Opening the Hydromate

Disclaimer - Opening the Hydromate will probably invalidate any warranty. You are dealing with electricity around water which is potentially dangerous, could give you a punk hairstyle, kill you and given the tub is left on for long periods of time, catching fire and burning your house down would be bad.

If you are not confident about opening the Hydromate, go down the professional service route :

Softub UK
Softub Midlands

Both the above appear to take and refurbish Hydromates.


To open My Hydromate I started by watching some YouTube videos, which are a useful resource for seeing what is inside, how things work and what you may want to give a go!

This video gives some details about swapping a capacitor on an older US model, but actually the designs are fairly similar. 
This one is about the control panel removal  - Not directly needed for me, but still useful.
This one on  repairing internal leaks  - A common problem and again good to watch.

Watching those videos and doing some research gave me the confidence to open up the Hydromate and have a look inside. I knew it wasn't going to be the best due to the break down of the soft insulating foam. 

First I unplugged the unit from the power socket. Live electrics are always a bad idea when opening something up!
I then disconnected the pipes (pour hot water on first to ease) from my tub and as I'd only filled it to just over the filters, I only lost a small amount of water. I'll be looking for an pump to drain the tub properly at some point.

I used a couple of plastic 2" beakers and a cork to plug the holes. These were just to stop anything going back in the holes whilst I worked on repairing the Hydromate.

Getting in wasn't too tricky, there's a buckle at the bottom by the pipes and a draw string (untie, don't cut, hot water was good for dissolving old chemicals) which loosens the cover and I could raise it up. Mine had some clear tape around the polystyrene shell which I used a knife to carefully cut and then could separate the top from the bottom

The Control panel cable meant that I needed to be carful in positioning the top. Unfortunately the connector is inside the control board enclosure, which can make things awkward. 

The thin "clear" (mine was heavily yellowed) tubing is part of the Ozone delivery system. There is an air switch to which the pipe connects to. The connectors are pretty delicate but fairly easy to remove from the switch if you are used to Speedfit/Pushfit connectors and I wished I'd have found THIS article before opening. I broke one, but will deal with that later in a Ozone refurb. The actual Ozone box is off to the side and in a void in the polystyrene shell.

The control board is in an enclosure it has 4 push fit barbed pins which hold to the lower shell, they pry up reasonably easily.
There were two screws on the top of mine which were a bit rusty and needed some mole grips to help undo. You can then slide to the rear, or slide forward for access, though you may need to move some cables and clip some cable ties
The Motor Capacitor is at the rear of the motor, it is held on with a metal strap, which has two nuts and I'll be replacing it in the next post







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