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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I have to give credit where credit is due. I have had very helpful support from the team at Enviroswim since complaining about problems with my Architect designed Custom pool here in Adelaide. Excessive pump running time, and poor water clarity were the issue. Staff rang me from Queensland & spent an hour with me going through my service and maintenance regime with me trying to analyse what the problem may be. Of particular note was the enthusiasm and belief that the product is the best available and it must be a problem particular to my situation and how I run the system.
Is Excessive temperature a problem for Enviroswim?
I had thought it may be the excessive heat we get here in Adelaide South Australia.... They informed me the product has been used in Death valley & the Middle East where the 40 to 45 degree heat waves we get here are considered a cool change.
Why Is 12 hours a day pump run time required to keep the pool clean?
I was informed that 6 hours a day should be all that is required to keep my 60kl pool water sparklingly clear. My excessive run-time problem is caused by not cleaning my filter often enough. This causes pressure back up & less water flow. 12 hours of pump running time is equal to 6 if the flow rate is reduced by half. Energy efficient pumps that vary flow rate will also need longer run times if they reduce the flow too much. I was cleaning my filter once a fortnight as it is a paper filter and takes me half an hour to do a good job... unfortunately in hot weather I will need to up this to a weekly clean. If the water starts to get murky the filter will clog up quickly as it isn't designed to get rid of fine particles such as algae. Once it clogs the run time isn't sufficient & then it clogs even more. This self-feeding cycle increases the problem very quickly until there is need for chlorine to clean things up. I also noticed that when the filter is clogged the oxidising potential of my plates decreases & will fail with the readout numbers fluctuating constantly, cycling between zero to 15. When the filter is cleaned the additional water flow fixes this & the numbers on the digital readout remain stable at 15 as they should.
Is a rendered pool finish such as Quartzon Qpebble or Qquartz suitable for use with Enviroswim?
It seems that part of my problem is due to my choice of pool finish. Plastered pool finishes require high (alkaline) PH as if they are too acidic the finish will etch and degrade dissolving into solution into the pool water. Enviroswim works best at lower (more acid) PH. As the ph reduces the efficacy of the Enviroswim increases. I need to run my pool at the high end of the PH range in order to not invalidate my pool render warranty. This then means I need to run my Enviroswim system harder and longer to get the same efficiency. This also means it is easier for me to get into the filter run-time/ water quality problem cycle that has plagued me over the past few years.
Solution for my Enviroswim problem is better water testing
In summing up it seems that my problems are caused by a series of interrelating problems each exacerbating the other. A paper cartridge filter coupled with high temperatures and a plastered pool finish are the biggest causes. Poor testing of my water quality is also an issue. It seems that the paper strips I have been using just aren't accurate enough and I have received advice from Enviroswim that I need to purchase a 5 in one (titrating type) testing kit as this will give me a much more accurate readout, enabling me to adjust my ph to a tighter range.
Last week I had a bit of a disaster with my Enviroswim pool. I dropped a scaffolding plank on one of the swim-jet valves and managed to break the pvc pipe off inside the concrete. I had to drain the pool down below the valve inlet to order to repair the pipe and in doing so had to drain off around 7,000 litres of water. Result was I killed, or nearly killed most of the plants that the water ran onto. My warning is DON"T DRAIN YOUR POOL WATER ONTO THE GARDEN!!!!
The picture below shows a bed of Canna lillies that were in perfect health before Enviroswim water was run onto them. Signs of severe leaf burn and yellowing on these and the adjacent nastursiums and weeds took 4 days to appear. The crocus and daffodil bulbs however seem unaffected.
Why does Enviroswim water Kill Plants?
As it is leading into the cool weather I have only been running my pool on a maintenance cycle of one burst of around 5 hours of pump filtration/sanitisation a week. I hadn't run the pump cycle for the weekend yet which meant that with only 5 hours of pump time for a period of 2 weeks the pool water was still toxic to plants. I was very surprised, for imagined that the levels of any nasty compounds in the water that may affect plants would be minimal. The water runs at just over ph neutral and the selling hype for Enviroswim's ioniser was (when I bought it) that it effectively produced as close to a "freshwater" pool that you can safely run & that no chlorine was produced (no nasty carcinogenic chloro-amines). The copper and silver ions in the water kill both the algae and bacteria (respectively) in the pool water but the pump needs to be run in order to keep these levels up as the electrolysis occurs in a cylinder connected into (& in series with) the filtration line.
How does Enviroswim water kill plants?
