Pentair IC40 cell -- no longer working...

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peterl1365

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LifeTime Supporter
Mar 28, 2007
276
Murrieta, CA
Pool Size
13000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I've replaced my IC40, manufactured in 2008, version 1.9R. I'm about ready to throw it out.

Is there anything in this cell that is worth salvaging? I know there are some valuable metals in there, but I don't think there is enough to make it worth breaking open the case. Is there anything that could conceivably be useful as a spare part for the new version 3.02 cell that I just put in?

BTW, the old cell only ran for about 18 months. It quit working in 2010, but I didn't want to spend the $600 to replace it until now. I've been using tabs for two years. The blades should still be in usable condition if anyone knows how to pull them out and reuse them.
 
Those plates are in there and can't be reused. I went through all the trouble of breaking down about 15 spent cells one time to get the titanium out and the local scrapper gave me stainless price.

You could sell it on ebay as a dummy cell for someone who likes to remove during the winter.
 
thepoolman said:
Those plates are in there and can't be reused. I went through all the trouble of breaking down about 15 spent cells one time to get the titanium out and the local scrapper gave me stainless price.

You could sell it on ebay as a dummy cell for someone who likes to remove during the winter.
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Yeah, that's what I figured. Thanks for the info.

I was thinking of selling it on ebay, but there doesn't appear to be any market whatsoever for dummy cells.

I'll probably just keep it for myself to use as a dummy cell. Don't really need it, as water temps here in SoCal never get below 40 F, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to store my new cell away for a few months each year.

On a side note, my new cell stopped working after just 3 weeks due to extremely low salt readings. Per the attached Easytouch diagnostics readout, salt levels went from ~3300 ppm to 1650 ppm virtually overnight. Pentair tech support says that it is probably a bad flow/salt sensor and I should be able to get one sent to me as a warranty item. I've seen a few comments around here about faulty flow sensors.
 
thepoolman said:
That's a common issue with them. It's like the aqua rite board failure except there's no cheap fix for it when it goes out of warranty.
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Looks like flow sensors are available for ~$80. Not cheap, but much less expensive than buying a whole new cell.

Any idea what causes the flow/salinity sensors to go bad? FWIW, I added borates (primarily in the form of boric acid) about a week before I started having issues. I don't think the borates could have caused the sensor failure, could they?
 
thepoolman said:
Also, where are you finding that part for $80? Remember its not the same flow sensor as goldline units.
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Well, googling the term "Intellichlor flow switch" returns a bunch of hits, including Amazon.com and ebay sellers. However, I suppose those could be the older series sensors without the salt sensor built in. I don't know if the newer sensors are available at that price.

Pentair apparently doesn't differentiate between different revisions of their parts. I'm seeing that there are multiple versions of their P/N 520736. The version that you need to buy seems to depend on the version of IC20/IC40 that you have. 520736 is the only P/N listed on Pentair's website as a "Flow Switch Replacement Kit".

Not a good way to deal with spare parts. I can imagine a bunch of PO'd customers that unknowingly purchase the wrong version.
 
thepoolman said:
I wouldn't attribute it to that. It's a common issue.
Click to expand...

I assume you're talking about the borates. I'm pretty sure that borates are not the issue either. Still though, it sounds like a major quality issue if a simple conductivity probe is failing so frequently. I wonder what the root cause of the failure is.
 
I'd assume it has to do with why I also see so many of their temp sensors go bad.

The intellichlor flow switch is not a salt sensor. It's a thermistor. The cell takes into account water temp and conductivity across the plates and calculates the salt from those numbers. When the temp sensor fails, the salt reading drops. It's the same thing that happens with aqua rite cells that pass in a tester but give low readings at home.
 

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thepoolman said:
I'd assume it has to do with why I also see so many of their temp sensors go bad.

The intellichlor flow switch is not a salt sensor. It's a thermistor. The cell takes into account water temp and conductivity across the plates and calculates the salt from those numbers. When the temp sensor fails, the salt reading drops. It's the same thing that happens with aqua rite cells that pass in a tester but give low readings at home.
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I received a warranty replacement flow switch from Pentair. Installed it with no problems.

