No Heat, Flashing Green Ready Light On 2006 Hot Springs Vista

[gnfishin]

I bought the spa new in June of 2006. It is moderately used by my wife and myself. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped heating. When I removed the cover from the IQ2020 control box, there was no visible problem. The Green light was on and the red heater light was on. On the front panel, the power light was on and the ready light was off. The jets, lights, ozone bubbles all seemed to be working fine. Just no heat. I pulled the filter off the stand pipe (I removed the silver ion cartridge, as well) feeding the circulation pump, but, nothing changed. I turned off both the 30 amp and the 20 amp breakers. That caused a small leak that, from previous experience I knew was an ozone check valve that was breaking. I replaced the valve and that stopped the leak. (I realize this valve issue is unrelated to the heater). Following the advice of another thread in this forum, I disconnected the heater power leads and took some measurements. The heater showed thirteen ohms, not all the votages were correct at the heater control board so I pulled the board and looked at the back of it. It was completely charred under one of the relays (it had melted all of the solder off at one connection point). Bingo! I thought I had it solved.

I purchased a new board from my local Hot Springs dealer ($35 more than I could have payed online, but, I had visions of using the spa the next morning). I carefully installed the new board. I flipped the breakers back on. The front power light is on, the ready light is off. The green lim light on the control board comes on and a few seconds later, I hear a click and the red heater light on the board comes on. A few more seconds and I hear another click, the red heater light goes off and the green ready light on the front of the spa starts flashing. I tried the same thing, turning only the 30 amp breaker on, and the red heater light does not come on (20 amp breaker still off), however, in a few seconds I hear one click and the green ready light on the front starts flashing.

It seems as though I solved one problem (replacing the bad heater control board) only to have a new problem start. In the meantime, still no heat. The circulation pump seems to be working, before and after the front ready light starts flashing. I can feel it running when I touch it, I have ozone bubbles coming from the drain and there is water coming into the filter compartment from the 1/4" line coming from the circulation pump. I do not know if it matters, but, a week passed before I bought and replaced the control board (did that yesterday). Does anyone have any ideas about what is causing this new issue? Thank you for any help you may offer.

Allan

[Dan.The.Spa.Man]

As long as you have flow from the circ pump, my guess would be that one of the thermistors is bad. Uncommon for one to go at the same time as the heater board. You can test them for resistance with a meter and they should read the same.

[gnfishin]

Thanks for the tip, Dan. I tested both of them and they read identical. At that point I believed I had tested and eliminated everything, other than the circulation pump. I decided to try one last thing. I put a hose down the stand pipe again, only, this time, I held it there, water on full blast, for a few minutes, then, without removing it, I had my wife flip the 30 amp breaker on, firing up the pump. I continued to hold the hose tightly against the inlet with the pump running for several minutes. When the green ready light did not start flashing, I had her flip the 20 amp breaker to power up the heater. Everything worked fine.

There must have been air in there, somewhere, preventing the circulation pump from working properly. I do not know how it got there between the time I changed the heater control board and the time I tried to restart the spa (I did not drain it). The trick seemed to be forcing a lot of water through the pump while it was running. This morning, after using the spa, of course, I shut it all down, waited a few minutes and fired it back up, just to see if there would be a problem. No problems. Everything seems fine. All in all, this forum saved me well over a hundred bucks for the service call I would have had to schedule with the dealer, had I not gleaned enough info to fix the thin myself.

Allan