JHolmes Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 Hello!I know LOR boards are resistance dimmers but I've heard of people connecting fans and motors to them before. I found this AC water pump and am trying to determine whether the LOR board would fry with it. Any thoughts?It's an AC pump that pulls 2.1A each. http://www.dannermfg.com/Store/Products/Danner/PID-02660.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HVACR Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 I would run the pump full on or full off. If the pump has a ball bearing motor you could run it down to 40%. If it is a sleeve bearing motor then all on or off. Sleeve bearing don't lubricate correctly below 100% rpm's. Hop this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mpageler Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 You run pond/water fountain pumps at full voltage. If you need to control flow, you do it via a ball valve before the pump.BTW 2.1 amps for a 3000gph pump is really high. At that flow, extenal pumps are much more effecient. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 You are going to blow the triac. First, motors are inductive loads and triacs are for resistive loads. We'll skip over the electricity lesson on that one..... Second, the MAX current our triacs can support is 8A. Anything over 8A for as short as ONE AC CYCLE will kill them. A motor when not spinning is essentially nothing more than a short circuit until it starts. The 2A rating of that motor is for when it is running. To get them spinning, many motors have an inrush current of 8-10 TIMES the amperage rating shown. You 2A motor could pull 16-20A start up current. Fuses/Circuit Breakers/and the wires you are using can handle that inrush current for the couple of cycles it takes to get a motor to start spinning - and thus don't fail/trip/catch fire. Triacs on the other hand are solid state devices. 1 cycle is all it will take to kill it. There is a reason we say DON'T DO IT. It's not because we don't want you to use our stuff, it's because it will break it. For those people 'you have heard of who use our controllers for pumps', they are most likely using a RELAY between the controller and the pump. You can do that all day long - at full on/off. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjflory Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 (edited) A $6 relay to save your $250.00 controller is money well spent. T Edited June 20, 2015 by tjflory Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHolmes Posted June 21, 2015 Author Share Posted June 21, 2015 Thanks!That's all I needed to hear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmmienLightFan Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 If you want to dim it, I would get a 12v pump and use the CMB24D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max-Paul Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 And if you dont need to dim it, and going to stay with an AC pump. Might I suggest that you get a Solid State Relay over a mechanical type relay. Mechanical relays have moving contacts. This will pit and get all nasty and fail. Solid State Relays can still go bad. But the failure rate is much lower than the mechanical relay. One thing that helps to extend the life of either type of relay is an arc snubber. Not to be confused with the snubber that people here use on their light strings. I am referring to a series resistor and capacitor across the contacts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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