However, I'm still getting the same very low salt readings as before. I gave the cell 36 hours to see if maybe there was a settling-in period for the new sensor to update the salt levels, but it hasn't changed since the installation.

At this point, I'm thinking it has to do with the main controller board on the salt cell. Could it be anything else? I'm going to have to call Pentair again first thing Monday morning.
 
thepoolman said:
If the flow switch fixes the issue it is instant. No settling in period. Double check your connections and call Pentair.
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Thanks poolman.

I'm quite certain all the connections are correct. Otherwise the flow light would be red and I imagine I would get a zero salt reading.

I'll call them on Monday.
 
thepoolman said:
Technically you could connect flow wires correctly and temp sensor incorrect. I'm pretty sure red and black are flow, green and yellow are temp.
Click to expand...

OK, I'll double check, although I'm pretty certain I checked the wiring pretty well at the time of installation.

Thanks again for your help.
 
Well, called Pentair and they had a pool repair guy come out today. He claims that the water really is at 1800 ppm, per his supposedly calibrated salt tester.

I'll have to take a sample in to a different pool store to confirm my levels. I just don't see how the levels could drop from 3200 to 1600 ppm almost overnight. I also am confident that the salt levels are ~3000 ppm because I just recently added 280 lbs of salt around March 20th when I installed the new cell. That should have added approximately 2500 ppm to the baseline level of ~800 ppm. Even if the initial levels were zero, I should be at about 2400-2800 ppm based upon my estimate volume of 12,000-13000 gallons.

FWIW, I'm pretty certain I don't have a significant leak. For the last month or so, I've had my autofill turned off because my water level was higher than I wanted it. In the last 2-3 weeks, the water level dropped maybe an inch or two. That is about what I would expect with evaporation and normal splashout.

I'll post this in the appropriate thread, but is there any way that borates in the water could affect the salt reading?
 
Question for experts: Can borates affect salt level readings

So I recently added borates to my 6 year old pool on approximately April 4th. . All seemed well.

About two weeks prior to that, I had installed a brand new Pentair IC40 salt cell. My two previous cells died, and so I'd been using liquid chlorine and tablets for the last two seasons. As part of the process, I added 280 lbs of salt to bring my pool to what I thought was the 3400 ppm level.

The new cell worked great for a while. However about a week after I added the borates, I noticed the salt level LED on the cell was red, indicating low salt. The cell had stopped producing chlorine. Running the diagnostics on the IC40 (via the menu on the EasyTouch controller), it indicated that the salt level was around 1700 ppm.

I contacted Pentair and they sent me a new flow/salinity sensor. I Installed it with no problem, but the salt readings did not change.

Contacted Pentair again, and they sent a pool guy out to investigate and replace the cell. He was here earlier today and he told my wife that he measured the pool water with his own salt sensor and that the salt levels were approx 1800 ppm.

I had my water tested at Leslies's just before adding the borates and they measured it at around 3200 ppm, well within the margin of error of what the IC40 was indicating.

It does not seem plausible to me that the salt levels could have fallen by 50 percent almost overnight.

Is it at all possible that the addition of borates could affect salinity readings?

I've read through the entire thread about adding borates, and I don't recall anyone else having this issue. I'm pretty sure that the timing is coincidental, but I find it really curious that the pool guy's meter agreed with the IC40 diagnostics.

There's more background information in the link below:
Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide.

http://www.troublefreepool.com/pentair-ic40-cell-no-longer-working-t57204.html
 
I posted this question in the Chemistry 201 section:

Topics merged. Please keep everything relating to one problem or project together in once place. Thanks JasonLion
 
Re: Question for experts: Can borates affect salt level read

No, adding borates has no effect on salt levels.

Or more technically, it raises the salt level just a tiny bit, but so little that we don't even think about it.

Rapidly falling salt levels are almost invariably a leak being masked by an auto fill system, which causes rapid water replacement.
 

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