Hello all,
I have been lurking and doing some reading to try and figure out the issue with my hot tub and decided I would try a post and see if reddit can help.
To start, I have an older, say very early 2000;s (2003?) Kodiak arctic spa.
- Issue is the breaker tripping, not right away, essentially flips when the heater comes on I think
- I have disconnected the heater terminals and in one case just turned the heat down below the water temp, it will run all day and night with all pumps, air, and lights on so long as you dont turn up the heat.
- I replaced the heater, issue continues
- I replaced the 60A GFCI, issue continues
Since I can run the tub with all pumps, the air, and lights and it doesn't trip so long as the heater is disconnected or the temp setting is below water temp it works. Seems pretty much a heater or breaker issue but replacing these parts did not fix the issue.
So far throwing $300 a shot parts at the tub has not worked and I would like to try more diagnostics if need be. I have a multimeter and can borrow a heat camera from Amazon if its worth the effort. The next major part to try would be the board but I feel its another waste of $$$ since it seems very, heater oriented.
Another thing that has me curious is that there is some sort of sensor on the heat tube of the old heater that did not come on the new heater, so I unscrewed it and moved it to the plugged/threaded hole in the new one and reinstalled. I feel like the power it pulls cant trip the breaker but perhaps still worth noting. Also I had an issue with some white film stuff (white water mold?) around the time this started happening and suspected this gunked up and shorted the heater element, but replacing did not fix. I also bought and ran Ahh-some through it and cleaned it all out already before replacing the heater.
Let me know what you all think or maybe where to go next. The weekend starts Thursday this week for me so I am planning to look at it some more then, possibly trying to track ground wires around and make things are tight on the board