Glacier Pool Chiller Control by Omnilogic

[Jeff McGuire]

Moved from here.
We just ordered a Glacier. I found TFP in my quest to find some answers on installing this thing. I am confident in the my electrical and plumbing abilities. My only concern is how I'm going to program my Omnilogic to operate it.

My Omni is already using 6 HV relays. I do not want to buy the bank of 4 more at close to $600 to only use one of them. I will take my equipment light off a relay and just put it on a manual switch and use the relay for the Glacier. I'm only using 2 of the 4 valve actuator slots on the omni now so I have 2 open spots for the valves to control the Glacier. It says in the the Glacier instructions to have the output valve on a delayed open so as to not cavitate the pool pump. I did not program my Omni so will this be a problem? Any Omnilogic gurus around here?

 

[cowboycasey]

Welcome to TFP

I wish I could help and I am sure there are many others who would love to help.. The problem being Omni is a pool store installer only thing and I have only seen a couple people with it and they are in the same boat as you.. there installer installed it.. Hopefully someone comes along to help, I just wanted to say Hi

 

[Peiloy]

Moved from here.
We just ordered a Glacier. I found TFP in my quest to find some answers on installing this thing. I am confident in the my electrical and plumbing abilities. My only concern is how I'm going to program my Omnilogic to operate it.

My Omni is already using 6 HV relays. I do not want to buy the bank of 4 more at close to $600 to only use one of them. I will take my equipment light off a relay and just put it on a manual switch and use the relay for the Glacier. I'm only using 2 of the 4 valve actuator slots on the omni now so I have 2 open spots for the valves to control the Glacier. It says in the the Glacier instructions to have the output valve on a delayed open so as to not cavitate the pool pump. I did not program my Omni so will this be a problem? Any Omnilogic gurus around

I might be able to help. The two valve actuator spots not being used, are they 1 and 2? If so, those are not addressable. They are reserved for a spa suction and discharge in a pool/spa setup.
As for a delay for one of the actuators, as far as I know there is no way to do this. That being said are you plumbing the chiller out to the pump suction? The delay is only necessary in this configuration. Alternatively you can plumb the chiller discharge to a dedicated return. If you have to do it to the pump suction, just thinking outside of the box a bit, if you use a 24v timer relay between the valve actuator slot and the valve then you can set a delay on the relay. You would need to be comfortable to do the electrical for this though.

 

[Jeff McGuire]

I'm into this project now. I am learning as I go. Seems the Omni is not too hard to configure with the congif. wizard.

I might be able to help. The two valve actuator spots not being used, are they 1 and 2? If so, those are not addressable. They are reserved for a spa suction and discharge in a pool/spa setup.

Thanks for your reply Peiloy. I am currently using 1 & 2 for the Spa and discharge as it's designed. The chiller will use 3 and 4. You are correct there is no way to have the actuators open at staggered times without a timer relay as you mentioned. I believe i might have actually mis-read the instructions too. They are refering the the balancing valves that you install on the chiller lines to regulate the water flow. On initial start up they want you to delay opening the output side until you purge the lines of air.

I plan to wrap up my install this afternoon and will report back.

 

[Jeff McGuire]

OK all installed and running. I'm still finetuning. I'm not getting any more cooling over night than my neighbor does with no cooler and a larger pool. That is very disheartening. I am back to the drawing board and hoping to find some solution.

 

[duckcmmndr]

OK all installed and running. I'm still finetuning. I'm not getting any more cooling over night than my neighbor does with no cooler and a larger pool. That is very disheartening. I am back to the drawing board and hoping to find some solution.

It should do far better than that. What is the RPM on your spray head? There is a big difference in the output of cold water based on spray head RPM.

@ 7 RPM the water from the chiller to the pool runs for 1 minute and 20 seconds with 40 seconds of downtime.
@ 12 RPM the water from the chiller to the pool runs for 2 minutes and 43 seconds with 32 seconds of downtime.

So huge difference in the volume of cold water being pumped into the pool.

20210805_122330.jpg

• duckcmmndr
• Aug 5, 2021

 

[Jeff McGuire]

@7-8 RPM it was taking 6 minutes to fill the lower tank!! The sump would run for 45 seconds or so to drop it back down.

My instructions said to set the spray wand to a walk speed or till its not spraying out the top. I got my sprayers up to about 28 RPM and at that speed it was not splashing out the sides or top and the sump was kicking on every 2-1/2 minutes and ran for just over 1 minute to drain it back down. The water is dropping about 5 deg from top to bottom no matter what speed i set it at. At the 28 rpm the water was also not being slung to the sides of the tank. At that speed it was still flowing onto the cooling media. The pool has heated up good today. It will probably hit 91-92 before the day is over so I'll run it tonight and see how it does. Our relative humidity isn't helping matter at all either.

 

[duckcmmndr]

@7-8 RPM it was taking 6 minutes to fill the lower tank!! The sump would run for 45 seconds or so to drop it back down.

My instructions said to set the spray wand to a walk speed or till its not spraying out the top. I got my sprayers up to about 28 RPM and at that speed it was not splashing out the sides or top and the sump was kicking on every 2-1/2 minutes and ran for just over 1 minute to drain it back down. The water is dropping about 5 deg from top to bottom no matter what speed i set it at. At the 28 rpm the water was also not being slung to the sides of the tank. At that speed it was still flowing onto the cooling media. The pool has heated up good today. It will probably hit 91-92 before the day is over so I'll run it tonight and see how it does. Our relative humidity isn't helping matter at all either.

I think you have a better handle on it. I measured my water temp top and bottom and while I can't remember I think it was more than 5 degrees.

I have mine plumbed into a single 1.5" return line. That line has an eyeball fitting in it. The full force of the chillers pump pushes water with the only restriction being the eyeball. If I take the eyeball out it empties the tank and just over a minute...but still refills in about 35 seconds. I don't know why it would take yours 2 1/2 minutes between pump runs, it could just be because of the different models of chillers.

I will say it's not an overnight fix to get your water where you want it. If the water is in the 90's....it may take a couple of days to get the "end of day" temp to a point where the chiller does not have as much to overcome during the nightly run. You may want to run it day/night for a couple of days to get it down. Is your chiller in the shade or full sun?

On my pool the chiller gets full shade all day and if I run mine during the daytime hours it will keep the pool to within 1-2 degrees of whatever the temp is at the time I turn it on. So lets say at noon the water has warmed to 86, if I turn it on a noon the water will never get warmer than 88...your mileage may vary.

 

[Jeff McGuire]

I spoke to a Tech at Glacier yesterday. He said that my 2-1/2 minutes between cycles is good.

Because i had to plumb mine into the the skimmer and main drain he told me to cut the valve 1/2 off from them so it actually pulls more from the cooler return.

 

[siffert]

What is the phone number of the Glacier Tech? Thanks