IC60 Very Low Salt - K1766 Disagrees, Lack of Timely Help from Pentair

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It might not give a salinity reading without a temperature reading.

Sometimes the salinity reading goes to zero with no known cause.

I would ask Pentair to send you a new flow switch under warranty since you have confirmed the flow switch temperature sensor is bad.

Until then, it looks like it's working.
 
JamesW said:
It might not give a salinity reading without a temperature reading.

Sometimes the salinity reading goes to zero with no known cause.

I would ask Pentair to send you a new flow switch under warranty since you have confirmed the flow switch temperature sensor is bad.

Until then, it looks like it's working.
Click to expand...

Thanks again! If you’re ever in Austin, give me a ring, I’ll pour you the drink of your choice at the swim up bar in a well chlorinated pool!
 
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JamesW said:
Note: Flow-temperature switches manufactured before September 2018 will feature a grey cable containing a GREEN and WHITE wire.

Insert these two wires into the same side of a splice connector and crimp using pliers. These switches are not compatible with cells manufactured after September 2018.

Since your cell was probably made after September 2018, it will not use the green wire from a flow switch.

If you replaced the flow switch, you would need to get a newer model with only the red, black and white wires.

So, I am not sure how you would connect a separate temperature sensor?

Does anyone know?

Would you connect the temperature sensor to the white and black wires?

If there are 4 wires from the cell, I would think that the green and white wires would connect to the separate temperature sensor, but I don't know for sure
Click to expand...

I was having low salinity issues last summer. I didn't realize there was a way to check the temperature from the flow switch prior to adding an external temperature sensor. I was able to hook it up to my 3 wire flow switch by connecting the white to white and the red from the thermistor to the black of the flow switch.

--Jeff
 
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Here is a video of the flow switch in action. It's a magnetic reed switch enclosed in a glass tube.

Trying to fit a thermistor in the same thin stalk probably means that the thermistor is very thin and fragile, which is probably why the failure rate is so high.

We should probably contact Harwil and ask them to improve the flow switch so that it doesn't cause so many problems.


 
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Turbo1Ton said:
I was able to hook it up to my 3 wire flow switch by connecting the white to white and the red from the thermistor to the black of the flow switch.
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Ok, so connect the temperature sensor wires to the white from the cell and to the black from the cell which is also connected to the black from the flow switch.

I'm guessing that the black is probably ground for both.

I wonder if it would also work if one of the temperature sensor wires was connected to the green instead of the black?
 
JamesW said:
I wonder if it would also work if one of the temperature sensor wires was connected to the green instead of the black?
Click to expand...
I assume you are talking about the 4 wire switch, pre 2018? The 3 wire doesn't have a green, just red, white, black.
 
For the 4 wire switch, the green would probably just connect to the black wire.

For the new cell, the cable still contains 4 wires from the cell to the flow switch.

The green is probably not connected on either end.

They probably have several thousand feet of 4 wire cable that they need to use, which makes sense instead of buying 3 wire cable. I don't even know if they make standard 3 wire cable.

For the new 3 wire flow switch, you would test the flow switch between red and black and the thermistor between white and black.

To install a separate temperature sensor, you would connect the wires to the white and black from the cell.
 
Probably so, on connecting green to black.

My cell only has 3 wires between the cell and flow switch. I think DB's flow switch was manufactured before the cutoff date and the cell just after, so it's likely Pentair used old stock of the 4 wire flow switch in its construction.

--Jeff
 
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The part came in last night, I swapped it out in the morning; it worked perfectly. Took about 5 minutes in total. The new flow switch only had three wires, there was no green wire. I suspect the green wire was abandoned and never connected on my original unit since it's the newer chlorinator.

After startup, I noticed the startup time for the cell to read a salt level was MUCH faster than before. Also, my salt now reads 3750 which sounds about right since I was at 3400 ppm last week with K1766 and did add a bag which is worth roughly 200 ppm. Additionally, my water level is a bit low since we've had some good heat and evaporation. I'm filling the pool today so it'll probably end up closer to 3600. Regardless, I've NEVER had this accurate of a reading, even when the unit was brand new, it always ready VERY low until it ultimately failed. Doing the MORE test sequence resulted in a hard 80% which indicates 76-85F water temp which is accurate since the water temp is 78 right now.

Anyways, thanks for the help, doing it myself was a fun project and saved a lot of time and hassle.

2021-04-10_08-22-27.jpg
 
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