The copper level testing as done both by my pool shop & by my myself with my Enviroswim supplied testing kit is pretty rubbish. It is difficult to determine exact levels. I have been gauging levels purely on Enviroswim's recommendation of pool pump running time and then increasing it in summer to combat the ever present problem of algal bloom. I have found I need around 8 to 10 hours a day in summer & as mentioned above as the temperature decreases though Autumn into Winter I reduce this to a single cycle of 5 hours a week which maintains pool water clarity ensuring that I don't have a huge maintenance job in Spring. The fact that I need to run the pool that much in Summer to kill plant matter (algae) had made me assume that most of the nasties in the pool water were actually killed in the ionising tube and not residual in the pool itself. The manual states that copper levels in the pool can get too high if you run the pool too long and then the pool tile grout will take on a greenish colour. This has happened in my pool but didn't concern me much until now. It was a purely aesthetic problem...or so I had thought.The Enviroswim manual also states that you just need to leave the ioniser off for a few days until levels fall back down. This green plaque on my grout lead me to believe that some kind of chemical reaction must over time take these ions out of the system and therefore render the water safe to plant matter.
Is Enviroswim water "Freshwater"?
I rang the Enviroswim people several times last year trying to find out how the system actually works and asked what is the gas that is produced in the oxidation/ionisation chamber? Enviroswim claimed no chlorine is produced by their product... which is what makes it better than a Saltwater pool where small amounts of chlorine are produced. No Chloroamines (organic matter bonding with chlorine is supposedly Carcinogenic) means a safer pool for the kids. Gas is produced by a series of oxidising plates in the ionising tube just before the Copper & silver electrodes... WHAT IS THIS GAS? We can only get out of the system what is put in as it is essentially a closed system. It shouldn't be too hard to work out. We start with water (Hydrogen & Oxygen) & add a small amount of pool salt (Sodioum Chloride) that is used to raise the conductivity level of the water for start up when the pool is first commissioned so that enough electrolytes are present to pass a current between the two copper Silver electrodes and create their "magic". We have buffer (Sodium Bicarbonate) and hydrochloric acid to stabilise the ph. We also have Calcium Chloride which is added when hardness levels fall. We have the electrodes themselves which slowly dissolve into copper and silver ions when current is passed between them. So what is the mysterious gas produced by the "oxidising plates"? we have a lot of chlorine related compounds in the pool and although there is supposedly no chlorine in the system my pool shop keeps registering small amounts of chlorine when it tests my water. I do have to add Chlorine about once a year to avoid algal bloom. Will this register 2 months later? A heat-wave of 5 consecutive days over 40 degrees means that not even 10 to 14 hours of pump run time a day is enough to stop the pool water clouding. A single dose of chlorine stabilises the system by improving water clarity & cleaning off the brown scum that starts to build up on the bottom of the pool.
Would I buy Enviroswim again?
Ok... it sounds like I am "bagging" this product. I am an Adelaide Architect and as a professional I did a lot of research before buying the product. I actually would buy the product again as it does reduce the amount of chlorine I need to use and that is a good thing for Chloroamine production reduction and for corrosion protection of my house. I intend to fully enclose the pool one day & so corrosion reduction (chlorine corrodes galvanised steel in no time) is high on my list of priorities. Once enclosed I will have less organic matter such as leaves blowing into the pool & I will also have a reduction in nitrate related products entering the pool (which stimulate algal growth) from rainwater and lightning. What I am unhappy with is just the marketing of the product & lack of specific information such as how long the pool pump actually needs to be run in Summer & how Chlorine use is still unavoidable in cities with extreme climates such as Adelaide. The "no Chlorine is produced by our product" statement by Enviroswim's staff is also something I am still left wondering about as my Chemistry isn't that good to prove or disprove. I will also however not regard the water in my pool as "Freshwater" (as Enviroswim state it is) as my plants certainly seem to disagree with this!!!
Bugger!!! went to turn on my Davey Silensor pool pump & it just hummed. At just 5 years old I didn't want it to fail as this is an expensive item. The power was still connected but the pump didn't do a thing.
I pulled the power plug out & undid the one screw that held the cover on the pump & looked at the back. There was a slot in the middle of the exposed guts of the thing that had an arrow showing the rotation direction. I put a screwdriver in & turned. It moved without a lot of friction, so I figured that not too much could be wrong. A bit of Googling & the capacitor seemed to be the main problem with these pumps. I figured he humming sound was an indicator this might be it as I have an old flourescent light that makes the same noise and that (I am told) is the capacitor. In my pump the capacitor is large an inch and a half in diameter & about 3 inches long. It resides in the large hump shape at the top of the pump. My time as a Telecom Tech. 30 years ago had taught me Capacitors are
full of carcinogenic goo, so if it is leaky do not touch the muck oozing
out. I gently pulled it out & pulled off the connecting tabs (labelling them first). It actually looked perfect. Not a mark. I strained my eyes.
Perhaps an almost imperceptible bulge in the middle??? After a bit of ringing around I got a replacement one for $25. The bloke in the store told me to keep my receipt & he would give me my money back if it didnt do the job. Sweet!! I put it back in & everything worked fine. Saved me heaps & was pretty easy to do.
Some pictures of my Davey Pool pump showing replacement capacitor
Davey Silensor Pool pump with cover off and capacitor removed. Wires ready to connect new capacitor.
Davey pool pump capacitor disconnected from pump with pump cover and required tools adjacent.
