Am I screwed? Hot tub breaker shot, freezing weather for days.

Jimrahbe · Jan 16, 2019

GP,

Since no matter what, you will have to install the GFCI breaker anyway, I would install it now... I don't see this fixing your heater problem, as the problem was there even with the non-GFCI breaker.

Jim R.

GuinnessPhish · Jan 26, 2019

Well, had spa repair man come out. He replaced gfci and pressure switch, but he thinks it's the high limit switch, which in a cal spas 2100 is inside the heater. Also, in these cal spa heaters, the heating element is on the outside of the tube, never in contact with the water, which he says is very ineffeicient. He disconnected it and bypassed it and heater would come on consistently. He left me instructing me to keep an eye on it. We kept it set at 100, and set to maintain that temperature constantly. It worked fine for days, but last night when using the hot tub, we increased temperature to 102. Even though it never actually hit 102, after I switched it back down to 100, now the heater is again not working.

This is the replacement:

Cal Spa 5.5 KW/240 Volt XL Heat Exchanger Replacement F2550-0011

I guess I'm throwing another chunk of change at this thing, unless anyone has some other ideas on a fix.

Thanks!

GuinnessPhish · Jan 26, 2019

update:

So I turned off the hot tub at the breaker and disconnected the two high temp connections from the pressure switch, and reconnected them to themselves, then put them back on their correct connections and restarted the hot tub. Heat came on, so I bumped it up 2 degrees from default to 102, set to maintain 102.

After the initial 2 hour cycle, it has now restarted a couple of times to maintain 102, and is heating.

Wondering if I just leave it set to maintain at 102, if I can just deal with it this way for the time being.

ajw22 · Jan 27, 2019

GuinnessPhish said:
update:

So I turned off the hot tub at the breaker and disconnected the two high temp connections from the pressure switch, and reconnected them to themselves, then put them back on their correct connections and restarted the hot tub. Heat came on, so I bumped it up 2 degrees from default to 102, set to maintain 102.

After the initial 2 hour cycle, it has now restarted a couple of times to maintain 102, and is heating.

Wondering if I just leave it set to maintain at 102, if I can just deal with it this way for the time being.

Understand that you have bypassed one of the safety devices in your spa. If your thermostat malfunctions and does not turn off the heat at the set temperature someone can be seriously injured if they are in the spa.

In general you have a primary control and a secondary backup for safety. With the safety bypassed you now have a single point of failure that can cause injury.

GuinnessPhish · Jan 27, 2019

Just to be clear. The high limit is connected again. It is now heating and maintaining 102, turning off when it hits 103, turning back on when it drops to 101.

GuinnessPhish · Jan 29, 2019

Well, that answers that question. It's back to not heating. New heater ordered.

johndoe42 · Feb 25, 2019

GuinnessPhish said:
Right. OK, so I got the non GFCI breaker in. The wire I was talking about was the ground wire from the hot tub. I attached that to the ground bus bar, and now hot tub turns on and circulates.

No one will be going in the hot tub.

I had the assistance of my hot tub repairman giving me instruction by phone. So for now, crisis averted. Hot tub is 91 degrees and circulating. Replacement GFCI switch should be here tomorrow.

Question:

Does this tell me anything about the problem? Since now I'm using a non gfci breaker and it turned on, does that show that my initial thought that the old gfci breaker was toast? Or could it still be a ground fault?....and that there was nothing actually wrong with the original GFCI?, (until I idiotically broke the hard wired neutral wire on the back when I was trying to get it out).

Wait... where was that green wire connected before you took out the breaker? If the green wire to the tub was connected to the GFCI breaker, then that may have been your problem and could have caused all kinds of functionality and safety problems, not to mention being a blatant code violation.

With the sole exception of your main service panel (unless you are doing crazy things with transformers or fit into certain exceptions for obsolete installations), the ground wires and the neutral wires must not be connected to each other. The ground wires go to the ground bus and the neutral wires go to the neutral bus or to the neutral terminal on a GFCI or AFCI breaker.