IntelliTouch/Screen Logic schedules not working

[fredricr1]

I have the Pentair EasyTouch controller and use the ScreenLogic iOS app as my main interface. I've set my pool up to run for roughly 9 hours per day but in the middle of that I turn the spillway from the spa on at 3 different times just to move the water in the spa. I could SWEAR when I originally set this up all 3 waterfall schedules worked fine (morning, noon, and early evening). However, after messing with the schedules and then trying to set them back to the way they originally were, they don't all work. Originally my noon waterfall period stopped turning on but the morning and evening would. I turned the breakers off and restarted the whole system and voila, the morning and noon waterfalls work, but now the evening won't. I've let the system run for more than 24 hours, thinking it may be a timer/cycle issue, but tonight was 48 hours and the evening waterfall didn't work again.

Has anybody else experienced this problem? My scheduled run tines include regular filtration, suction side cleaner, and the 3 waterfall periods. There are never more than 2 schedules that overlap (e.g., the filtration timer is running and then the waterfall kicks in for 30 minutes during the time period. The cleaner period, with a higher pump rpm speed, comes later).

Not sure how to fix this seemingly simple issue.

TIA,

Fred

 

[Jimrahbe]

Fred,

Since it was working and then you messed with it and now it no longer works, logic says it is something that you did...

What were you "messing" with? Did you change any egg-timers or run once timers?

Please post the following screenshots...

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[fredricr1]

Thanks, Jim. I agree, it must have been something I did but I went so far as to delete the "waterfall" schedules and recreate them and one (the 5:45pm one) didn't run again last night. I've attached the screenshots.

In a separate thread I had described how a pool builder friend (he did not build my pool) told me my spa should ALWAYS, whenever the pump is running, be trickling over the spillway to avoid dead water. He then adjusted the actuator so the return to the spa never fully closed. After consulting with people here on the forums (and not really liking that approach) I reset the actuator to close off completely and instead run the waterfall more than the 45 minutes a day I was so I'd get fresh, chlorinated water in there throughout the day. That adjustment - creating 3 "waterfall" schedules instead of the 1 in the evening I originally had - was all I did to the system. However, I had created the 3 waterfall periods before I adjusted the actuator. It ran for a few days that way because I didn't have time to mess with it, and like I said, the 3 schedules seemed to work. I'll be honest, I may have not noticed that one of the schedules wasn't running until the last few days but I'm pretty OCD about this (new pool!) and think I would have been checking. It was after I adjusted the actuator that I noticed one waterfall schedule wouldn't run. Anyway, here are the screenshots (I even thought maybe 3 schedules couldn't run simultaneously, which is why I have the noon waterfall come on at 12:01pm so it didn't overlap with the pool/cleaner schedule):

EDIT: I do have a fairly constant battle with my pH due to aeration from the SWG and spillway schedule. As soon as I get this schedule thing figured out, assuming I do, I plan to experiment to find the minimum amount of water flow in/out of the spa that's needed to keep that water healthy. The 3-times a day for 30-45 minutes was a suggestion from someone in these forums. Any other tips appreciated, if you have them.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Fred.

Do you have a full up ET/IntelliTouch, with a load center full of circuit breakers in the bottom half of the unit? I just want to make sure that you do not have the "Lite" version of the ET which can only handle four schedules..

I am not sure about the IntelliTouch, but the ET can only have 12 schedules... At first glance you might think you only have 4 schedules, but really you have 13 because the egg-timers count as a schedule. I am not sure why you have so many egg-timers... You really only need them for circuits that you always want to turn off after x amount of time. A good example is that I have a fill line that I just turn on and it runs for one hour and shuts off by itself because I have that circuit set up as a one hour egg-timer. Anything that you normally schedule with a start time and a stop time you really don't want it to have an egg-timer. If you want something to run longer than 12 hours (the default setting) then you need to make the egg-timer say "don't stop"..

The default of 12 hours does not count as a schedule...

