what do you mean? On mine, there is the main transformer (24V, 18V and 12V), and there is the IntelliChlor transformer.

As for which wire is which, it appears the rightmost wire (looking down on the board where the J1 wires enter from the top) is the common/neutral wire. The other two wires are 24V control lines. You should be able to connect the common to neutral and one or both of the control wires to the 24V line as described above.
 
Craig, what I am having trouble with is that the Suntouch transformer has only four output wires; red (neutral) and red/white (power) going into a socket on the main board that is marked 24V, and an orange and orange/white pair that plug into the 18V socket. There is no third black common wire.

Can I splice into the common from one of the three other currently in use actuator wires?

S//
 
On pg. 56 of the SunTouch User Guide (http://www.pentairpool.com/pdfs/suntouchUG.pdf), it shows four low voltage wires coming from the transformer, two for 24V and two for 18V. You would need to tap into the two 24V wires as described above. There really isn't a true common from the transformer, as both appear to be wired to the ends of the 24V secondary coil. If you can trace the board, you can find out which of the two wires feeds the unswitched (common) side of the other relays, and yes, you could use this the same way. I just think it would be easier to splice into the two 24V wires as I mentioned earlier.
 
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