I saw a video of a Stenner peristaltic pump and noticed that when it was run below its full rate, it produced "clicks" as the pump engaged/disengaged the roller movement. This makes sense given how it works, but I'm curious how loud these clicks are given that my equipment deck is right next to my pool. It was hard to tell exactly how loud they were from the video, but the problem was that the clicking seemed like it could potentially be rather distracting. Even a louder pump would not drown out the "sharp" sound of the clicks if they were loud enough. Does anybody here have any opinions on this?

On a related note, Stenner recommends running their pumps at the highest possible setting due to the fact that the lower settings result in more frequent engage/disengage cycles, which wears out the mechanical pin/hole system. Stenner told me that the units certainly "can" be run on the lower settings, but that this would dramatically increase wear.

Given my parameters (chlorine demand, pump run time, etc.), I will end up using the lower end of the settings even on the lower-flow unit that does 0.2 to 3 gal/day. I was thinking that I could run the unit at full speed if I had a timer switch capable of switching the unit on and off in cycles -- i.e. basically the way the Rola-chem units work, which run the unit some fraction of every 9 minute cycle. If I could find a timer like this, that would allow me to run the unit, for example, somewhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes of every 10 minute cycle, it would basically give me a similar capability to the mechanical system in the Stenner pump, but without the mechanical wear.

Does anyone know of such a product? It seems like a solid state device could do this fairly inexpensively, but I'm not sure if this exists as a standalone product.

Thanks,

Larry

I do realize that I could use lower percentage chlorine (or dilute the chlorine myself) in order to use higher settings on the Stenner, but a timer as described above would make the process of making adjustments a lot easier, and the Stenner would ALWAYS run at the highest setting, meaning it would solve both issues above (i.e no mechanical wear to the engagement system, AND no clicking noise.)

Larry

The 'click' is easy to ignore. In fact sometimes I have to listen to make sure it's still running. I run the dial on 5.5.

What you want is a percent cycle timer. Intermatic, as well as many others, makes them. Here's a couple of models.

Thanks -- that's EXACTLY what I was looking for (I wasn't sure what to call it in my searches.) The CT2000 is mechanical, so it can be powered on and off by the main pump timer and retain its settings. It's on the pricey side, but I may be able to find it at a low enough price to make it worthwhile. It would be nice to be able to use the actual pump at it's highest flow rate all the time. Even though the noise is apparently not an issue, using the pump at maximum will, according to Stenner, vastly reduce wear.

Unfortunately, it's proving to rather hard to find a reasonably priced flow switch that will work for me -- I'm still searching for that one.

Thanks again,

Larry

You can also search for repeat cycle timer.

The cheapest paddle flow switch I've found is on ebay for about $30 shipped from Hong Kong. Dwyer also has one for about $40.