Marquis Spa, New Circuit Board Re-Boots

[glp1049]

I have been working on my daughter's spa. It stopped working last fall. They drained it for the winter. I filled it and attempted to start it this spring. The circuit board wouldn't respond, so we replaced the board. The board we ordered was for a single 230 volt pump, and the tub has 2 - 230 volt pumps, so I installed the board with only pump one working. We arranged to return the board for one that was for 2- 230 volt pumps,but, the spa seemed to work fine with the Balboa vs500 board running on pump one only. If it didn't, we did not notice it re-booting. We received the new board( Balboa VS501Z 54357-03) and we also ordered a new topside control that is compatable. I set the board up for 230 volt pumps - Moved the wires white to red- installed them, and it seemed the spa was going to be fine. It cycled up, went into prime mode, heated to set temp, all pumps worked and primed fine, and it filtered for 2 hour cycle. All seemed to be fine. We decided to use it that evening, and after a short run time, the board locked up, (another term may be more correct) the LED lite duplex display flickered, It displayed 9 dashes ( like the horizontals lines of 3- 3"s without the verticles) and the board re-booted, went back into prime mode, and started the 2 hour filter cycle again. It did this a couple times , so I shut it down and decided to try the new board with the old, original topside the next day. With the old topside control, it still re-boots. I tried to plug the topside into J2 instead of J1. it still re-boots. I monitored the line voltage for a period of time thinking that it may be voltage sags causing the re-starts, but the voltage measured 239 to 241 volts most of the time, and the biggest sag I caught was 7 volts. I don't feel that would be enough drop to cause any reset of the board.

I may be getting dazed and confused, but it seems that it only does the restart problem with the cover on the spa. I am wondering if it could be heat related. Pump one does get pretty hot, but I don't think it would reset as quick as it does, because the pump will run again as soon as it boots into prime mode. That is only a minute or so into the board boot process. I think a motor over heat trip would take 10 minutes or more to reset.

Can anyone give me any insight into what this could be? My instinct says bad board, but it is very hard to get an on-line seller to replace an electrical part. I was surprised when they took the wrong one back that we ordered.

As a side note: whoever came up with the LED red topside control should be working elsewhere. It is impossible to see in the daylight!

[Spa_Guru]

You are asking us to diagnose an issue with a spa pak that you have switched boards on twice, both times requiring conversion -- you are knee deep in this project, and nobody in thier right mind is going to guess at the problem short of seeing the pak.

I'd reccomend you contact Spokane Spas (a member here).

http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.php?showuser=74685

[glp1049]

Thanks for reply Spa Guru. I didn't install a spa pak. Just a new board, and a new top side that is compatible with that board. Update: I left the exterior cover of the spa off; leaned up against the tub for a week. It was used several times with all pumps running. There was no problem. No re-boot of the board. Seems the problem is heat related. I put a 12" x 12" vent in the cover to see if problem returns with cover on. I know it should not need it. Many tubs have no vents. The cover already had 2 small vents.

As far as conversion? The only thing I did on the boards was to move the wires from 120 volt locations to 240 volt locations.