Jersey Hot Tub Repair

I was able to cross reference through a catalog to a different part number that it says is compatible: http://www.hotspringpartshotspringfilters.com/47-555-2150-element-watkins-15kw-120v?language=en&currency=USD&gclid=CjwKCAiAoNTUBRBUEiwAWje2lqkIHOMzpLlMA5wCNCONmf3PWEX_Nq17B4oeAbW0yZVAcCNZNaqveRoCUgwQAvD_BwE Sorry about the long URL, that's the way it came up. Make sure you order the mounting gasket, that's sold separately. Dave

Sounds like you're on the right track. If the breaker trips with the pump connected, and doesn't trip with the pump disconnected, sounds like you found the culprit. If it's the original circ pump, you've gotten more than your money's worth out of it. Those little pumps rarely last longer than 6-7 years. Dave

No photo attached,, but I'm guessing you're talking about a trumpet heater? With 3/4" tubing for water? If that's the case, you can replace with a standard Watkins no-fault heater, you're just going to have to do some plumbing re-alignment. Dave

Is this a new breaker that you installed yourself? Does it have a GFCI? If so, is the Neutral out on the GFCI connected to the neutral bar in your subpanel, or is it connected to the white wire going to the hot tub? Here's a wiring diagram showing how the GFCI is supposed to be wired: https://www.poolandhottubdepot.com/installing-a-gfci-hot-tub/ A common issue for do-it-yourselfer's (and a few electricians too) is to wire the Neutral LOAD to the neutral bar, which will cause your GFCI to trip. If the GFCI is wired properly, the breaker holds without the XM pack connected, and trips when the XM pack is connected but nothing is connected to the XM pack, than the XM pack is the issue. Dave

It sounds like your jets are getting clogged by salts, which is usually a symptom of too much chlorine or bromine. The best long term solution is to stop using those chemicals for disinfection. Artesian doesn't make the jets. About 95% of hot tubs use jets that are, for the most part, made by either CMP, Waterway or Balboa. The only proprietary jets I've seen are in Jacuzzi, Sundance and a couple of cheap Made in China internet hot tubs. Jets for the most part can be removed, although as they get stuck in place, it becomes more and more frustrating to get them out. I've used screwdrivers, needle nose pliers, reverse pliers, hooks and vice grips to get the suckers out. Be careful you don't crack the housing they are installed into, or you'[re going to have to replace the entire assembly. If they aren't coming out easily, they're probably going to break when you pull them out. The good news is that for the most part, jets are relatively inexpensive. Dave

If one jet isn't working, it's usually a kink in the water line or the jet itself is clogged. If the entire seat isn't working, look to the diverter valve as the issue. If the pump tries to turn on but then give sup for 30 seconds, the motor itself is probably the problem. Dave

110V will heat aprox 1 degree per hour. 240V will heat 4-5 degrees per hour. Even at 110V, you're supposed to use a dedicated circuit for the tub, so you should put a new outlet on its own 20Amp breaker in. At 110V, the heater will draw 9-10 amps. The pump will probably draw 3-4 amp at low speed. Allow another 2-3 amps for lights, wifi and overhead you're pushing 15-16 amps. You want to draw no more than 80% of the supplied amperage. Aside from the national electrical code which says a hot tub is supposed to be the only thing on the circuit, you may run into capacity issues if you use an existing circuit. It would suck to have your hot tub short out whenever a racoon walks past the motion detector light in your driveway, and it'll take a long time to discover what the problem is. Dave

When the heater shuts off and will not restart without a reboot, I usually look to the hi limit sensor as being the problem. It could be that when your temp is 106, the hi limit thinks it's 118. Given the cheap cost of a hi limit sensor, I'd buy one and put it in. Dave

It doesn't make a difference. The spa monitors both sensors and expects them to have identical values. I usually put the left circuit board connection to the left sensor and right to right. Dave

