Cooling with solar panels?

[mkelley]

Folks,

I'm stumped here and so are the tech folks I've contacted. I have the Jandy Aqualink RS and a solar panel system with a sensor on the roof. In theory everyone says I can cool my pool by simply running the solar at night, but in practice this is impossible to do so -- the Jandy (or perhaps the solar sensor) will not allow the water to go through the solar no matter how I configure it (enabling solar and setting the temperature to lower than the pool temp, for example).

All that happens is the pump runs and the water does not circulate through the roof panels -- unless the sun is shinning and the temp is set higher than the current water temp (which isn't what I want, naturally, because then it heats up the water).

The solar folks say it's the Jandy that's the problem, and the Jandy folks say it's the solar sensor -- in either case, no one has the answer to making this work. The Jandy guy did suggest I try fooling around with service mode to bypass what the Aqualink is doing but then said (ominously) "be *very* careful about what you are doing there, as you may get the valves in the wrong position and possibly blow things up" or words to that effect. In any case, I'm more than a little nervous about screwing this up.

If anyone has any clever ideas about how to get this working I'd greatly appreciate it (given my problems logging in here it's unlikely I can login again and reply but I *will* be reading whatever is posted -- this time I had to create another login using another email address just to get going again but don't assume that any help will be unappreciated just because I don't answer here again).

[cleancloths]

While I am not familiar with your exact setup, it should be fairly easy to make it work. It sounds like a control issue, the thermostats are set up to prevent exactly what you are trying to do. What you have to do is fool them. The simplest thing would be to install a manual switch to bypass the thermostats so that the system would accept water flow when the panels are colder than the pool.

[PatL34]

There should be a switch on the Jandy valve that bypasses the solar controller to give you manual control. I use it quite often on mine.

Pat

[mkelley]

Thanks for the replies.

I think I get it -- right now, as luck would have it, we've had several cloudy days and the pool temp has dropped so it's fine (of course, with the rain it's also not so great for swimming :>). As soon as the sun comes out again (probably Wednesday) I'm going to try fooling around with the manual controls as another pool forum suggested (which I think is what you are talking about, Pat).

If that doesn't work then I definitely understand the concept of putting a manual switch in at the panel sensors, so that should work as well. Thanks again for the help.