Congrats…no doubt you implemented “The Fix” the right way….you know LP blue jumpers and all.Good news -- thanks exclusively to you guys, the way smarter than average group of bears and, in spite of my too long ignored and not so great soldering skills, I have somehow managed to effectuate "The Fix" (trademark pending) and, as a result I now have a fully functional salt cell and muriatic acid dispenser back in action.
. All kidding aside give us the deets on how you repaired and how easy you found soldering on to the connector.
LP, I used all green jumpers just to confuse the daylights out of anybody reading this thread in the future!Congrats…no doubt you implemented “The Fix” the right way….you know LP blue jumpers and all.
The soldering was more difficult than I'd expected. It had been years and, looking back, 98% of the soldering I ever did was in building out pc boards and loading them with components. I didn't know at the time, but that's probably the easiest of all soldering work. The Fix (trademark still pending) requires some McGiver soldering to a component on the board not designed to receive it. Like one of you guys had mentioned, halfway through I was pretty sure I had already roasted that receiving connector on the board, so I was surprised and relieved to see everything light up green once I put the IpH back in the loop. I tested it solo before connecting the IC cell just to make sure all was well. What a relief to finally have everything working again.
Good idea, I should go back in and do that but probably not for a few days. Gotta celebrate everything working first by goofing off on home repair projects. I had actually bought Permatex dielectric grease and a product called DeoxIT D5 last year to throw a hail mary fix at a Harmony 900 universal remote. Great remote but the female USB Mini port on it had that failed due to corrosion, making it impossible to update the remote, which was effectively a death sentence. Those two products solved the problem, but this recent IpH experience makes me realize I could probably swap out that USB Mini port if it ever comes to it.
Jeez, you let a guy solder a couple of wires and all of a sudden he gets delusions of grandeur!
Dirk, those delusions predate my ham-handed implementation of The Fix by decades!!!!Jeez, you let a guy solder a couple of wires and all of a sudden he gets delusions of grandeur!
Amen. I do all our AV, IT and home networking stuff. I'm probably better at that but I've been lucky enough to fix a couple of refrigerators and a laundry machine over the last few years. The refrigerators were temperature regulation and ice maker issues and the laundry machine was a failed pump. Actually getting to that pump was the hard part. The product engineers designed that thing so that you had to disassemble almost the entire appliance just to get access to a part that, you'd think, would have been pretty high on the "likely to fail one day" list. Simplifying maintenance and repair was not on their list of design goals.
I expect they would. Without any actual stats, I'd guess that the IpH is a niche market, made smaller by the fact that it is dependent on the presence of an IntelliChlor. Which means they can't sell it to anyone that doesn't have a Pentair pool. So it being discontinued would not be that big of a surprise. And if that has happened, they could just run out the remaining stock and replacement parts and that'll be it.
Good stuff, thanks Dirk. I knew about your “winter work around” from another thread. It’s a genius option but if they abandon the IpH it will still hack me off.
Yah, me too. I've only ever owned the IpH, but compared to other acid dispensing systems I've studied, I think it's the best. The design of the tank is really great. And the way the IpH integrates with the chlorine dispensing is also really good engineering. While not every pool needs regular acid dosing, for those that do, it's a really nice convenience that was, at least at one point, a really good value, price-wise. Other than the odd corporate decision to ignore the over-current issue, which would have been a really easy thing to correct, it's a great product. And it'll be a shame if they give up on it.
I just checked the 2024 catalog in the Pentair Partner web portal. It’s still listed in the 2024 catalog as are all the customary replacement parts. It’s now listed as TradeGrade. So it would appear for the time being it’s staying. I may check in with my Pentair rep if I think about it next week to see if there are any inside talks about ceasing production.
I've got an Airport Express and also an Airport Extreme. They're such well designed products, and every year they keep running perfectly I like them even more.
Despite getting that Harmony 900 back up and running, I also bought a Harmony Elite when Logitech announced they were abandoning that line of business so that I had a backup ready when the time came. Like the Express, another well-designed product that nobody else has managed to match or surpass at anywhere close to the original price point.
That is really welcome news LP, thanks for sharing.