Pentair IC20 Advice on Flashing Green Cell Light

[fudgebar]

Hey all I just opened pool for this season in Northern NJ area. Temp reading on my Pentair Automation is showing outside temp of 52F and Water temp of about 56F
I noticed after about 20mins of turning on all equipment, that the SWG IC20 cell light went from solid to flashing green. I recall from last season, right before closing that this started happening as well and in the automation panel under diagnostics it displays Clean Cell!!!
I have done this and the cell plates are perfectly clean with no residue whatsoever. Before i go out and purchase a brand new IC20 SWG cell, I wanted to ask some advice from any of you that may have some more advance tips I can try to revive this unit

Firstly, is the water too cold to further isolate the problem? and are there any other things I can try before replacement? ie replace flow sensor, or cut some of the wiring that may be falsely reporting temps or salt readings?

Here are some additional details:
-Cell is approx 5 years old BUT advanced diagnostic shows Cell Life 4000 hours (40% LED 2 green lights)
-Pool is only about 8,000 Gals so this cell rarely gets pushed hard
-I have maintained almost perfect water chemistry thru these 5 years
-I have already acid washed the cell a few times last season to ensure blades are free of corrosion
-Salt in Pool is more than adequate

 

[ajw22]

Every time you clean the cell plates with acid you etch off some of the rare earth minerals on the cell and reduce its life. You should not acid clean the plates unless youc annot get scale off with a strong water flow or a Popsicle stick.

Flashing light CELL light on the IntelliChlor panel says "Inspect Cell" not clean cell.

The cell will stop generating chlorine when water temperate is below 60 degrees. With a water temperature of 56 degrees I would would wait for your pool water to warm up before declaring it dead.

 

[Jimrahbe]

F,

The first sign of a bad cell is a flashing cell light when the cell is clean.

As Allen points out.. You should never acid wash the cell if it is clean.

It can't hurt to wait for the water to warm up, but I suspect it will still be bad. For me anyway, they tend to run ok right after startup, then the cell light starts flashing after a few minutes.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[fudgebar]

Jim, after some more testing here is what I observed today, your right about working fine on startup.....i shut system completely down and rebooted easy touch system. The cell took a new salt reading which reported approx 3180ppm ( when it was flashing earlier it was reporting 2800ppm) I still think both these readings are off but regardless, the cell stayed solid and I could actually see small chlorine bubbles coming thru the returns so it was working....but about 15mins in, the cell light started flashing again. Does this point to unrecoverable cell or just a bad flow switch temp or saline sensor wiring?....thnx

 

[Jimrahbe]

F,

I have three pools and replaced two IC40s in the last six months, both cells did exactly what yours is doing. I guess it could be the thermistor in the flow switch or just your cold water. You could replace the flow switch. If it worked great. If not you would have a spare flow switch. Much cheaper than a new cell.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[d12e111]

IC20 is flashing inspect cell as well. Its only 3-4 yrs old, only has 4000hrs used. It started flashing end of last season, but thought it needed a cleaning. I've cleaned it end of the season and had no problems for 3 weeks into this season so far. I did notice last year that some of the blades were deteriorating. I did clean it with Mur acid as it had a lot of build up inside. I've read to try to bump up the salt in the pool and see if the unit responds to that. Any insight would be great before I spend $1kcad on a new unit. Thanks in advance.

 

[d12e111]

IC20 is flashing inspect cell as well. Its only 3-4 yrs old, only has 4000hrs used. It started flashing end of last season, but thought it needed a cleaning. I've cleaned it end of the season and had no problems for 3 weeks into this season so far. I did notice last year that some of the blades were deteriorating. I did clean it with Mur acid as it had a lot of build up inside. I've read to try to bump up the salt in the pool and see if the unit responds to that. Any insight would be great before I spend $1kcad on a new unit. Thanks in advance.

Just checked the Manufacturer date and its from March 2018. which make sense as I had my pool installed July of 2018. 3-4 years just seems like such a short span as well as only using 4000+ hours.