JBJ ATO Stopped Working??

[Canarygirl]

What would cause an ATO to stop refilling the water from a resevoir? Can the sensors get covered with salt creep or something and stop registering changes in the water level?

The electricity is still working on it, and the refill pump is still connected to the hose, but the water level in my sump dropped way down below the bottom sensor without it triggering a refill. When I tried jiggling the sensors it had no effect. THis ATO unit is about 8 months old.

 

[seawandrr]

It's often the sensor that fails. Try swapping in your other one to the role of measuring your sump level, and see if it works again.

 

[Canarygirl]

The top one is supposed to be the fail-safe, where if the bottom one fails, the top one is supposed to kick in. But neither one seems to be working. I am going to try taking both off and cleaning with hot water, see if that makes any difference.

 

[seagirl]

might try cleaning with vinegar too.

 

[mic209]

are your sensor lights on? I know it has a failsafe feature, if your pump runs to long it stops your pump till you reset the swithches?

 

[Canarygirl]

The light is on on the square box thingy and there's lots of water in the resevoir.

 

[Canarygirl]

So I came home from work at lunch to find that all 4 of the lights on the box were on: sensor 1, sensor 2, power, and pump. It wasn't like that when I looked at it this morning.

I poured more water into the sump and suddenly the ATO kicked in and started to add water too. When I looked at the box, 3 of the 4 lights had gone out again, leaving only the "Power" light on.

What the heck does this mean?

 

[mic209]

The power light shouldn be on. Are you sure you have set to the right mode? Where are your two sensors at? What mode is it set to?

 

[Big L.E.E.]

When all four lights are on like that, it means the ATO has timed out. The ATO will cut off after 3 minutes of running to prevent an overflowing. Reseting one of the sensors (in your case by adding water) is usually adequate to reset the whole unit.

Check to make sure you water pump is still pumping. When my last aqualifter started to go bad, the ATO timed out daily.

 

[Canarygirl]

When all four lights are on like that, it means the ATO has timed out. The ATO will cut off after 3 minutes of running to prevent an overflowing. Reseting one of the sensors (in your case by adding water) is usually adequate to reset the whole unit.

That's interesting....my water resevoir was still full of water so that wasn't the issue, and when I added water to the sump the pump started to run so it does still work. I'll try soaking the pump in vinegar tonight in case it's going squirrely on me.

The ATO is set to mode B, for the low and high level sensors.

 

[mic209]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11789576#post11789576 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Canarygirl
That's interesting....my water resevoir was still full of water so that wasn't the issue, and when I added water to the sump the pump started to run so it does still work. I'll try soaking the pump in vinegar tonight in case it's going squirrely on me.

The ATO is set to mode B, for the low and high level sensors.

So both sensors are in your sump, correct? You can also set up the ATO unit to make your pump to "time out" at 14 minutes instead of 3.

Here's the link on how to do that http://www.jbjlighting.com/pdfs/ATO_faq_ht_adjust_float.pdf

 

[Canarygirl]

yep, both sensors are next to eachother in the sump.

I want to keep my time-out at 3 minutes. Still not sure why it timed out but it seems to be working again now after the reset.