Cleaning the green crud from the heat exchanger?

[Soundy]

Got a Jandy Lite 2 here. There's a leak somewhere in the back-right this thing after the winter, from my reading it sounds like it's probably something relatively painless to fix... however, I've got it halfway apart to discover a lot of green buildup on the heat exchanger fins. Can this be cleaned fairly painlessly? Or is it done?

 

[JamesW]

Why do you think that it's going to be easy to fix?

Can you see where the leak is?

 

[Soundy]

Why do you think that it's going to be easy to fix?

Can you see where the leak is?

Not yet... I'm working my way inward slowly.

The reading I've done so far suggests the most common things to fail are seals or possibly the headers, while the heat exchanger tubes themselves are less prone to failing.

It's not a gushing stream or anything when I send the water flow to the boiler, so it doesn't seem to be a MAJOR leak, but it is dripping out the back of the unit below the inlet.

 

[JamesW]

Have someone turn the pump on then off while you listen to the heat exchanger and you should be able to find the leak.

Did the heater get properly winterized?

 

[CJadamec]

That green crud is the corroded copper from the heat exchanger. I wouldn't get too carried away trying to clean it or you may find you have many more leaks than just the one small one.

 

[Soundy]

So followup...

I finally got it all pulled apart and discovered the source of the leak: one gasket on the main header was in cock-eyed... in fact, I'm amazed it never leaked before as it's clear this thing wasn't set properly when it was last assembled (I suspect it's been worked on before).

So I ordered a new gasket set online, as well as a new set of carriage bolts (all were rusty, one snapped while trying to take it apart). Cleaned the fins nicely by soaking the heat exchanger in a tub of diluted CLR and rinsing them with a gentle spray on the garden hose.

When I went to reassemble it, I was cleaning off the gasket seats and found a bunch of small cracks between some of the holes in the small manifold, that I patched up with some JB Weld.

I finished reassembling everything, with some Vaseline on the gaskets (I know, I know, but they'll probably still outlast the whole unit before we either need to replace the whole thing, or sell the house) and some high-temp copper anti-seize for the bolts, and fired it up...

SUCCESS! No leaks, and I swear it heats better now than it did before (under 24 hours to get an 80,000 liter pool from 69F to 82F).

 

[pooldv]

Thanks for the follow up. Perception is reality.

 

[Soundy]

Reality is that the last four years we've lived here, it's been a good day and a half to get the pool up to temp in the spring. This time was <24 hours, and it's not even that warm out this week (the one saving grace for how long it's taken me to complete the repair: other than two or three days in early June, it really hasn't been swimming weather).