Last week I turned on my pool for its daily 6 hour cycle and although the pump was working fine the enviroswim had no power.
Troubleshooting
The pool pump is connected through the enviroswim box but presumably is
on another separately fused circuit as no Enviroswim indication lights showed at all. I haven't had this happen before, but this was probably a fuse. I checked my manual and it stated the fuse will blow if you add too much undiluted chemicals to the skimmer box. I presume that this means more solutes therefore greater conductivity and therefore more power is drawn. I have been careful not to place undiluted chemicals in my skimmer box so this wasn't the case. I removed the fuse which is easily visible and labeled on the front of the Enviroswim control box. It has a label stating "slow blow" fuse. Insert a screwdriver into the slot on the fuse-holder and push in and turn. It will pop out. Yep, there was a black and silver carbonised blob in the middle of the glass fuse where the fuse-wire had been.
Silensor Pool pump.... Why the Enviroswim fuse blew
I have a Davey Silensor pool pump servicing my pool. This pump has low power consumption and is very quiet. It is also relatively easy to service. I am generally quite happy with this Australian design award winning pump, but it has one shortcoming. The capacitor blows around every 4 years. I have 2 pumps. One for the pool and one for the spa. In 9 years I have now replaced the capacitor twice on each pump. This is an easy task and only takes around 5 minutes. Unfortunately the capacitors are not easy to source and as they are around $15 each I generally don't have a spare lying around.
How to get your faulty Davey Silensor to start
If your Davey Silensor just hums and will not start I have found a way to get a few emergency starts out of it. The humming is due to a faulty capacitor that can be accessed via the end of the pool pump body by unscsrewing a single bolt. I have documented this in a previous post.
Before the capacitor gives up completely it can be overridden by turning the power switch on and off very quickly... perhaps 5 or 6 times in 3 or 4 seconds. The capacitor will hum as each power cycle is turned on and off and then the pump will catch and start up. I had been doing this for the past month as I hadn't a chance to get to the local electronics store to get a replacement capacitor. The frequent cycling on and off must have caused my fuse to blow.
Fixing the Blown fuse
Finding a replacement fuse wasn't that easy. The fuse looked like any other 5 amp 3ag (30mm long glass cartridge fuse) that you can find in the autoshop... but the Enviroswim box was marked "slow blow" above the fuse holder. A slow blow fuse has a time-delay before it blows. This way it can have a small surge of higher current and still not blow. These are however not easy items to find. The identification markings on the on my Enviroswim fuse were confusing. The label on the Enviroswim control box stated "slow blow", yet the fuse itself was marked with an "F" (needed my glasses and a torch to see this) identifier as the first alphanumeric of the code on the base of the fuse. This usually would indicate it was a standard "fast blow", not slow blow fuse.
After 2 hours of driving around and trying Bunnings, Supercheap auto and Jaycar. I gave up and bought a pack of 4 standard 5amp 3ag fuses from Supercheap Auto for under $4 and decided to try one. As it is fast blow I figure the worst that can happen is that the fuse may blow more frequently. So far a week in and everything is fine.... Oh, and I replaced my faulty capacitor as well and it now switches on first time every time.... Bliss!!
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