ScreenLogic will allow you to set up thousands of schedules.. it will never tell you that you have too many.. If you were doing this at the panel, it would provide a warning that you are "Out of Schedules" or something similar..

I suspect if you get rid of some of those unneeded egg-timers, your programming will work again.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[fredricr1]

Fred.

Do you have a full up ET/IntelliTouch, with a load center full of circuit breakers in the bottom half of the unit? I just want to make sure that you do not have the "Lite" version of the ET which can only handle four schedules..

I suspect if you get rid of some of those unneeded egg-timers, your programming will work again.

Thanks,

Jim R.

Below is a picture of my ET system. There are only 4 breakers installed: EasyTouch, Lights, Filter, and Pump. I don't know how to tell if this is the 8 or 4 version but the original contract said it was the EasyTouch 8. As for the egg timers, I didn't realize those contributed to any limit on schedules and was just messing with them when the pool keys were handed over to me. I'll delete most of them. I imagine only the lights and spa settings are needed for an egg timer to avoid having those features run for hours unnecessarily. That would give me a total of 9 schedules (5 "Schedules" and 4 "Egg Timers"). I'll make these adjustments.

Setting the unnecessary ones to the default "12 hours" would not be considered a schedule, if I understood you correctly. I can't seem to delete any item on there. Nor can I set the timer to anything less than 1 minute. Please let me know if I'm wrong on that. Thanks!

ET Image:

 

[Jimrahbe]

Set them to 12 hours and they will not count.

I don't believe that you can delete any of them.

Are you saying you can't just set them to 12 hours??? If you click on a line do you not get an Less and More arrow??

If you don't get the Less/more arrows you may have to delete a schedule first to get down to 12...

Jim R.

 

[fredricr1]

Set them to 12 hours and they will not count.

I don't believe that you can delete any of them.

Are you saying you can't just set them to 12 hours??? If you click on a line do you not get an Less and More arrow??

If you don't get the Less/more arrows you may have to delete a schedule first to get down to 12...

Jim R.

Yes, I can set them to 12 hours. I noticed that you cannot set them to "zero" hours and cannot delete them. That's all. I was just confirming that setting them to 12 hours was the same as removing that feature from my schedule count.

However, that didn't solve my problem. The third waterfall was supposed to start at 5:45pm this evening and it did not, even though I only have 9 total schedules (5 "schedules" and 4 "egg timers").

I guess I'll start from scratch - delete all the schedules, reboot ET, then build them again. Unless anyone has another idea.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Fred,

Another "feature" about the ET programming is that if you screw with it by manually turning something on or off, it will often skip the next schedule because it "easily gets confused"..

Sometimes I think I understand it and then sometimes I don't. It seems very dependent on what is changed and when in relation to the schedule.

In any case, I always reboot, the entire system and then if it does not work, I wait until the next schedule before I assume it is bad.

I suspect that your the 3rd waterfall was entered as the 13th item... It never took effect.. turning off the other items reduced your count to 12 or below, but you would still need to reenter the 13th item as it was never stored in the ET..

Jim R.

 

[fredricr1]

Fred,

Another "feature" about the ET programming is that if you screw with it by manually turning something on or off, it will often skip the next schedule because it "easily gets confused"..

Sometimes I think I understand it and then sometimes I don't. It seems very dependent on what is changed and when in relation to the schedule.

In any case, I always reboot, the entire system and then if it does not work, I wait until the next schedule before I assume it is bad.

I suspect that your the 3rd waterfall was entered as the 13th item... It never took effect.. turning off the other items reduced your count to 12 or below, but you would still need to reenter the 13th item as it was never stored in the ET..

Jim R.

Dude...you're my hero. Although I wasn't around today to check the first two waterfalls, after restarting/rebuilding the schedules, my evening waterfall came on. It appears your last sentence was accurate: The last waterfall schedule was likely never recognized and I had to restart the system to force it to do so.

Thank you so much.

Fred

 

[Jimrahbe]

Fred,

Excellent!!! Glad you got it working..

Jim R.