Hey everyone,
I'm not sure if this is the best place for this post... mods feel free to move it somewhere more appropriate.
I've been a ghost around here for a while, but yesterday my neighbor asked me for help with his hot tub/spa, because it wasn't working and he thought it was done for. He went to fire it up and it wouldn't turn on. It was popping the breaker at the panel. He said that the pool guy insists that the tub was working before the house was sold, but that he doesn't work on hot tub components.
I suggested that we at least try to take a look and see if we can't figure out what's wrong before he trashes an otherwise just-fine spa. Now, I'm far from a spa technician, but we took it apart and I started looking around. At first I thought pump motor and/or capacitor. Capacitor tested fine and the motor didn't seem to have any issues, the shaft turned freely and it didn't have any visible problems. Then I noticed that the breaker was tripping immediately, the controller wasn't even trying to turn the pump on. Well, after a process of elimination of unplugging everything I could from the controller board and plugging things in 1 at a time until the breaker tripped, I narrowed it down to the heater. If the heating element was connected, the breaker would trip immediately when it was turned on. As long as the heating element wasn't connected, the breaker would not trip. So we figured out how to pull it all apart and got the heating element housing removed. I could not, however, get the actual element out of the housing as one of the 2 nuts that secure the element into the housing was corroded and rusted so badly that I had to resort to a 24" breaker bar to turn it, and at that point it just twisted the element itself and sheared it off. It was junk anyway. In the process we also managed to break the pressure switch.
So, long story long, we have a broken heating element and pressure switch. Googling turned up nothing, we tried Leslie's to see if they could at least help us find the parts and they were of no help... so I turn to you guys for your collective wisdom. We did find some "universal" heating elements, I'm not sure if one of those would work or not. After the trouble I had getting the element out of the housing tube, I'm not sure if I could get a new element INTO the housing, though it seems like they're supposed to be able to be changed? We're also not able to find the proper pressure switch. The spa is about 20 years old, I will put some pictures on this post of the heater housing and switch. Anything you guys can suggest would be awesome, and if we can resurrect his spa for not too much money he'll be super thrilled.
Thanks everyone!
I'm not sure if this is the best place for this post... mods feel free to move it somewhere more appropriate.
I've been a ghost around here for a while, but yesterday my neighbor asked me for help with his hot tub/spa, because it wasn't working and he thought it was done for. He went to fire it up and it wouldn't turn on. It was popping the breaker at the panel. He said that the pool guy insists that the tub was working before the house was sold, but that he doesn't work on hot tub components.
I suggested that we at least try to take a look and see if we can't figure out what's wrong before he trashes an otherwise just-fine spa. Now, I'm far from a spa technician, but we took it apart and I started looking around. At first I thought pump motor and/or capacitor. Capacitor tested fine and the motor didn't seem to have any issues, the shaft turned freely and it didn't have any visible problems. Then I noticed that the breaker was tripping immediately, the controller wasn't even trying to turn the pump on. Well, after a process of elimination of unplugging everything I could from the controller board and plugging things in 1 at a time until the breaker tripped, I narrowed it down to the heater. If the heating element was connected, the breaker would trip immediately when it was turned on. As long as the heating element wasn't connected, the breaker would not trip. So we figured out how to pull it all apart and got the heating element housing removed. I could not, however, get the actual element out of the housing as one of the 2 nuts that secure the element into the housing was corroded and rusted so badly that I had to resort to a 24" breaker bar to turn it, and at that point it just twisted the element itself and sheared it off. It was junk anyway. In the process we also managed to break the pressure switch.
So, long story long, we have a broken heating element and pressure switch. Googling turned up nothing, we tried Leslie's to see if they could at least help us find the parts and they were of no help... so I turn to you guys for your collective wisdom. We did find some "universal" heating elements, I'm not sure if one of those would work or not. After the trouble I had getting the element out of the housing tube, I'm not sure if I could get a new element INTO the housing, though it seems like they're supposed to be able to be changed? We're also not able to find the proper pressure switch. The spa is about 20 years old, I will put some pictures on this post of the heater housing and switch. Anything you guys can suggest would be awesome, and if we can resurrect his spa for not too much money he'll be super thrilled.
Thanks everyone!
