Came back from weekend trip and things have gone haywire

DrivenPT

Bronze Supporter
Mar 11, 2024
88
Cedar Park, TX
Pool Size
13200
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pentair Intellichlor IC-20
Just got back home to the pool and found a bit of a mess.

As we walked up there were a bunch of crepe Myrtle blooms floating on the surface…not a great sign as our skimmers normally work really well.

Next found that the pump was not running. We were out of cell and WiFi range so I didn’t get any notifications. But the system was off. Not sure when the shut down happened.

It fired right up with no trouble and I started testing. FC came in at 5.5 with 0 CC. At the bottom of my range. Immediately put 72oz of 10% bleach in.

After the system got up and running I noticed a low salt reading on the cell though all the other lights were green. ScreenLogic says my salt is 2750, my TF100 says 3200. Added a 20lb bag and spread it.

I am short on liquid chlorine and won’t be able to do an OCLT tonight but will do it tomorrow.

My big question is why would the pump shut off? The skimmers were full of floating crepe Myrtle blooms (which is why they were not getting skimmed) but the basket wasn’t super full. Definitely restricted and had leaves in the bottom but it didn’t look like flow would be completely restricted. Would poor circulation shut the pump off?

We have had a fair bit of rain so I have had to drain about 1k gallons of water over the past 10 days. Maybe that explains the low salt?

Thanks in advance!
 
We have had a fair bit of rain so I have had to drain about 1k gallons of water over the past 10 days. Maybe that explains the low salt?
Probably.

What automation do you have that gives you notifications (it is not in your signature)? Does your pump have svrs? What it the model number on the volute of the pump?
 
Ashamed to admit I don’t know where to update my signature at but will look into that.

I have an intelliflo/pro3 vsf pump and a pentair easy touch control panel. It’s connected through ScreenLogic. I don’t get notifications but when I opened the app once I got home I saw that the chlorinator was offline.

Not sure what svrs are?
 
It appears that the problem with the pump not running originated with the automation. Somehow the pump run time was changed to only run from 10am to 5pm. Quite a bit different than the 3am to 11pm it was on. I think that may have been what we originally were started with by the pool builder. Could the system have been reset somehow? I never opened the app as far as I know. Being on the reduced runtime for 3 days would certainly have tanked the FC levels with sunny days!
 
Ok, now I’m really confused about what’s going on. Pump was off again when I got home at 4pm. I had reset the schedule to 3am to 11pm this morning when I discovered that it had somehow reverted to the old 10am-5pm schedule. Pump was on when I left and off again when I got home even though it should be on according to the schedule. I don’t think it’s an egg timer thing either as the egg timer is set to not turn off when turned on.

It must have been windy again today as the skimmers were full of crepe Myrtle blooms again, but again they were primarily on the surface and not in the skimmer basket itself.

So I am back to wondering how to figure out why the pump keeps shutting off.

Possibly related - when I try to log in remotely from the pentair ScreenLogic app it rejects me saying “login rejected by gateway”. I can connect locally though.

Any thoughts?
 
I’m also unsure what the model number is on my pump. Attached pictures of the stickers on the pump. If you can help me determine which is the model number I’ll get my signature updated! IMG_7097.jpegIMG_7098.jpeg
 
Also finding that in addition to the automation reverting to the wrong pump run schedule it is also changing the SWG settings. Normally I run it on 100% on the pool and 0% to the spa but I noticed it had been changed to 51% pool at 49% spa.

I actually have no idea what the two different percentages are…I would assume that water passing through the SWG would get sent both to the pool and to the spa since when the pump is running the spa spills over slightly into the pool…

Or is it that the SWG runs at 51% when in pool mode and 49% in spa mode.

Sorry - I realize I have probably too many questions out there for one thread! So much I still don’t know!
 
Post pictures of the automation screens showing the pump run schedules and SWG %.

The pump doesn't have SVRS. That's good.
 

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PT,

I have no clue why your schedule changed, as that is not a normal issue.. I suggest that you run it for a couple of days and see what happens..

Keep in mind that if you manually turn on a circuit that is normally scheduled, depending on when you do it, it can confuse the EasyTouch and you might have to wait for the next one cycle for things to sync up..

Your low salt light will come on at 2800 ppm, but the cell will continue to make chlorine until the salt level drops below 2600.. Below 2800 it is called "low salt" and below 2600 it is called "Very Low Salt"...

If you are using the spa, in the spa mode, you really do not want your SWCG to be dumping a lot of highly chlorinated water into the spa.. So the automation gives you the option to have the cell make less chlorine when in the spa mode. It is just an option.. How you set it is up to you.. If you don't use the spa much, it makes no real difference.

If this were my pool, I would push the reset button on the main box and see what happens.. This is just like rebooting a PC, it will not erase anything. When you push the reset button, everything will shut off, and then over 5 or 10 minutes, everything should come back on line.

Also keep in mind that you can only have a max of 12 Schedules and that includes all egg-timers not set to the default of 12 hours.. So setting an egg-timer to "Don't stop" counts as a schedule. The whole point of an egg-timer is to shut off anything this is manually turned on after X amount of time.

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
Ok so after about 15 minutes I am getting a low flow error on my SWG through the ScreenLogic app. Not sure why - pump says it is going 32 gpm at 1850 rpm. Maybe that’s why the pump keeps shutting off?
 
Ok, so the saga continues. Pump was on when I left at 6am, was still on at 9:20am when my wife left but was off when she got home at 3:30pm. One skimmer was full with crepe Myrtle blooms, one was not. The full one is always the better performer. When I say full, it’s really just on the surface. These things don’t really sink but they do prevent any more from coming in. Could this be causing the pump to shut off somehow? The main drain and the other skimmer are open and should be working…

If it’s not the blooms then I guess it must be some sort of glitch in the automation? The correct schedule is showing on both the panel and on the screen logic app. But the pump shuts off seemingly at random.

I reset last night and thought it was working right…

Any ideas?
 
PT,

You need to use the little LCD on the EasyTouch and look at your schedules.. Make sure there are only the three you want.. It is possible for the EasyTouch to have schedules that do not show up in ScreenLogic.

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
PT,

You need to use the little LCD on the EasyTouch and look at your schedules.. Make sure there are only the three you want.. It is possible for the EasyTouch to have schedules that do not show up in ScreenLogic.

Thanks,

Jim R.
No extra ones in there. Just the 3 main schedules (1 for the pump, 1 for the lights, and 1 for the water feature). And then the egg timers. They all match ScreenLogic
 
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