WLWalker

We are new spa owners. Recently bought a mountain home with a 2007 model Sundance Spa 880 (Marin model). Worked fine until we drained it yesterday in cold December weather to clean and replace the filter. The temp outside was about 35 degrees. Once we had refilled with fresh water and tried to turn the power back on at the circuit breaker as directed in the manual, we got an error code that was a series of 4 dashes (----). The lights would work but that was all. The owners' manual indicated that this was a 'WATCHDOG" signal and that a spa repair person needed to be called. Since there are no such repair people in our area, we resorted to Google to see if we could out if anyone had had a similar problem and hopefully offer a solution. We did. We found someone who had the exact same problem and had gone to one of those websites where you pay money to have an expert help you solve your problem. The spa repair expert guy first suggested that there might be an air bubble in the pipes and told the owner to "burp" the system. The owner reported back that this had not worked. The spa guy then suggested that the owner replace the temp sensor, a relatively inexpensive repair. The owner came back and said that he had solved the problem himself -- by turning off the power, removing the panels to access his circuit board and then TURNING A HAIR DRYER ON IT for 10 minutes. He turned the spa back on and VOILA! It worked. This sounded a little crazy to us. But we tried it this afternoon and... VOILA! IT WORKEDI Our hot tub is now bubbling perfectly and the heater is getting us back up to a lovely high temp; we are looking forward to a midnight dip. For us it took about 20 minutes of blow drying. But once we turned the system back on the "----" Watchdog error code was no longer there. Suddenly there were temperature numbers and the jets came on and we were up and running. No service call, no waiting for a new temp sensor to arrive and replace. Thought we'd share in case others encounter this problem and are willing to go out on a limb with an unorthodox solution. I will say that one thing that helped was we had one of us at the circuit breaker to turn on the system while the other one of us videotape the display. We could tell that there were some other code that came up before the "----" but it went by so fast you could see what it was. By freeze-framing we were able to see that just before the "----" error code came on, there was a 88F which quickly change do ICE which quickly changed to "----." Though the manual indicates that the "----" code usually means the water it TOO HOT, the reverse was the case. So if you're in the same position we were and have a blow dryer handy, give it a shot before you call for an expensive repair.