My hot tub display keeps flashing PSI and then the temp. My husband just changed the water and now the display keeps flashing. And now it only seems to heat up when the jets are going. What could be the problem? Thanks! We have a Blue Ridge Spa by Jacuzzi.

Does your spa have a circulation pump and heater similar to this?

If it does, then don't try the plug the jet thing as the plumbing is entirely different.

Just let me know.

Thanks

That is exactly what our pump looks like. What do we do? The finger plugging didn't work. Thanks for helping us!

I appreciate your confirmation of the suction hose on the circ pump via email because it makes all the difference.

Where your problem most likely is; is in your filter cavity. It's retaining air.

1. Turn the power off.
2. Open the filter top cover in the corner of the spa, and make REAL sure there's nothing (no garbage or anything) floating around in there. If there is, the clean it all out real good.
3. Now, unscrew the filter element, and remove it from the filter container area.
4. Power up the spa.
5. The spa heater should be heating and... no more psi thingy showing up on your display.

If this is correct then continue:

6. Go to your garage and get out the trusty black and decker drill. Put in a 1/8" bit. (Most folks have a 1/8 bit some place. The preferred size is actually 1/16", which is not very common in most drill index-s But NEVER larger than 1/8").
7. Drill two holes in the top of your filter. Anywhere in the plastic top.
8. Go back to spa, power down, then put in filter again.
9. Wait for air to exit those holes.
10. Power up spa, problem solved.

If it is not correct, then there's something else that you need to do. It's more involved, but it's not too difficult.

After step #4, the display still shows PSI. We went ahead and drilled the holes, but it didn't solve anything.

For the sake of simplicity, I've assumed that the little circulation pump is running when it's powered up - and, that your spa had a single filter element. Some of these things have two. If yours has two, then you need to be sure that you removed both of them in the previous attempt.

The below images will give you an idea of what to look for. Essentially, you've got a problem where the circulation pump, for one reason or another, is not pumping enough water through the heater, and subsequently triggering the pressure switch to activate the heater.

Where we start with this is in the filter cavity itself. This particular spa brand has a bit of a design flaw, in that when you remove the filter elements, any debris within the skimmer cavity will fall into the circulation pump suction hose, travel to the circ pump, and stop it cold!

Now before we go that far, you need to verify that
1. the circulation pump is running, and
2. The pressure switch is not activated (on the side of the heater).

Take a look at the below image and you'll see how the water is supposed to flow through this thing.

if you can't see water flowing through the hoses, or at least hear it or feel anything coming from the heater discharge jet in the spa, then we're basically at a worst case scenario. That some debris has entered the suction side of your circulation pump and has clogged it up - when you removed the filter for cleaning.

What I've done previously on this design, is to remove the suction hose from the front of the circulation pump, which will tell me if the water flow from the filter is good,

and when the hose is actually removed, water will flow backwards through the circulation pump and hopefully push out any obstruction that had entered it.


Removing this thing is no easy task. Coming from the factory the hose can be very difficult to remove, and you may actually need to cut it off at the pump, then reattach it.

Do not do any of this with power applied to the spa! The circulation pump has 115 volt terminals in the back of it, and then there's a 230 volt connection directly under the heater! When the hose comes off, it will most assuredly get everything wet.

Last bit of the worst case:
If you can stick anything into the front end of the circulation pump to feel around to see if anything's lodged in there, then that also helps. It also helps if you can basically watch what comes out immediately upon removing the hose....

Now if you reattach the hose, power it back up and still get the same results, then it's time to remove the circulation pump altogether, remove the face cover, and inspect the impeller.

Hope this helps.

We do have two filters in our tub, but we drilled both of them. It looks like this is going to be hubby's weekend project. I don't see or feel water coming through the hoses. We are having a hard time locating the pressure switch, to see if it's been activated. Is it always on the side of the heater? I'll post back this weekend and let you know how it went. I guess we need to be real careful when cleaning out the filters! Don't want this to happen again!

Well, you didn't mention if the small circulation pump was running.

Some versions will use a little different style of heater, where the pressure switch and power connections are underneath:



Those are almost impossible to work with and I don't recommend trying to do any visual checks on the pressure switch. I'd just stick to the suction hose removal thing and go from there.