r/swimspa

So my wife years ago had a new swim spa installed. The system is more than 20 years old. I have maintained it fairly well over the years, but the system finally burned up here recently. It is an Old Megatrol Spa Pack and Wayward 6hp dual speed 230v 16.4a pumps for the jets.

The company that made the Megatrol controllers is now owned by ACC. I was going to replace like for like with the most heavy duty stuff I could find. So I was looking at the ACC SMTD-3000, the Balboa BP7 or the Waterway NEO 2100. Whichever one paired with these brand new 5hp pumps (Waterway Plastics 3722021-13).

The issue I am seeing is that the controllers all say that the max amperage for each pump is 12 amps max on any of the spa packs. While the pumps draw 16.4 on high speed. One google search says absolutely not to hook these pumps up to the controller because it's too much amperage and will melt the wires and components in the circuit (which it appears is what happened).

Another search however says that these spa packs are specifically designed to run with these heavy duty high power pumps and recommends 2 of the three I have listed as options.

So I am very confused. The system seemed to run fine for decades with no issues with the old setup. It only just recently burned up the wiring I assume because of a faulty heater or bad bearings in the old pumps, plus age of the system or all of it combined.

Does the spa controller keep the pumps from running at 16.4 amps and limits them to 12? What am I missing here?

Hello,

we got a simspa a month ago and ran into a few problems.

Riptide Easy Life 6.0 Duo Pro is what we got so we have a whirlpool next to the bigger swimming area.

Currently our filtration times are set as following (the technician configured it like that):

• whirlpool filtering 16 h/day
• swim zone filtering 20 h/day

it feels like these settings are a bit much?

The whirlpool is heated to 37 **°**C (89,6 **°**F).
The swim zone is set to be heated to 22 **°**C (71,6 **°**F)

It is usually covered by a thermal cover if not used. We checked the temperatures and noticed that the temperature of the swim zone is 29 **°**C (84,2 **°**F) which is way too high (at least for us lol.)

We believe that the filtration time settings are the cause of the heat since the pumps are running almost 24/7. Not quiet sure though. Should we reduce the filtration times?

Also we can't quiet get optimal water quality it seems.

Disinfection is done with ozone. And as far as we are know, is alkalinity and pH the only values we have to take care of (sometimes a bit chlorine but only once/week).

In order to get a stable pH value, alkalinity has to be between 80 and 140 thing is, if i get a pH value too high i have to put in pH minus which also decreases alkalinity.

So it basically is a vicious circle.

We now try to get in the optimal alkalinity value range but yeah it's not really coming to a satisfying level. The pH value is always too high which only can be reduced by ph minus but yeah.. you get the point.

The whirlpool also does not really disinfect itself properly at least not as of now but that's probably because the values are shit. Anything different we could do/try?

Thanks for the help! Much appreciated.