greetings,

ive owned a used spa i got off craigslist for about a year now. It works fine, however ive always wondered if the control box may be wired incorrectly. In order for me to heat the spa, the jets must be on. I tried with out the jets running, just the pump in the low filter mode, and no increase in heat. Is this not suprising? I question this because the when i fool with the timer, it has no effect on turning the jets on or off..just effects the motor when its in low gear for filtering. so whats the point of scheduling a time to enable the heater. Is this timer just for scheduling filtration? Of course i have not investigated if the timer turns on or off the heater element but never the less, it seems that the energy efficiant way to heat the spa (if its true that the jets must be on to heat) would be having the timer enable the heater, and the jets instead of me having to manualy turn the jets on when i want to heat.

The face of the control box made by "Spa builders systems group" has the following controls:

The time clock with the dip switches for the cooresponding time to enable/disable

A variable thermostat knob

A switch that toggles "timed filtration and heat" / "timed filtration and auto heat"

and a high heat limit button.

Thanks for any feedback

How it's supposed to work: with the switch set to "timed filteration and heat" the spa, when off, should turn on with the timer, and if heat is necessary, the heater would turn on. The low speed must be in operation before the heater will heat. With the switch set to "timed filteration and auto heat" the spa, when off, will turn on with the timer to filter, using the low speed. However, anytime the spa is off and needs heat, wether the timer is on or off, the thermostat will turn on the low speed pump, then the heater. Spa Builders Systems are put forth by Allied Innovations ( http://www.alliedinnovations.com ) and the schematics are normally found on the site. however, I just checked and could not access them. The good news is they also put out the Brett Aqualine type of control system, and is very much nearly identical as spa builders. Also on the Allied innovations site, you can find the schematics for the Brett Aqualine. From your description, check out the Brett Aqualine EM-104 control. It's the most common type of the mechincal nature, and might give you some insight to solve your problem. Take some time browsing through the different PDF files, to find one that closely matches your system (major differences is in how many control buttons you have, from 1 to 3)