Didn't realize a quick power blip would wipe my pump timer

Started by Bill Hartman · · 4 replies
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#1
We had one of those flicker outages last week, lights blinked maybe two seconds, didn't think twice about it. Came out three days later and water had that hazy look starting, turned out the timer reset itself back to factory and my pump had only been running a couple hours a day instead of the eight I've got it set for. Took me a minute to even think to check that, kept looking for a chemical problem that wasn't there. Water's colder than my wife's feet this time of year anyway so a couple extra cloudy days almost didn't matter, but still. Might be worth a battery backup clock for the timer box, anybody up here in Ohio dealt with that before.

4 Replies

#2
Does your timer have the little battery backup slot built in already or is it one of the real basic mechanical ones, cause mine's got a coin cell in it that saves the program through blips like that and I never think about it till threads like this remind me it exists.
#3
Had basically the same thing happen two summers ago except it was my sand filter running a shortened cycle and I didn't catch it for almost a week, water wasn't hazy yet but I could feel it getting slick on the liner which is usually my first clue something's off. Mine's the cheap mechanical dial type, no battery backup at all, so any blip and it just loses its place and defaults back to whatever the pins were last set for. Sam's question is the right one to ask first, pop the cover and look for a little coin cell slot before you go buy anything. If it doesn't have one those plug in digital timers with battery backup aren't expensive, I think I've seen them in the twenty dollar range at the big box place, and worth checking their return policy anyway in case the one you grab doesn't handle your pump's amp draw right. For what it's worth I just started writing my settings on a piece of tape stuck to the timer box so even if it resets I can fix it in two minutes instead of playing detective with my water for a week like I did.
#4
That tape on the box trick is smart, i might steal that honestly. Jason, before you drop twenty bucks on a new digital one, did you actually check under the dial for a coin cell slot or just assume it's not there, cause mine looked basic too at first glance and had one tucked under the face plate. Worth the two minutes to check before buying something new, buddy.
#5
I don't run a timer at all on the Raypak side, that one's manual start stop, but the pump timer on my filtration is the mechanical dial type same as Jason's, no coin cell that I've ever found, and I've had exactly one blip in about 25 seasons wipe it clean back to default. Happened during a thunderstorm maybe six years back. I only caught it because I walk past that equipment pad every single morning with coffee, it's part of the routine same as checking the gauges, so the pins being wrong jumped out at me inside a day.

Tape on the box is a good idea though, better than what I do which is just have the on off times memorized at this point, eight to four, every season, it's in the binder if I ever forget. Three days before you noticed yours, Bill, that's the part that'd bother me more than the hazy water honestly.