Opening the Pool with a Problem

On May 19th under a beautiful, clear blue sky, we decided to get ready to start up the pool.

As expected, the water was a pretty, emerald green, that perfectly matched the surrounding lush, new vegetation.

As usual the dark green quickly, over the next day or so, lightened up and the water turned clear again with the help of a couple jugs of chlorine.

The water tested as we thought it would - High chlorine and high ph.

Ms. Duck waits patiently 

The pool heater is essential in this part of the process since we have to get the water up over 60 degrees F so the automatic chlorinator can kick in and continue to sanitize the water. 

The pilot lit electronically and the burners "whoomfed" to life -  THEN DIED!

Oh oh. What could be wrong here. The heater is not new but this is only the start of its sixth season. You can see the blog entry when we installed it.  CLICK HERE.

Son Tim and I checked the internet and did everything the well-meaning YouTubers suggested,

Cleaned the pilot igniter and pilot tube to no avail.

Checked the circuit board in the main controller - Hmm the back side looks fine, not burnt marks or anything.

The front of the circuit board also looked okay until Tim spotted a damaged capacitor. Then we noticed the leaky looking gas discharge tube beside it.

This obviously looked like a problem, but what caused it?

Upon closer inspection we could see a gas discharge tube adjacent looked may be corroded.

We identified the culprits and ordered replacements ($3 CAD) from DigiKey Electronics. The parts were sent FedEx ($8 CAD) and arrived the next day.

Of course we were worried that this might not cure the problem... A new control board is $500 and a new heater $3000. Not what we want to hear.

Here's the culprits we found, in a zip bag after I soldered in the new capacitor and gas discharge tube. You can imagine how thrilled we were when the burner went "whoompf" again and we had heat. A grand total of $11 CAD! We'll probably never know what caused the failure. Maybe a nearby lightening strike? a power surge? a solar storm? Who knows?

We're just glad it's working again so quickly. Starting to look more like summer! 

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