Pool equipment randomly turning on?

[davidhum66]

I just joined TFP after coming across this post from 2011 that similarly describes my problem.

Jandy RS6 spa turns itself on

What a great surprise to have this forum to turn to going forward for DIY solutions to my pool issues. My problem is with certain parts of my pool coming on spontaneously over the past week. Airblower, heater, pool lights, and landscape lights. My system includes a Jandy Aqualink RS One Touch (wired), a spa link RS, and about 3 yrs ago an iAqualink was installed.

After reading the TFP post and thread, I assumed I have a faulty spa link RS (8 button) located at my spa. When I push one of the assigned buttons at the spa control, its hit or miss. Sometimes, the "path light" will turn on pool light and air blower. Sometimes nothing happens. Only the devices assigned at the spa link are turned on randomly...nothing else...which again seems to point to the spa link RS being faulty. The One Touch and iAquaLink seem to be fine and I use those to turn off the device that is not suppose to be on. And the problem seems to happen when the pool program comes on or turns off. So, a bit of predictable "randomness" which has made the past week easier vs leaving in service mode and manually running.

I followed the post and was going to isolate (confirm) the Spa Link as the problem by removing this connection from the panel and seeing if everything works as expected. When I did this, I noticed that my One Touch was also turned off as a result. I did not confirm if the iAqualink also turned off.....but started researching the problem when I came across TFP. I have repaired and replaced a One Touch board in the past and done other minor repairs. But trying to avoid the costly pool company repair to diagnose this one.

So apologies for the long post, but my questions are: can you just disconnect the SpaLink RS by itself and not impact my other pool controllers? And if it is the Spa Link that's the problem, how challenging of a repair is this? I thought I could just replace the unit, but appears I will have to pull the cable back to the pool pad site and wire all of that....which seems daunting. Attached are my pictures for referencence. Thanks for any advice.

 

[ps0303]

So you disconnected the black connector to disable your spa side remote?

 

[davidhum66]

Thanks Paul. I'm embarrassed to admit that I disconnected the 4 pin (red) connector next to the iAqualink 4 pin. I had my air blower coming on at 2AM last night and it went on and off every second. Ran out and placed into service mode until I get this fixed. I just disconnected the black 6 pin where it clearly says "Spa Side Switch" on the MB. What is odd is that the LED on the Spa Link RS is still illuminated? I hit "Spa Light" button on the Spa Link and it turned on 3 devices in error. So, I am wondering if the green 10 pin connector is what I need to disconnect? It says "solar", "air" and some other things on the board, so I'll try this next. At this point, I just hope it is the spa controller that is causing havoc with my system vs something else.

 

[ps0303]

The green connector are all of your temp sensors. If you are pressing the spa light and something else comes on, then you could have a bad board all together. You could remove the board and make sure you don't have anything on the side of the board where the buttons are. Things like ants or spider webs.

 

[davidhum66]

It turns out I had a bad spalink RS. Once I deactivated the spa controller via the lockout function in my One Touch controller, the pool system stopped coming on randomly. Jandy informed me about the lockout function in the controller, as I was looking at the "Spa Link" configuration and there wasn't an option to turn it off there. I needed to go to the "Lockout" section of the menu. (Doh!) Now that I know, this will be helpful when my kids or their friends push those spa buttons...and I want to prevent that. It turns out the black PIN was an old set up that controlled my system via phone. This has been unplugged. The spalink red PIN connector was located in the adjacent power center. Live and learn...