Freeze protection is slowly draining my spa

[ajw22]

Not sure if your response was to my program schedule post but if so I only run this program during freeze protection so the pump has already been primed and is running. The only thing I’m doing is changing the return valve to send some water back to the spa return when in pool mode. This is necessary to keep the spa from draining below the jets after about 5 hours from the pool to spa to pool transitions during FP. With that said does this still require the pump to prime 48 times? Other than spillover the other scheduled programs seem to be cancelled out by freeze protection. Please let me know the fallacy in my thinking.
Thx

The post was in response to selecting shut off pump when valves are turning.

 

[bradgray]

I agree with Allen. You don't need to turn the pump off every valve change. The only situation we ever do this, is if the rotational path of the two actuators are different (I.E one is 180 and other is 90).
Otherwise, it's unnecessary wear to several components and it will also increase the possibility of losing prime as the seals wear out, and you'll be stuck with a priming failure and no water flow for periods long enough to cause freezing.

Also, pump-off during valve change won't stop the gravity draining that occurs within the suction side when that diverter is open to both sides. You'll lose less, sure, but it'll still happen.

It's really very easily solved in your case without the downsides above. Just schedule a spillover a few times in the morning shortly after freeze protection typically shuts off. You don't live in an area where temps are less than 36 during the day very often.

 

[Lampasas1]

It's really very easily solved in your case without the downsides above. Just schedule a spillover a few times in the morning shortly after freeze protection typically shuts off. You don't live in an area where temps are less than 36 during the day very often.

While I concur that the temps don’t get less than 36 very often, we have had an extended freeze each of the past 3 years that lasted 48 hours or more before temps started to rise above freezing. We will continue to get occasional below freezing nights where FP will be activated for 12 hours or more. Knowing I can’t go longer than 4 hours before having to fill the spa while in FP, I will just have to suck it up and continue to set an alarm to manually toggle FP off, fill the spa, toggle FP on, rinse and repeat.

I have yet to experience any joys of pool ownership as this pool was finished just in time for winter

 

[bradgray]

I will just have to suck it up and continue to set an alarm to manually toggle FP off, fill the spa, toggle FP on, rinse and repeat.

If you're prepared to resort to this, my last suggestion is to manually schedule your mode changes. Give yourself a pool for 20 > spa for 20 > pool for 20 > spillover for 10 > spa for 20 etc, until you've filled your risk hours.

This will mimic the behavior of freeze protection, but you get to control the spillover timing.

It's a pain. But surely not more than setting an alarm to do it manually. Good gracious.

 

[DrewLG]

The only issue was needing to know the timing of the window it ran pool mode so I can add spillover in that window..

Is that actually necessary?

I can't test this on my Pentair EasyTouch system, because it allows a maximum of only 12 schedules and I'm already maxed out. But if your Jandy system doesn't have such a low limit, it seems to me that you could set up six PAIRS of 2-minute spillovers, with the schedules in each pair separated by 30 minutes (e.g., schedules at 12:00 and 12:30, 4:00 and 4:30, etc.).

This would ensure that exactly six of the schedules would run while the system was in Pool mode, regardless of what time the Pool-mode windows happened. And the other six schedules would run while the system was in Spa mode, and so would presumably have no effect at all.

 

[clairsan2023]

Is that actually necessary?

I can't test this on my Pentair EasyTouch system, because it allows a maximum of only 12 schedules and I'm already maxed out. But if your Jandy system doesn't have such a low limit, it seems to me that you could set up six PAIRS of 2-minute spillovers, with the schedules in each pair separated by 30 minutes (e.g., schedules at 12:00 and 12:30, 4:00 and 4:30, etc.).

This would ensure that exactly six of the schedules would run while the system was in Pool mode, regardless of what time the Pool-mode windows happened. And the other six schedules would run while the system was in Spa mode, and so would presumably have no effect at all.

This was the solution that I also came up with and posted earlier although mine was to determine when the freeze protection started and cycle the spillover during the pool mode time. With Jandy you could set up the Program B for just the spillovers suggested by DrewLG and then when you know it will hit freezing temps that will activate FP, switch the Aqualink app from Program A to Program B. You'd just need to remember to switch to Program A and your normal schedule activities after the freeze is over.