Jandy JXI400 Problems

[PoolGate]

I got a strange problem. I turned the heater on yesterday morning and it was, I thought, heating all day. We got in the pool and it was cooler that it should have been so I checked and Aqualink was reporting that the heater was running and "heating". I could hear the blower on the heater running as well but no heat coming out. No errors no warnings nothing. I did a reset and tried to start it again. Seemed to start, blower came on, but never lit. Never gave me an error, just did not light. To make matters worse, I think the gas was still on and running. We could smell gas around the pool. Of course I turned it off immediately and it remains off.

I have not torn into it yet. Any ideas?

 

[ajw22]

That sounds like a failure of the Fenwal if the heater continues to run with no flame sensed.

@setsailsoon has been in the internals of the Jandy heater.

 

[ps0303]

If the heater fails to light it should shutdown. The gas valve would also shut down and you don't have gas flowing. First thing I would check is to see if the igniter is OK and not broken. Jandy did change out the igniter style a while back as the ones they originally used broke to easily. The old one was like a spiral design and the new style is more of a solid looking piece.

Old style


New style.


*Yes I stole these images from the internet. LOL

 

[PoolGate]

If the heater fails to light it should shutdown. The gas valve would also shut down and you don't have gas flowing. First thing I would check is to see if the igniter is OK and not broken. Jandy did change out the igniter style a while back as the ones they originally used broke to easily. The old one was like a spiral design and the new style is more of a solid looking piece.

Old style
View attachment 373234

New style.
View attachment 373235

*Yes I stole these images from the internet. LOL

Right, except it doesn't/didn't do that. I have replaced the ignitor before and have 2 spares. The first time it failed it tried to start 3 times and gave me an IGN error and shut itself down. This time it did none of that. It thought it was running. I will check the ignitor again for sure to see if it has failed again. I'll have to check out the new ignitors. I have 2 of the old style.

 

[setsailsoon]

The primary issue I see from these symptoms is a failure of the gas valve to close with no flame. This is potentially a very dangerous condition. I have a couple of questions:

• Are you certain the gas valve remains open for more than a few seconds? Gas odorants persist for a while after the gas valve shuts off. If the flame does not occur or goes out the gas valve only stays open a few seconds of no flame condition. Normally the ignition cycle starts the blower after safety sensors all check out safe and lets it run for a period of time and tests (via the pressure sensor) to be sure there is air flow so there can't be an explosive mixture in the fire box and then turns on the igniter, then opens the gas valve, then tests for flame. Then after the flame is detected it keeps running and monitoring for flame via the flame sense circuit. If flame is ever not sensed it shuts down with an error message. If the gas valve remains open it could be faulty or the Fenwal can be at fault or it could be both at fault.
• Do you have the ability to test the voltage sensing current or voltage at the two pins on the Fenwal? This can be done easily with micro clips or a couple home made extensions. It's tedious but not too hard to do.
• Do you have a gas manometer? This is required to check out the function of the gas valve. You would want to check the pressure when the valve is supposed to close. For the Jxi series the pressure is controlled at a negative value. So testing this is not like testing positive gas valves but is easily performed if you have the right tools.

If the gas valve truly is staying open and you don't have training/experience with gas systems this really is a good time to call a pro. Unfortunately many of the "pros" don't have the training or ability to troubleshoot and repair either so they'll just suggest you replace the unit. So it may take some effort to get a true pro. Diagnosing and repair is probably ~$1000 for a failed gas valve or a failed Fenwal if you pay a pro. It will cost about half this if you can do the repair yourself but should not be attempted unless you really do have the ability. Replacing the entire heater is probably over $3500. So it's worth the effort to get a real pro.

I hope this is helpful.

Chris

 

[Poolbreh]

Was it cycling off and on? Or was it running just continuously? It sounds like a gas/air combustion problem. LP or NAT?
you could probably call the gas company out and just verify pressure, regulators.
If it kept cycling and lighting temporarily you would smell gas. Although I’m not familiar enough with jxi to know how many times it would cycle.

 

[Poolbreh]

Cycles seem to be similar to Lxi, it will cycle 3 times if no flame is detected and will shut off for a hour and will try and continue the 3 cycle purge. I wonder if it shut off due to low or empty gas and when you went back out it was during that 1 hr mark.

 

[PoolGate]

I am not actually sure if the (natural) gas was running or not. The first time I started it at 9:00am via Aqualink and we went for a dip around 3:00pm expecting a 92 degree pool and the water was 86. There was no indication that the heater was not running all day. NO errors on the heater and Aqualink reported it as "heating". So I cycled everything and tried again. It did the same thing went through the regular startup and showed as running. NO errors, not 3 times, no nothing out of the ordinary. This time we smelled gas around the pool so I shut it down and left it that way. I plan on diving into the heater and troubleshooting more next week.

 

[setsailsoon]

I would suggest you isolate this from an iAqualink problem. If you haven't already done so I'd start by running manually to see if you get the error. There were a couple times my WiFi got messed up and the heater kept running but was unresponsive to my app. This could make it harder to trouble shoot.

Chris

 

[PoolGate]

I would suggest you isolate this from an iAqualink problem. If you haven't already done so I'd start by running manually to see if you get the error. There were a couple times my WiFi got messed up and the heater kept running but was unresponsive to my app. This could make it harder to trouble shoot.

Chris

Lol there isn't any error.

 

[PoolGate]

I dove into the heater today. I took it out of remote mode and tried to fire it up. This time it went through 3 tries and shut down with the IGN error like it is supposed to do. It doesn't do that when connected to Aqualink. So I figured I would start with the ignitor since it is simple to check and simple to replace and I have a couple spares. I took it out and it looked fine. No noticeable breaks. It looked almost new in fact. But since I had it out anyway I went ahead and replaced it. Turned it on and boom, heater works perfect. So no clue why it did not report the error when Aqualink was connected. The first time I had to replace the ignitor I did get the IGN error and it was connected to Aqualink. Oh well. I did also confirm that the heater itself was not shutting down when connected to Aqualink. Both the heater and Aqualink both thought the heater was working. Fortunately the gas was NOT flowing when it failed to light. I confirmed that multiple times. Seems that all is well.

This is the ignitor that the pool store gave me at 1/2 price because they replaced it on a customer's heater but didn't think it was broken. It probably has a short in one of the wires and eventually doesn't work anymore. It got me 3 seasons so I guess that is ok!

 

[setsailsoon]

Pool,

That's very interesting. I never could pin down what was casing me problems trying to trouble shoot with iAqualink engaged but it did seem to interfere. Curious, how many flashes of the red light on the fenwal did you get?

Chris

 

[PoolGate]

Pool,

That's very interesting. I never could pin down what was casing me problems trying to trouble shoot with iAqualink engaged but it did seem to interfere. Curious, how many flashes of the red light on the fenwal did you get?

Chris

I didn't really pay attention to the lights but I think all I saw was a couple green lights.