acritzer Posted October 15, 2007 Report Share Posted October 15, 2007 Hello everyone. I'm hoping the vast knowledge base of the www will be able to help me. I have an off brand tub, with Balboa control board and heater. It has recently stopped heating. Without knowing anything about tubs myself, I'm guessing it's the heating element. Everything else appears to be functioning as normal. Could anyone give me a few steps to follow to double check this diagnosis? Test the heater for electricity? (What do I need and how do I do it?) If it is indeed the element, how do I know what kind to buy to replace it? Is replacing the element something that might be accomplished by a novice? Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kengorman Posted October 16, 2007 Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 Hello everyone. I'm hoping the vast knowledge base of the www will be able to help me. I have an off brand tub, with Balboa control board and heater. It has recently stopped heating. Without knowing anything about tubs myself, I'm guessing it's the heating element. Everything else appears to be functioning as normal. Could anyone give me a few steps to follow to double check this diagnosis? Test the heater for electricity? (What do I need and how do I do it?) If it is indeed the element, how do I know what kind to buy to replace it? Is replacing the element something that might be accomplished by a novice? Thank you. Post back what kind of a balboa pack you have. It may be a flow problem (check filters) or check the pressure switch. If it's not the pressure switch, it might be the heater element. You can simply check for voltage across the heater elements terminals. Often with balboa packs, the heater is a flow-through heater and the heater elements terminals are on the top side of the long cylindrical tube. The two terminals are posts that get their voltage from the board in the control pack. Be very careful checking for voltage. Power must be applied to the tub when checking for voltage. If you're not comfortable with a multimeter or checking voltages, don't attempt this. If you have voltage, but the tub isn't heating, your heating element is most probably bad. A tub won't send voltage to the element if the pressure switch doesn't detect flow. The next step is to disconnect the heating element from the terminals. Make sure you've turned off power to the tub. Using a multimeter, check the resistance across the two terminals. A reading of 9-12 ohms is normal. A bad heating element will often show infinite resistance. Regards, Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acritzer Posted October 16, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 Hello everyone. I'm hoping the vast knowledge base of the www will be able to help me. I have an off brand tub, with Balboa control board and heater. It has recently stopped heating. Without knowing anything about tubs myself, I'm guessing it's the heating element. Everything else appears to be functioning as normal. Could anyone give me a few steps to follow to double check this diagnosis? Test the heater for electricity? (What do I need and how do I do it?) If it is indeed the element, how do I know what kind to buy to replace it? Is replacing the element something that might be accomplished by a novice? Thank you. Post back what kind of a balboa pack you have. It may be a flow problem (check filters) or check the pressure switch. If it's not the pressure switch, it might be the heater element. You can simply check for voltage across the heater elements terminals. Often with balboa packs, the heater is a flow-through heater and the heater elements terminals are on the top side of the long cylindrical tube. The two terminals are posts that get their voltage from the board in the control pack. Be very careful checking for voltage. Power must be applied to the tub when checking for voltage. If you're not comfortable with a multimeter or checking voltages, don't attempt this. If you have voltage, but the tub isn't heating, your heating element is most probably bad. A tub won't send voltage to the element if the pressure switch doesn't detect flow. The next step is to disconnect the heating element from the terminals. Make sure you've turned off power to the tub. Using a multimeter, check the resistance across the two terminals. A reading of 9-12 ohms is normal. A bad heating element will often show infinite resistance. Regards, Ken Okay, got some follow up questions for you. First off, thanks for the response! I've been checking anxiously. My pack is an M7 I think. My heater is exactly like you described, bolts on top of a tube etc. Where is this pressure switch? How do I check it? I did have a low amount of water in it a little while ago. Could this have flipped this pressure switch? I've since filled back up to a good level, but the heat has not come back on....does the switch need to be manually reset if it's been tripped? Can I get a meter from the local hardware store? What should I look for? Multimeter? Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kengorman Posted October 16, 2007 Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 Hello everyone. I'm hoping the vast knowledge base of the www will be able to help me. I have an off brand tub, with Balboa control board and heater. It has recently stopped heating. Without knowing anything about tubs myself, I'm guessing it's the heating element. Everything else appears to be functioning as normal. Could anyone give me a few steps to follow to double check this diagnosis? Test the heater for electricity? (What do I need and how do I do it?) If it is indeed the element, how do I know what kind to buy to replace it? Is replacing the element something that might be accomplished by a novice? Thank you. Post back what kind of a balboa pack you have. It may be a flow problem (check filters) or check the pressure switch. If it's not the pressure switch, it might be the heater element. You can simply check for voltage across the heater elements terminals. Often with balboa packs, the heater is a flow-through heater and the heater elements terminals are on the top side of the long cylindrical tube. The two terminals are posts that get their voltage from the board in the control pack. Be very careful checking for voltage. Power must be applied to the tub when checking for voltage. If you're not comfortable with a multimeter or checking voltages, don't attempt this. If you have voltage, but the tub isn't heating, your heating element is most probably bad. A tub won't send voltage to the element if the pressure switch doesn't detect flow. The next step is to disconnect the heating element from the terminals. Make sure you've turned off power to the tub. Using a multimeter, check the resistance across the two terminals. A reading of 9-12 ohms is normal. A bad heating element will often show infinite resistance. Regards, Ken Okay, got some follow up questions for you. First off, thanks for the response! I've been checking anxiously. My pack is an M7 I think. My heater is exactly like you described, bolts on top of a tube etc. Where is this pressure switch? How do I check it? I did have a low amount of water in it a little while ago. Could this have flipped this pressure switch? I've since filled back up to a good level, but the heat has not come back on....does the switch need to be manually reset if it's been tripped? Can I get a meter from the local hardware store? What should I look for? Multimeter? Thanks again. A few more questions - how old is this tub? The newer Balbo M-7 packs don't have top-mounted pressure switches as did the the previous models. They detect flow by comparing temperature readings over a short period of time. If the temp in the heater tube goes up drastically, it detects a fault. Are you getting any fault codes on the top-side panel, for example, HL, HH, LF, etc? You indicated you had flow problems earlier. Have they been resolved? Are your filters clean? The balboa packs will shut down the heater if they detect flow problems. Regards, Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acritzer Posted October 16, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 The tub is around 5 years old. I do not get any fault codes. The flow problem was simply that I hadn't check it for a while and the evaporation left the water level slightly below the filter level....not exactly sure how long it was like that. Maybe 1 or 2 filter cycles. It's been fixed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kengorman Posted October 16, 2007 Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 You asked: Where is this pressure switch? How do I check it? The pressure switch (if your spa is equipped with one) is located on the top side of the flow-through heater. It has a small wheel on top that can be turned. Turn the wheel counter-clockwise and see if that clears up the problem. I previously wrote: You can simply check for voltage across the heater elements terminals. Often with balboa packs, the heater is a flow-through heater and the heater elements terminals are on the top side of the long cylindrical tube. The two terminals are posts that get their voltage from the board in the control pack. If you don't have voltage across the heater element, it could signify a bad pressure switch. If, however, you have voltage across the heater element's terminals, but you still don't have heat, it would indicate a bad heater element. You asked: Can I get a meter from the local hardware store? What should I look for? Multimeter? Yes - most hardware stores (and HD/Lowes/Radio Shack) sell multi-meters, however, I would strongly caution that if you're not familiar with electricity to use extreme caution or have someone else look at it. The voltage across the heater terminals can be lethal. If you decide to move forward, let us know what the voltage reading was and we'll continue from there. Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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