Turning on water feature (with a separate VSF pump) toggles the actuators for the other VSF pump

[futurebeowulf]

Hi all!

This is my first post, and I'm a complete newbie on pools, but I am enjoying reading these posts, and look forward to learning and helping more in the future.

Today my pool installer and I encountered an interesting issue on my new pool/spa. He'll call Pentair on Monday, but I thought it would I would also check with the experts here.

We have two intelliflo VSF pumps. One for the pool and spa, and one for the water feature. They are controlled by Intellicenter. We turn one VSF#1 on to filter the pool. (Pool setting) We then turn on the other VSF#2 to activate the water feature. When this happens, intellicenter seems tells the actuator/valve control that the spa is on. This causes water to be pulled from the spa, and it drains. The VSF#1 meanwhile is still filtering the pool. We have tried to set the actuator/valve control manually, but it simply causes the opposite problem. (i.e. if we turn off the water feature, then intellicenter tells the actuator/value that that the spa is on, and it drains...) What puzzles us, is that the toggle on/off of VSF#2 should not affect VSF#1 at all, so we are scratching our head.

Has anyone seen this issue? Is there a setting you may know of in Intellicenter to look at? (We have verified the circuits, electric set up, etc..., so we are down to a possible software issue.) We also have the latest firmware.

thanks all for any hints or help

 

[Jimrahbe]

F,

There is no software issue, you just have things set up wrong, wired incorrectly, or have a misunderstanding of how the system should work.

You should have at least three valves.. An Intake valve and Return valve that switch the system between the pool and spa modes. These valves along with your main VS pump will operate the Pool and Spa..

Then to turn on the water feature, there must be a third valve. This third valve has to be assigned to the Circuit that controls the water feature. Basically, when the water feature Circuit comes on, it will open the water feature valve and turn on the water feature VS pump.

Show us some pics of your equipment pad so that we can see all three (or more) valves, plumbing and the pumps. Show us several pics from different angles.

Edit.. another thought. When you have two IntelliFlo pumps, they cannot both have the same RS-485 address. One needs to be address #1 and the other address #2. The pump's default address is #1. If you put the system into the Service mode, you can use the pump's control panel to check the pump's internal RS-485 com port address.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[futurebeowulf]

Thanks for the fast reply. I checked the RS-485 address from the Intellicenter panel, and one is set to 1, the other 2.

I've attached a couple photos. They seem to be set correctly (but I'm learning). Note: I failed to mention that when they were first ran last week, all worked as planned, until we had the pool cleaned and the pumps were put into service mode, and then when back to auto. From there it seemed to trigger some kind of reset and the issue started. Hard to know.

Images: View of pumps is the setup, Valve for VSF1 is where we see the issue, where it goes to "zero" when the feature is turned on. VSF 2 is another shot of just VSF 2.

 

[matthewsunshineflorida]

You should have at least three valves.. An Intake valve and Return valve that switch the system between the pool and spa modes. These valves along with your main VS pump will operate the Pool and Spa..

Then to turn on the water feature, there must be a third valve. This third valve has to be assigned to the Circuit that controls the water feature. Basically, when the water feature Circuit comes on, it will open the water feature valve and turn on the water feature VS pump.

I'm quite sure this is not accurate IF you only have one feature on a dedicated pump with its own suction/return. If you had an actuator on it, the position would just be full open and you'd control the intensity of the feature with the pump speed regardless.

In any case, this sounds more like a misconfiguration of the actuator in intellicenter. It might be mistakenly physically connected into the valve A/B ports instead of spa/pool, causing it to attach to the feature circuit the PB created?

So my question would be does the pool/spa mode work correctly? If you go to intellicenter2.com, go to the POOLS tab, and hit "ON" under pool, it should suction entirely from the pool (position 24 in your photo) and the actuator on the left should go to something like 18-20 i.e. sending most of the water to the pool but a little bit to the spa to circulate the water via spillover (assuming you have a spillover spa). In spa mode, (ON under SPA), it should suction and return entirely to the spa (both valves 0).

