Couldn't decide if this should go here, or under the "recently refilled your tub", move if needed.

Recently were given a tub from my parents because it "didn't work" and they wanted to buy a new one anyways. It had worked fine for them and then one day it turned off and just wouldn't turn back on. I called the service people where they bought it, and the guy told me he almost guarantees (99.5% sure) that it's just the GFCI, that he would be wasting our money to come out and do a service call to check/replace it. So we do it ourselves.

Here's where it gets tricky. My husband decided he wants to hardwire the tub to a gfci outlet, even though it doesn't need it. Now it does not "unplug", it goes into a GFCI box mounted in the garage. It is not the only thing on the breaker unfortunately, but it has been the only thing *on* while trying to start the tub.

Got it wired, tested everything, seemed to work fine (as fine as we could test without water (ie- the pump was unplugged). Then we filled it a few days ago, turned it on. It worked for about two minutes, about half of the jets working (others could very well have been accidently closed), and then it tripped the GFCI. We tried it again, and now it trips within about 10 seconds of being turned on. When it was on the first time, the jets work, blow air, etc, as well as the lights, display.

Opened up the panel again- and apparently the tub is leaking- we can see a small amount of water looks like it's coming from the heater 'part' (it's weird in this spa- it's a series of tubing that heats water through friction)- I understand that this can trip the breaker- however, we dried it off, waited a night and tried it again, and it's still doing the same thing, even though it appears to be dry. Would it take longer than this to dry out and work again?

If we unplug the pump, and start it again, it will run for at least 5 minutes (we shut it off after that, as it didn't seem to be the problem). Plug it back in, and it flips immediately.

What should we be checking? Things I've come up with are: Water still on the motor etc somewhere, Air-locked pump, temperature gauge sensor (but don't know if we even have one of these), GFCI miswired somehow... But I'm not even sure how to check these things. Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated.

Info:
1. Dreammaker x-400
2. Power: It's on a 15 amp 110 volt service. This is all it needs- it's a 'plug and play' However- it is hardwired into a GFCI receptacle, and it's not the only thing on that breaker, but it is the only thing 'in use' (the garage is on the same breaker)
3. "State of the art balboa digital controls with digital color changing light package" dont know other than that...
4. Topside control; Don't know what this is?
5. Pump Configuration: This too says 110volt 15 amp service, 1.5 horsepower high performance aqua flo pump.
6. Thermostat: pushbuttons on topside control (can't keep it going long enough to tell if this works, but it did last time it was filled)
7. Heater Type: This mostly fits D (Plastic housing, looks weird, has water coming in at bottom and goes to spa on right) It's described as a friction based system- lots of little white pex pipe looking hoses coming out of a plastic junction. I can take photos if it helps.

Please help! We're desperate. If we don't get this solved by the end of the weekend, the tub will have to be drained as it's getting too cold.

Ok so we just went out for another round. Turn the tub on. Great. But the jets aren't working. We fiddle with a couple of them that were still closed, turn everything one- whoosh. We've got jets (though some of them still aren't blowing air...) It works good for five minutes, then my husband accidently unscrewed the waterfall control, so we turned the tub off so he could put it back on. Turn on again, runs again for another 5 minutes, no issues, at this point we had turned the jets off, figuring they didn't need to be on, and we would just try to heat the water as much as possible. Near the end of the second five minutes, we turned them on again to test, and noticed that the jets on the right side aren't blowing, so we adjusted the dial, played with it for about 30 seconds, then as we turned it on a full on position, the gfci flipped again. We look down and there's a small puddle of water again, more than yesterday. There was none at the end of the first five minutes, so my conclusion is that it happened when we played with the jets, however it could have been just a smaller puddle and we didn't notice it until it 'spilled out'. At any rate, I'm positive now that a leak is responsible for the gfci flipping- we just need to find out where!

I beleive the leak is coming from the 'jet adjuster', as it flipped within 30 seconds of playing with that one. My husband believes that the manifold that the hoses actually come out of have cracked. To me this doesn't make sense, as the threading for the jet adjustor is all wet (why I don't know...). However, the manifold breaks into several (6?) of those pex pipe looking hoses, all in a circular bundle, and there does appear to be water in the middle. I'm not sure whether it's from it dripping from the adjuster (which is above and slightly to the right of this) or from inside the manifold part itself (crack, loose connection, etc).

We left the tub for 5-10 minutes, and then turned all the jets off, and figure what the heck, let's see if it will start again. We thought it would be way too wet still, and would flip immediately, but now almost 10 minutes later, it's still running, jets off. I figure we'll leave it until it throws again, if nothing else, then to heat up the water to a reasonable level so we can let it sit again while we troubleshoot.

So.... is it possible for water to leak from the dial that adjusts the jets? I'm told only air flows through here and so it shouldn't be... but to me it seems like the most obvious place.

((And I guess this is now a leak issue and not an electrical/gfci issue- It can be moved))

Still no responses?

Well it's about 16 hours later, and the tub is still running strong, albeit without jets. We are worried about the water being too cold and freezing in the lines, so we're not going to touch the jets at all until the tub gets to abour 95 degrees, that way we've got a little bit more time to play with them without fear of having to drain the tub if we can't get it going again.

There's two threads in the plumbing section about tubs leaking only when jets are on, and it being due to loose jet fittings and internal fittings, essentially causing the air diverter pipes to backfill with water. Both threads sound EXACTLY like what is happening, so we're going to try tightening, and perhaps replacing, all of those, and then turn the jets back on and give it a whirl.