My guess is that the terminal attachment strip was the root of the problem. Wires expand and contract from the heat and the connection gets more and more tenuous. After 25 years, the connection got loose enough that you got arcing. I must see at least one old circuit board a month that has burns at terminal connection points. Just make sure your new connections are clean. Sand that wire until it's bright and shiny, and make sure it's in the terminal strip really good. Dave

That's the right way to do it. Of course, you never hang anything electric DIRECTLY over the spa where it could fall in and electrocute you. Dave

It's not a question of can you, it's a question of should you. Hot Springs spent a lot of time, effort and money designing an electric tub of water and having it certified through UL Laboratories as being safe for you to climb into. You're talking about changing the design. I wouldn't work on, let alone climb into, a hot tub knowing the owner had rewired it themselves. In the trades, every time you read about someone getting electrocuted, you often find the phrase "modified by the homeowner." If you need 110V by the tub, a separate outlet on its own circuit, professionally installed, grounded and GFCI protected, would be the way to do it. Dave

The pump should not be painful to touch. If you can't put your hand on it and hold your hand there, then the motor is overheating. There is an internal circuit that shuts it down if it gets over a certain temperature. The last time I ran into one of those, the motor case was 160 degrees F, while the other pump in that spa that wasn't malfunctioning got to about 120. How old is the motor? What kind of hot tub is it? Dave

Turning on every 2 minutes for 3 seconds is a symptom of an overheat condition, which is usually related to bad water flow. Are you getting any error messages on the control panel? It could be a pump issue, before you go nuts with ripping the tub apart, turn off the spa, remove the filters, turn the spa back on again and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you need new filters. Dave

Do you have good power coming into the tub? Do the jets work? Does the circulation pump come on? Is there a flow switch and is it activating? Are you getting any messages on the display, or are your LED's red or green, blinking or solid? Dave

One thing I always check in a no-heat situation is if the circulation pump is turning on, and if the flow switch is being activated. Can you tell? Dave

Sounds like bad water flow - either dirty filters or an obstruction in the lines. On low speed, it sounds like you're not getting enough force to activate the flow switch. On high speed, the extra power is activating it. Easiest test - remove the filters and see if the heater comes on at low speed. If it does, time for cleaning or new new filters. Just remember, just because they look clean doesn't mean they're not clogged with minerals or lotion. Dave

Before you start swapping parts - do you hear the relays activate when you press the hot and cold buttons?

In Economy mode, the tub only heats during filtering cycles. Here's the manual, if you haven't got it: https://www.jacuzzi.com/media/3286/j400-series_english.pdf. Heatings mode are explained on page 36. Do you see the economy icon on the screen? When you press the MODE button, whatever pops up is the mode you are in. So if you press MODE and see "STANDARD," then you are in Standard mode. It's not prompting you to hit the button to go into standard mode. Dave

What parts do you need? Dave

One trick with Hotsprings spas is to disconnect the Auxilliary Control panel from the spa pack. Sometimes the Aux panel goes nuts and stops the rest of the spa from operating correctly. Dave

The retrokit would also give you a new heater and sensors. I'm wondering, what wires did you replace? Do you mean from the breaker to the tub? What size were you originally using? I've never heard of thinner wiring causing a breaker to pop, but I have seen wires get hot. As far as too-thin wiring causing voltage fluctuations, I've never heard of that either. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen, and if that's what you measured, it is what it is. Was the voltage fluctuations at the 120 and 240 level, or at the low voltage on the other side of the transformer? Just as a tidbit of info, a Balboa heating element should raise the temperature about 4-5 degrees per hour. Depends on the age of the element, the wattage, and how heavily coated it is with minerals. I've seen elements completely encased in a calcium shell that barely heated at all. Dave

