IC 40 Blowing Fuse after Fuse

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Divin Dave

Divin Dave

TFP Expert
LifeTime Supporter
Oct 2, 2013
5,754
Longview, Texas
Welp,
As the title says, my IC 40 is blowing fuse after fuse.

A couple of days ago is when I noticed the lights on the cell wouln't fire up. I put some bleach in the pool and waited until today to look at it further. My SWG is just finishing 5 years of trouble free operation.

The fuse which was in the unit was a 8A. I went to Autozone and ended up with a pack of 10A fuses rated for 250V. Just for info, the 10A fuses are not slow blow ones, I couldn't find any of those anywhere.

Anyways, came home and installed a new 10A fuse. It blew in about 1/2 second.
Opened the Power Box and looked inside with my Tactical flashlight and my 6x magnifying glass, no obvious issues like burnt wires or anything.
Oh yeah.. before I went snooping into stuff, I measured the voltage and its perfect at 220V.

Put in another 10 amp fuse and another 1/2 second later, instant blow.

hummm...
So next I un-plugged the cable that provides power from the Power Box to the Cell, installed another 10A fuse and turned on the power. The fuse did not blow, the little Green LED light on the circuit board in the Power Box lit up and everything looked fine.

So I turned power back off, plugged in the cable and turned it back on and Pow. Blown again.
Using my super duper tactical flashlight and magnifying glass, I inspected the pins in the power cable connector and don't see any signs of arcing or burnt pins on it.

Unless anyone knows anything else I can check, I'm leaning towards deciding something in the cell has gone awry and the cell needs to be replaced.

Give me your ideas if you have any.
Ready, GO!

Thanks
 
There are 4 wires that go to the cell. Red, black, green and white.

The red and black wires are the power wires. The pins that line up with those carry the power to the cell. The green and white wires are the data wires.

If the two power pins show as shorted (0 ohms), I think that the cell is bad.

Also, note that the fuse holder tends to fall apart. Make sure that it's not damaged. Maybe get an in-line fuse holder to replace it instead of the original one if it goes bad.

If you want to rig up a test load, you could get (3) 12 volt dc halogen light bulbs at about 50 watts each and wire them in series to the power supply.

That would simulate a cell load. If the lights get fully bright without blowing the fuse, the power center is probably good.

You could measure the amperage and voltage to be sure but full brightness should be a good enough test.
 
So I received my new IC 40 cell a couple of days ago and it's all back up and running fine now.

I removed the top cover of the old one, and the back side of the cover where the Salt Level LEDs are, is burnt black. So, something on the circuit board of the cell shorted out I'm tempted to use my Dremel to cut the cell open and appease my curiosity.
 
Cool, thanks for the update. The Intellichlor cell will sometimes do that. I think that it's sometimes caused by water intrusion into the electronics from inside or outside the cell.

Let us know if you find out why it happened.
 
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