tonyman

OK, so I'll answer my own question. I took apart the "Smart Heater" case, on a hunch, and to see if I could figure out where it was leaking. Sure enough, once I cracked the two halves of the heater housing, I was confronted with about 1/2 a cup of crunchy lime scale. It was no longer coating the heater element, but from the shape of the flakes, it clearly had formed there and fallen off. I talked to the friend that I'd bought the tub from, and no suprise; when he'd bought the house, its well water was immensely hard, and every plumbing piece in the house (faucets, shower heads, washer, dishwasher, etc) was pretty much destroyed and had to be replaced. He'd installed a water softener, and had run the tub for a month or two after filling it a couple of times with softened water. It seems fairly clear that the new water chemistry cracked all that goo off of the heater element, and that stuff worked its way downstream and plugged up the outlet of the heater, and some of the volcano jets. I cleand up the heater, reassembled it, and refilled the spa. The heater is still dripping, but after a bit of runtime with some lime-busting chems in the water, the remaining cruncies blew out of the jets. The "Flow" errors (and the actual flow problems) are now gone, and the water looks great. My wife and I had a nice soak today, and are loving it. Next step, after replacing the heater, is figuring out what's up with the ozonator!

Hi all. I just purchased a used 2002 Sundance Optima. I wired it up, filled it, fixed a cracked wet-side on the high speed pump, filled it again, and things were looking fairly good... until I turned "Pump 1", the two-speed pump, to its high-speed mode. I got a "Flow" error. I was outside the tub and had a clear view of the (new) flow switch; this is not a switch or circuit board problem, the flow switch's vane was clearly drifting to the left ("upstream"). The circulator pump, when running, closes the switch firmly. The high speed jet pump does as well. However, the two-speed pump, when on its low setting, seems to start to null out the flow somewhat, and on high speed, it seems to be generating significant backpressure... enough to make the heater case drip water at its gasket. The Optima's array of knobs & jet adjustments is rather bewildering, but I have done my best to make sure everything is opened up when trying this stuff out. There seems to be plenty of water coming out of everything, but I don't have a good reference to know what's normal. I'm getting pretty good at draining and refilling the tub, but I'd kind of like to make the next time count. I'm thinking of taking the 2-speed pump apart to see if its impeller has grenaded, and probably stuffing my fiber optic camera into the plumbing to see if there is anything I can see that is overtly blocking it... But what should I really be looking at? Thanks in advance for any help!