Also, how is he having you "turn on" the feature? If you go to intellicenter2.com, Settings, System Config, Circuits - is the "feature" listed under AUX-CIRCUITS, FEATURE CIRCUITS, or CIRCUIT GROUPS? It should be ONLY under FEATURE CIRCUITS because there is no actuator. If it's under AUX-CIRCUITS, he almost certainly mistakenly tied it into A/B instead of Pool/Spa because you cannot independently control the pool/spa actuators from AUX-CIRCUITS.

The way this should be set up is to create a FEATURE CIRCUIT named whatever your feature is, then go to the PUMPS tab (under System Config, not the main pump screen), click your second pump, click "ADD CIRCUIT" and then set the speed (or GPM) to whatever you want for the feature. You can also create multiple features for different effects i.e. bubbler low, bubbler med, bubbler hi. Then rename the AUX-CIRCUIT he mistakenly called your feature to "UNUSED" and mark it as "do not show".

The pool/spa actuators then need to simply plug into the pool/spa intake/return inputs - there is no actuator configuration (other than physically changing the open and closed settings).

You can go a step further with CIRCUIT GROUPS, where you could set a feature called "POOL PARTY" that activates your water feature, turns on your pool, turns on the heater, and turns on the pool lights.

 

[Jimrahbe]

F,

I only see two valve actuators. The IntelliValve in front of pump #1 is called the Intake valve. Its job is to select if the water coming into the pump is from the Pool side or the Spa side. The other IntelliValve is called the Return valve and its job is to send the water back to the Pool or back to the Spa. Neither of these valves should have anything to do with the water feature. (I assume the water feature is a separate waterfall of some type, and not the spillover from the Spa into the Pool)

The Intake valve should not move at all when you turn on the water feature pump.

You obviously do not need any valves to move to turn on the water feature pump.

You need to open the IntelliCenter and make sure the Intake valve is plugged into the Intake connector and that the Return valve is plugged into the Return connector. The circuit card is clearly marked as Intake and Return.

As a test, you can see what the valves do when you switch between the Pool and Spa modes. Both the Intake and Return valves should rotate 180 degrees.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[futurebeowulf]

Thanks all. Yes, we have it in "AUX" vs. a separate feature. We'll see if the helps and walk through some of the other ideas. I'm impressed. Stay tuned!

 

[matthewsunshineflorida]

Thanks all. Yes, we have it in "AUX" vs. a separate feature. We'll see if the helps and walk through some of the other ideas. I'm impressed. Stay tuned!

Yep pool/spa actuators can't be controlled from AUX-CIRCUITS, so I'm nearly positive it's plugged it into A/B instead of the pool/spa intake/return. Swap that, then go rename the AUX circuit to unused and "don't show" because that's just an unused actuator port. Then follow those previously mentioned steps to create feature circuits and attach them to various pump speeds. Once it all works, have some fun with circuit groups - I find it really useful.

My PB was primarily using Easy Touch and didn't seem to know hardly anything about intellicenter. I had to figure out how to program all of it and even added the "Spillover" feature that they explicitly said couldn't be done (instead of just "pool mode" which spills over during circulation, Spillover suctions only from pool and outputs only to spa, then you attach a pump speed to it in my case max to get a 5ft spillover).

Frustrating when you're paying so much money that people don't know how the technology they sell works - but pentair isn't exactly known for their flawless technology implementation either as you'll soon find out haha

 

[Jimrahbe]

F,

Aux connectors only have two pins, an actuator connector has three pins. It should be impossible to plug an actuator into an aux circuit.

A agree with Matt above, I also suspect you have your actuator connectors plugged into the A/B actuator ports.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[rstrouse]

As an aside there is an issue with intellicenter2.com in that the A/B valve configurations are not appearing for me. I have a valve expansion so I don't know if that matters but notice the two missing valves on the site. This is not an issue with the mobile app, the indoor control panel, or the wireless controller. Notice below the two missing valves. The purple (bottom) screen shot shows all of them but they are missing from the IntelliCenter web. Double check the circuit assignments for your A and B valve associations.

 

[matthewsunshineflorida]

Aux connectors only have two pins, an actuator connector has three pins. It should be impossible to plug an actuator into an aux circuit.

A agree with Matt above, I also suspect you have your actuator connectors plugged into the A/B actuator ports.

Right, but Intellicenter stupidly shows A/B actuator ports as AUX-CIRCUITS by default alongside Spa, Pool, and lights - so it's not at all intuitive.

