Friend of mine got a hot tub at a garage sale.
Standard 20 amp 120v male plug with GFI within 12" of the end of the cord.
He filled it up and pugged it in.
It starts up and runs for about 10 seconds then the pump motor gets so hot it trips out the thermal overload.
After about 3 or 4 minutes it cools down and starts up again.
I broke loose the water line fitting above the pump to relieve the pressure but still the same problem.
My question is this tub is plugged into the only outlet out on his back deck far from anything else.
Voltage was solid 120 at the unit until the pump started, then it dropped down to 100 then 98 with the amperage going to 38 then to 40 amps.
It doesn't trip the breaker feeding the receptacle it just keeps cycling on the thermal overload.
The end of the cord was hot so thinking it might possibly be a loose connection in the cord, temporarily made a male cord out of thhn and a male cap.
No change in operation.
Without having to throw a bunch of parts at it that I don't have readily available, or causing more problems by trying to get everything out of the way to get the pump out, I suggested he have a hot tub guy come and look at it.
Other than plugging a dummy load into the outside outlet to see if that load operated properly, which it does , after I left, I got to wondering how one would actually determine if the pump was having issues because of a voltage drop problem ,or, if the bad motor was causing the voltage drop itself without having to tear everything apart and isolating the motor to different source.
It seemed odd that at 40 amps, even for that short amount of time, that it didn't take out the 20 amp 1p breaker feeding the outlet but it was getting late.
JAP>
Standard 20 amp 120v male plug with GFI within 12" of the end of the cord.
He filled it up and pugged it in.
It starts up and runs for about 10 seconds then the pump motor gets so hot it trips out the thermal overload.
After about 3 or 4 minutes it cools down and starts up again.
I broke loose the water line fitting above the pump to relieve the pressure but still the same problem.
My question is this tub is plugged into the only outlet out on his back deck far from anything else.
Voltage was solid 120 at the unit until the pump started, then it dropped down to 100 then 98 with the amperage going to 38 then to 40 amps.
It doesn't trip the breaker feeding the receptacle it just keeps cycling on the thermal overload.
The end of the cord was hot so thinking it might possibly be a loose connection in the cord, temporarily made a male cord out of thhn and a male cap.
No change in operation.
Without having to throw a bunch of parts at it that I don't have readily available, or causing more problems by trying to get everything out of the way to get the pump out, I suggested he have a hot tub guy come and look at it.
Other than plugging a dummy load into the outside outlet to see if that load operated properly, which it does , after I left, I got to wondering how one would actually determine if the pump was having issues because of a voltage drop problem ,or, if the bad motor was causing the voltage drop itself without having to tear everything apart and isolating the motor to different source.
It seemed odd that at 40 amps, even for that short amount of time, that it didn't take out the 20 amp 1p breaker feeding the outlet but it was getting late.
JAP>
