Hot Tub heating issue

[Mr. Truelove]

I'm sure there are forums specifically for Hot Tubs. But I figured the swinger community is as good as any to tap into for hot tub information.

I have a Legacy Series, Master Spa. It's about 10 years old. Outside of that I have no information. No manual, no model number, nothing. I bought it used.

Sometimes it heats, sometimes it's a little cool with no apparent reason at all.

About once a month I check it and it'll be a little low, high 90s even when set at 102. Most other times I check it, it'll be right where I set it.

So tonight, I shovel all the white stuff off my driveway and nothing sounds better than a nice hot tub soak and I go out and grr... 97 degrees. I check and it's still set at 102. I check the rest of the tub, jets, blower, everything works fine.

Filter cycle was set at 2 hours. It was previously 6 hours before this weekend.

There is a Econ mode, and a Stan mode I can access. As far as I can tell it is set to Econ. And I do not see any other options. I assumed Stan means standby. Now I am wondering if Stan means Standard. And maybe it gets bumped or whatever by the wife/kids/myself.

Any hot tub gurus? I looked online at Master Spa's website, but they don't offer 10 year old manuals. :-P

Thanks in advance.

[AskMeOk]

I don't know a lot about hot tubs per se, but I do about machinery. First, RTFM... and if you don't have one, get one.

Simply, from what you have described I would point to (1) inability of the thermostat to control the temperature and/or (2) inability of the heater to keep up with temperature swings....

[LFM2]

Now this is just a guess, but the last time our hot tubs temperature went south it was one of our filters. We have five filters in our tub. One goes to the heater and the other four filter the jets.

We bought new filters, which really wasn't too bad and replaced the filters. This was after I called a hot tub guy out to check it out. He demonstrated to me how to check the filters to see how dirty they are. Ours were clogged with calcium and iron. If you don't want to buy new filters, he told me that I could soak mine in TSP (Tri-sodium phosphate) over night and rinse them really well before replacing. We trade our filters out about every six months, with cleaning the tub itself about every three months.

[lovinher]

In our hot tub the econo mode can be programmed to go into econo mode at whatever time you want it to. Could you be reading it when it is in econo mode? I would notice a similar scenerio when the time of day wasn't right.

If not I doubt it would be the heating element because they either work or they don't. It would more likely be the temperature probe.

[Mr. Truelove]

Well, I went out there and sat in it. Wow. 97 degrees is too cold. And then to get out of it into the snowy blowing snow...sucks. It wasn't blowing when we got in...

I think Stan mode was what is was supposed to be in. It's such a pain to even read the display as you have to hit two buttons to change it, so you hit it and you can't tell if it just changed to stan mode or if you were on it to begin with. But I toggled it back and forth till it stayed on Stan and then I felt the heat coming out. so I think I'm good to go.

It might have been the other times the filters needed rinsed. And this is all just a coincidence.

[VegasLee]

Here is a link to the owners manual for your hot tub.

http://www.masterspas.com/manuals_ow...nersManual.pdf

Hope that helps.

[Mr. Truelove]

Thank you Lee. I have some reading to do it seems.

[Alura]

My bet is on the thermostat. Your symptoms description is what our spa was doing when the thermostat was bad. A new one fixed it. That was ten years ago.

Alura