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New Heater + Pump. Still No Heat.


mschmitz57

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I have a 10 year old Hot Springs Prodigy that quit heating.

This spa had an older style trumpet heater so I installed a new style replacement heater.

This was advertised as a Watkins but It looks like a reproduction model. The price was $209

so I figured I'd keep it and take my chances. The quality looked decent.

After replacing it I restored the power and felt the heater was warm so I left it heat-up overnight.

The next morning the water was cold.

After a bit of investigation I decided my circulator pump was bad so I replaced that as well.

Now I can see a nice vigorous plume of water coming-up from the outlet in the bottom of the spa

as well as the little outlet hole in the filter compartment. I did not have this before I replaced the pump.

I restored the power but the heater never got warm. I noticed the little green reset button was tripped so I reset it.

Still no heat. Today I measured 115 VAC on the heater relay board. Also measured 115VAC on the circulator pump leads on

the motherboard.

The red heater LED is not on. The heater reset button is not tripped.

I'm afraid my new heater bit the dust. At this point I'm going to try checking the heater with an ohm meter.

Does anyone know what value I should see on this?

Thanks for any advice.

Mark

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I have a 10 year old Hot Springs Prodigy that quit heating.

This spa had an older style trumpet heater so I installed a new style replacement heater.

This was advertised as a Watkins but It looks like a reproduction model. The price was $209

so I figured I'd keep it and take my chances. The quality looked decent.

After replacing it I restored the power and felt the heater was warm so I left it heat-up overnight.

The next morning the water was cold.

After a bit of investigation I decided my circulator pump was bad so I replaced that as well.

Now I can see a nice vigorous plume of water coming-up from the outlet in the bottom of the spa

as well as the little outlet hole in the filter compartment. I did not have this before I replaced the pump.

I restored the power but the heater never got warm. I noticed the little green reset button was tripped so I reset it.

Still no heat. Today I measured 115 VAC on the heater relay board. Also measured 115VAC on the circulator pump leads on

the motherboard.

The red heater LED is not on. The heater reset button is not tripped.

I'm afraid my new heater bit the dust. At this point I'm going to try checking the heater with an ohm meter.

Does anyone know what value I should see on this?

Thanks for any advice.

Mark

Somewhere between 9-15 ohms usually.

If the heater LED is not lit up then the tub is not trying to heat. There is either a problem with one or both of the thermistors or the control head could be bad. Most likely a thermistor.

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Update.

The heater resistance is around 8.5 ohms.

I just noticed that when I reset the power, the heater LED comes on for about 10 seconds.

Then I hear a relay "click" and the heater LED goes out.

Yes the thermistors are original. Is there any way to check them?

Will try replacing them first.

Mark

You can check the resistance on those too. The reading depends on the water temp, but they should both read about the same value.

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I found the problem.

I was checking the thermistor resistance and found that I had the connector offset by 1 pin.

In other words only 1 pin was contacting the motherboard.

I had disconnected it when I replaced the heater and re-connected it improperly.

The thermistor never registered a rise in water temp so the motherboard shut-down

the heater.

Will check back later to verity the water is actually getting hot.

Thanks,

Mark

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