Breezair cooler blowing warm air while the Magic Touch IQ controller shows blue

 Issue

• The cooler runs and the fan blows, but the air coming out is not cold
• Discharge air is close to the outside air temperature
• The Magic Touch IQ controller shows blue, meaning it believes cooling is active
• Water level and salinity readings look normal
• The service operating screen reports the pump as on

Nothing on the controller flags a problem. There is no error code, no fault message, and no air temperature display, so the only symptom you get is warm air.

Mine for example showed the inside temperature as 83° but it was cooling and the fan speed was on 10! So what the heck!

Environment

• Breezair evaporative cooler, model EXQ 210 and similar models
• Magic Touch IQ controller
  

Cause

The water pump has failed and is no longer delivering water to the cooling pads, so the fan is pushing unconditioned outside air into the house. The controller only knows that it has switched power to the pump. It gets no feedback confirming that water is actually moving, which is why it keeps reporting the pump as on and never raises a fault.

A failed pump can also be completely silent. Listening for it tells you nothing, and the absence of noise is not evidence that the pump is fine.

Resolution

You May have a failed pump. If you’re lucky, the pump is just blocked by something, maybe there’s a leaf in the tube or something but worst case the pump does nothing when you turn it on. That was the case for me; The pump just does nothing when turned on so needs to be replaced.

This is the second Tornado pump that has failed on me in four years, so I just decided to splice in a $50 pump from Home Depot, which seems to work just fine.

Replacement part

If you want to go to the official route, though, here is the pump that you’ll need:

The part cost is a fraction of a service call, and the swap is within reach for anyone comfortable working on the unit.

Notes

Related observation from the service operating screen: setting the drain to ON leaves water in the sump, and setting it to OFF empties it.