Hayward H Series Control Panel

[Guest]

I have a hayward h150 natural gas heater. I started my filter this year after the winter and the heater appeared fine. It showed the temp on the display panel. I went to clean out the inside of the heater, as mice had brought some bird seed shells into it. After blowing out the heater with compressed air, the panel read SB and the service light was on. I called Hayward tech support and they said the control panel needed to be replaced. I ordered one and when I went to replace it, I noticed the display was now blank. I tested the power to the display, at it is getting power. I called Hayward back and they told me I need to order a control panel board now. The panel itself was only $60, but the circuit board is $150. I am afraid if I order one, what ever caused the first one to go bad, will just cause the same problem. Any ideas? I have read about others who are having the same issue. I even went as far as to test some of the resistors and the small 1/4 watt resistor label r55, seems to be bad. Thanks!

[CGPoolman]

Hi there,

My experience with heaters is limited, but electronics failure is a pretty common problem in Hayward heaters. There's a lot of things can cause this failure - power surge, moisture, ants, your mice could have chewed something up, who knows? There's no real warning when a board goes bad. The heater works today, and fails tomorrow. Most of the Hayward techs will only tell you what the error code means. There's 1 or 2 guys there that will actually take the time to walk you thru testing the board with a multimeter to see where exactly the failure is.

If it were me, I would just replace both boards and move on. Even if only one of the boards is bad, it probably won't be long before the other one burns out.

-CG