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Coast Spa tub not working

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Spot9:
I went out and the display was blank. The breaker was bad and the test button was stuck in. I replaced the breaker and the tub still won't turn on. There is power going to the tub and the fuses seem okay. When I test the lines going from the board to the heater there is no power. There is power going to the pumps ( I think). It's a pretty old tub (2000) with a TPSA-1 Gecko Spa Pack. Any ideas on what I should be checking? Thanks!!

bud16415:
So your GFCI breaker the one near the tub was faulty and you shut off the power at the main panel in the house and replaced the GFCI breaker. When you turned the power back on and reset the GFCI, it did not trip again? Did you try the test button o the new one?

You are getting 240V to the tub now where the power connections are made?

You mentioned fuses seemed ok. They will look the same if they are blown or not. I would start by checking the fuses. It sounds like you have lost one leg of your 240V and fuses would be the likely thing to look at first.   

Spot9:
Thank for the reply. I will retest all the fuses. Last time I had a fuse blow, I still had power to the display at least with an error code.

Spot9:
Okay, so I took the heater out and tested the resistence and it checked out okay. I cleaned all my contacts. I first reset the breaker with nothing attached and it didn't trip. I plugged the pumps and everything back in. Reset the breaker and it didn't trip. I filled the tub and reset the breaker and it was running okay, I even tired both pumps on low and high. So I went out for the evening and cam home for a nice soak with a cold beer and the tub was off. The breaker tripped and now it won't reset again???

Weird electrical problem?

bud16415:

--- Quote from: Spot9 on June 15, 2019, 10:06:36 am ---Okay, so I took the heater out and tested the resistence and it checked out okay. I cleaned all my contacts. I first reset the breaker with nothing attached and it didn't trip. I plugged the pumps and everything back in. Reset the breaker and it didn't trip. I filled the tub and reset the breaker and it was running okay, I even tired both pumps on low and high. So I went out for the evening and cam home for a nice soak with a cold beer and the tub was off. The breaker tripped and now it won't reset again???

Weird electrical problem?

--- End quote ---

This is just a guess. When a GFCI protects anything it shuts down as soon as it sees 5ma of fault. If you didn’t have it in you would see a meltdown of something like a heater as that 5ma would quickly grow and grow and meltdown until the 50a main breaker was reached.

What goes in a heater is I’m told is a little bit of water weeps between where the heater is sealed from the water. This slight short is enough to trip the GFCI before any damage can happen to you or the tub from the 240v.

Taking the heater out and drying it off and measuring resistance will show that the heating coil is still good because it was never overloaded enough to fail. So the heater will test good still as it didn’t burnout just that it shorted the 5ma.

You would have to look for a slight current path between the metal and the two hot connections or look for any signs of weeping or such that could be causing a short path.

If you unhook the power to the heater and the GFCI resets and the tub works or you get a open heater message it would lead me back to the heater. Make sure you tape those wires off before testing that.

Again just some Guessing on my part and I’m just a tub owner not a service person.   

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