Whoever designed Intellicenter just did not think logically through how even a technically inclined person would naturally proceed through the system - and they don't even train the builders they sell to. My start up guy frankly just didn't know anything about intellicenter (but let's be honest, neither does Pentair), so it's pretty frustrating to have to learn everything through this forum, reading a giant manual, and toying around in settings. Looking forward to getting a pi set up eventually.

As an aside there is an issue with intellicenter2.com in that the A/B valve configurations are not appearing for me. I have a valve expansion so I don't know if that matters but notice the two missing valves on the site. This is not an issue with the mobile app, the indoor control panel, or the wireless controller. Notice below the two missing valves. The purple (bottom) screen shot shows all of them but they are missing from the IntelliCenter web. Double check the circuit assignments for your A and B valve associations.

Same thing here, didn't notice that until you said it. I also cannot edit my schedules on Intellicenter2.com but can in the app. Glad they moved to AWS but Pentair's UX is painfully embarrassing for a $10 billion company.

 

[rstrouse]

If you had that pi set up already I could tell you exactly what is triggering the valve control. Over the years I have had EasyTouch (for about a month), IntelliTouch, and IntelliCenter. The EasyTouch was an exercise in futility to get it to control all the equipment I had so that got pulled out and switched to IntelliTouch. IntelliTouch was great when it wasn't acting up but there were plenty of times that I had to reset it and reprogram all over again. It also ate motherboards every few years and for some reason always when it was the least convenient time to change out the motherboard.

I have to say that out of all of them (as expected), IntelliCenter is much better. While the IntelliCenter web needs to go back in the oven for a bit, the indoor controller, and the wireless brick can be navigated easily enough so that guests (and the wife) can operate it without me having to worry so much about the setup getting tweaked. Now that they fixed the disconnect and reboot issues for the wireless controller, I am satisfied with how it all works.

I have messed with the old Intermatic PE series controllers (these had promise at one point and even an API), Jandy iAquaLink, and Hayward OmniLogic. I won't start a war on what I don't like about these but suffice it to say I am glad I stuck with Pentair.

I almost never use the web interface because as you have already surmised, I built my own. If I had to rely on the web app I probably wouldn't be happy as it acts like most Angular apps that I have messed with. 90% of the way there in a few hours but a lot of fiddling to get the final 10% working exactly how you want it to.

 

[Turbo1Ton]

@rstrouse - It appears the issue with intellicenter2.com isn't even consistent, as mine is only missing the A valve. Pentair can't even get their screw ups right!




--Jeff

 

[futurebeowulf]

Hi all!

The issue was resolved, but it was a different issue. First I checked the setup and the actuators were in the right spots, and then I went ahead created a new circuit for the water feature. In so doing, I had two options, one for "generic" and another for "spillway"... For some reason, I thought spillway made sense and set it. The spa drained when the feature was on... and then I went, "This is not a spillway, it's a small water feature," so I changed it to "generic" and it worked as expected!

Thanks for all your help and extra discussions... That lead me to the solution and as I'm a new pool owner, made me push the buttons so to speak.

And as an aside... good to see we have some programmers on here!

 

[futurebeowulf]

One follow-up question... Why are there 7 or so AUX circuits to setup in AUX circuits? (They seem to match up with the number for plugin on the board) Are they related?

FYI, Most of the other circuits I have are here too, like the lights, blower... Should they also be "feature" circuits or does it matter?

 

[rstrouse]

That matches the number of relay controlled circuits you can have. Then you can add up to 32 features and 16 groups that are not controlled by an AUX relay.

EDIT: Actually there are 40 slots for features but the UI will only show 32 of them.

 

[Jimrahbe]

F,

An Aux circuit has a corresponding relay. When you turn on the Aux circuit the relay will close. You will need to use an Aux circuit relay to control external things that are run by 120 or 240 volts AC.. Things like booster pump, spa blowers, lights, etc.. An exception to this rule is IntelliFlo pumps which are wired to constant AC input without any relays. IntelliFlo pumps are controlled an RS-485 com port cable.

Feature circuits work just like Aux Circuits except they have no relay. They are used to control internal things, like pump speeds, valve movements, etc.

Glad you were able to get it fixed..

Jim R.