Automating Pool Heater bypass. Possible?

[carlb]

Couple of questions during the middle of the Night.... I have an Omnilogic and replacing my dead H400 with the newer WDF400. Is it possible to automate a 3-way bypass valve to prevent water circulation through the heater? Seems running water through the heater when not heating the pool, or using solar heat, is a waste. 1. wear/tear to the heat exchanger. 2. reduced pressure for in-floor pool cleaner system and 6 wall jets. 2 swim jets in a "grotto/waterfall" and 4 spa jets around the pool snack/drink table. 3. Why push water through the Gas heater if it's already been heated by the Solar System?

Has anyone automated the gas heater bypass valve? How?

Thanks,
Carl

 

[PoolGate]

Easy to plumb, but hard to automate. This is because of the need to delay the bypass until a sufficient "cool down" period has been reached. You could set an arbitrary time of 10 minutes but I am not sure any automation system has a delay feature. Manual control of a JVA would be easy to do, however. For the record, I don't think bypassing the heater does much at all in a practical sense.

 

[Turbo1Ton]

In the Pentair instructions for their automated heater bypass, they advise on only setting the bypass to halfway closed, so that there is always water flowing through the exchanger. Also, @mas985 advised the same thing in a heater bypass discussion a long time ago (no time to find it at the moment). This is exactly how I set mine up. I tested both fully closed and 50% closed, and 100% bypass of the heater had no better result on flow reduction than 50% bypass of the heater. I was able to lower my pump speed to 1200RPM in both instances to still trigger the SWCG flow switch.

Also in Pentair automation, there is no way to turn on freeze protection for the heater bypass circuit, so having it set at 50% bypass, allows for circulation during freezing events, if that is a concern.

--Jeff

 

[ajw22]

Couple of questions during the middle of the Night.... I have an Omnilogic and replacing my dead H400 with the newer WDF400. Is it possible to automate a 3-way bypass valve to prevent water circulation through the heater? Seems running water through the heater when not heating the pool, or using solar heat, is a waste. 1. wear/tear to the heat exchanger. 2. reduced pressure for in-floor pool cleaner system and 6 wall jets. 2 swim jets in a "grotto/waterfall" and 4 spa jets around the pool snack/drink table. 3. Why push water through the Gas heater if it's already been heated by the Solar System?

Has anyone automated the gas heater bypass valve? How?

Thanks,
Carl

Pentair offers ways with their latest MasterTemp heater and IntelliCenter.

Jandy offers the Versaflo on their JXI heater.

Hayward has a “Smart Heater” with a controllable valve in its configuration.

 

[ajw22]

In the Pentair instructions for their automated heater bypass, they advise on only setting the bypass to halfway closed, so that there is always water flowing through the exchanger. Also,

Pentair instructions are for the IntelliValve to be set to bypass 70%-80% of the water from the heater. But as you found even a 50% bypass gives good benefits to flow.

 

[BMerrill]

Reference to page 26 of the OmniLogic Installation Manual (Download current version from Hayward's website) for the configuration of the heater, cooldown, extend runtime and valve.
Once set-up, when heat is called for the heater bypass valve will divert water through the heater and will remain in that position until the cooldown time has expired.

 

[carlb]

Wow. Thanks all of you. More info then my last three days of phone calls.

Carl