If you replace it, just make sure you clean the wires really good. You may want to cut off the burnt ends to make sure it's pure wire and you don't have any bits of burned plastic in there. Make sure there aren't any strands of the wire left outside of the terminal, squeeze the entire wire into it. There's really no way to tighten them, either the wires are in the terminals or they're not. You said the spa is a '95 model. That means it's almost 25 years old. That's not a bad life for a printed circuit board. I see plenty of newer hot tubs with burned up circuit boards after only 7 or 8 years. It may have been a faulty solder connection in the back of the board that you won't see until you remove it. You mentioned a few GFCI trips. That's a little unusual. Does the TEST button on the GFCI work as expected? Is the breaker unusually warm to the touch? Is the GFCI neutral connected to the spa or the neutral bar in the box? How about the GFCI neutral pigtail? Dave

The fact that you got an SN error, added to the fact that your sensors are 20 years old, would certainly point to a need for new sensors. The OH error usually points to a water flow problem. If the tub was recently drained and refilled before the problem occurred, it could be an airlock restricting water flow. It could also be dirty filters (take them out and see if that helps). It could be a mechanical problem with the pump like a broken impeller or something stuck in the wet end. If the OH was due to a flow problem, when you turn the spa on, you'd hear water boiling in the heater can and it would be too hot to touch. If the heater can is not hot when you get the OH error, than it's either a sensor or circuit board problem. I think ordering sensors is the best means to troubleshoot the problem. Your topside is probably either incompatible or not working properly. If you start up a Balboa system without a topside, it will usually default to Standard Mode, 80 degrees. If you need to get a new spaside, obviously make sure it's compatible with your new circuit board. For the future, it's often less expensive to replace the entire pack with a Retrokit than to replace a circuit board. Dave

Blinking red light is a hi limit sensor trip. It's caused when the temperature in the heater is above 118 degrees. When the problem occurs, put your hand (carefully) on the heater tubes. is it overheated? If so, the issue is probably caused by bad flow. If it's not hot, then the sensor itself is probably bad. If it's bad flow you're dealing with, make sure you remove the filter that's connected to the circulation pump. Leave it off and let the thing run until it fails, or until you're sure you found the problem. Sometimes filters are clogged with minerals from water and look clean. Sometimes filters are clogged with shampoo, conditioner and sunscreen and look clean but have a scummy film on them. The bubbles from the lower drain are coming from the ozonator plumbing. While they are an indicator of how much flow is in the lines, it's very conceivable the air lines could be clogged, but that wouldn't prevent the circ pump from doing it's job. In other words, if you have bubbles, it's a sign the circ pump's working. But if you don't have bubbles, it's not necessarily a sign that there's a problem with the circ pump. Put your hand on the circ pump and feel if it's turned on. Depending upon the age of the 3/4" tubing, you may be able to see water moving in the circulation hoses. When you tried to bleed the circ pump by removing the intake hose, you may not have gotten the bubble out, depending upon what angle the circ pump is mounted at. At minimum, you should also try bleeding the discharge side of the pump. The air will migrate to the highest point which may not have been at the intake. You said that when you removed the venturi tubing from the check valve water came out of it. That means that either the check valve was put in backwards or it failed. The purpose of the check vale is to NOT have water come out of it when the circ pump is not turned on. If the valve was put in backwards when your tech fixed the broken elbow, that might explain the less amount of bubbles. But that should not affect the water flow from the circ pump. Your comments about having to run the spa without the heater for 30 minutes after refilling suggest that you're getting an airlock. Are you putting your hose into the circulation pump filter? That will push air out of the lines. Filling by throwing your hose into the footwell of the tub will push air from that foot drain into the circ pump. I have seen Laing pumps fail intermittently, but that's really a long shot. As to your jet pump, I would never replace the impeller and seal on an 18 year old Hotsprings pump. The pump is behind the spa pack, right? That sounds like a lot of labor. True, he saved you the cost of a new pump, but you've still got an 18 year old wet end and an 18 year old motor that is going to need just as much labor to remove and replace if they go. If the motor's 18 years old, it's at its end of life. That's my two cents anyway. Dave