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Need hot tub help

Jeffrond you got me thinking so I reinstalled the board and did the old tap tap tap a roo and still nothing.

My gut tells me it is a bad pump and bad relay on the board. The pump looks to have a little oil residue and an odor in it. I've also plugged it into a known working circuit and it didn't work.

I'm worried I'm going to destroy the board trying to replace the relay. I'm more known for rough carpentry vs finish trim if you know what I mean.

jeffrond, where are you located?
 
So Tom, should I just throw 240 straight to the pump and see what happens bypassing the dedicated circuit? I guess that should confirm if my pump is bad correct? I still think there is a relay/board issue but the internet is not very helpful on this. Wife is getting pretty upset that the screen room is now done and she can't dip her toes in the tub.
 
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Andy. If you can hook up your motor to a 240 power source then you can at least determine if the motor is bad or not. And then go from there.
 
I'll try that tonight when I get home Chris. The wife is really nervous messing with the board. I'll see what happens and post an update.
 
The relay is just a switch that controls delivery of high current power to the motor - on or off. As long as you're delivering the same voltage and the connected wires handle the current, powering the motor directly should be fine. An inline fuse is nice or you can also use a couple light bulbs in series with it in case the motor is shorted.
 
A relay also isolates two circuits from each other.  The first circuit is used to open/close the switch in the relay, the second is the circuit that actually gets switched on/off.  Usually its to isolate a high powered circuit from a low powered circuit, like Tom said above, or two circuits of different voltage (instead of high vs low current).

At the extreme end of the spectrum from the relays in your hot tub controller, we use relays at work that take a 5 volt control circuit (driven by a microprocessor) to trip a relay that will open a 161,000 volt circuit breaker.  The relays are about the size of a desktop computer.  Some of our old oil circuit breakers are big enough that all the guys posting on this thread could crawl inside.  At the same time.
 
I suspect it is a bad pump and relay. I broke down and have a tech coming out tomorrow. I'll post what he finds/confirms.
 
Sheesh, first he looks in the manual, now he's getting a repair man??? Haha jk I'm I would do the same, probably sooner than you did if MY wife was involved! Let's just say she isn't known for patience!!
 
Couldn't wait anymore 

 
Status update: Hot tub is up and running. Turns out when the circ pump died it tripped up the board. The tech that came out put the tub into test mode and re-trained it essentially. We were able to test the circuit to the circ pump was now putting out 240v. New pump arrived last night and bingo. Tub is warming up as we speak and the wife is happy! Thanks for all the tips guys.
 
Glad everything worked out! Have fun w/the tub!!! You must be off today?!?

Had hot tubs at my first 2 houses but decided not to get one at this house. Seems like we were using it less and less especially when the kids got out of high school and went to college. They used to pack 10-12 kids in there and half the water would have to filled back up..........Enjoy!
 
Thanks Daril. At work but checked the temp before I left home. I was up until Midnight getting it all set so we could enjoy it tonight. You would think they would design them so you wouldn't get air locks on the pumps when you refill the water.
 
Glad to hear you worked it out. A happy wife, this is good!
 
Right now a hot tub is the last thing I would want. It's 99 here and our upstairs (bedroom) a/c is out. Capacitor is on the way but not soon enough.
 
I installed one of those on ours in May! The ac shut off was damaged so I had to pull the meter and wire in a new box. Don't get zapped Carl!
 
Couldn't wait, went to Charlotte for the part ($8.57) 3 minutes to install, now waiting for the upstairs to cool down (91 degrees).
 
lakeliving said:
Status update: Hot tub is up and running. Turns out when the circ pump died it tripped up the board. The tech that came out put the tub into test mode and re-trained it essentially. We were able to test the circuit to the circ pump was now putting out 240v. New pump arrived last night and bingo. Tub is warming up as we speak and the wife is happy! Thanks for all the tips guys.
Click to expand...

Story of my life.  Two things go wrong at the same time.  Makes it next to impossible to figure out what went wrong...

Glad you got it up and running despite all our help!
 
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