Choice of pumps

[scooperhsd]

When we bought this house in 1995 - it came with the pool. It's been an adventure, and I've learned alot.

when we bought the house - the master bath had one of those "hydro therapy jet" tubs. A couple years later, when we did some remodeling and rearrainged the bathrooms - we discovered that the pump for the tub was a .75 HP Hayward PowerFlo II (without the strainer). Not knowing anything about it at the time, we kept it anyway as a "just in case".

Fast forward to about 4 years ago.At that time, we were using a Hayward 1.5 HP Superpump, that sat outside over the fall, winter and spring, sometimes with leaves covering / touching it. As you can probably guess - the outside of the motor rusted out / crumbled to dust.

What to do - I remembered we had the PowerFlo, and after checking Hayward's website - which said the PowerFloII is suitable for above ground and SMALL Inground pools - can lift up to 8 feet suction. I figured, WTH - even without the strainer, it should pump ok until we can get a permananent replacement. Plumbed it in, got 120V power to it, and after it was primed with a hose down the output - it did a pretty reasonable job for the 2-3 weeks until the Pentair SuperFlo in my signature came in and was put into service.

Since then, I did get the strainer assembly, and the last couple summers, I've thought about using the smaller pump instead.
The SuperFlo shows about 15-16 PSI on the guage, while the PowerFlo was about 10-11 PSI (as I remember). The waterflow is also "calmer" with the smaller pump, and I have a bit of an issue with real fine dust settling out with the larger pump (I can vacuum the pool and 2hours later the fine dust is like it never was vacuumed at all).

So - the question is - would the smaller pump actually help better with this fine dust issue ? Or do I just need to try it out and see what happens ? The smaller pump does use about 300 watts less power, and both pumps are single speeds. For that matter - is there a better solution for the fine dust (yes, I've thought ALOT about getting a robot cleaner). I would also like to get a heatpump for the pool (I got to 80 degrees from the Middle of July to the 3rd week of august - and yesterday it was at 75), so would the smaller pump be able to keep up with that as well ?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

[needsajet]

Interesting post!

Regarding the filter, your sand may be channeled and in need of a deep clean, so check out this thread: Deep Cleaning a Sand Filter

If it's been cleaned recently, try some DE: Pool School - Add DE to a Sand Filter

If flow is enough for skimming, water features and keeping the water clear, the smaller pump will save money. Keep a close eye in the corners for algae gaining a foothold due to poor circulation, but otherwise there's definitely people here having good success with smaller pumps or two speed pumps on low for circulation.

Heaters have a range of flow in their specifications which you need to meet in order to get long life and good efficiency.

 

[scooperhsd]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Next year - before we get things going - I'll do the deep cleaning and I'll give the PowerfloII pump a shot to see how it can handle it. I'm going to do a 5 minute backwash this afternoon - usually that much only gets done when I need to drain down the waterlevel (I use backwash instead of to waste on the theory that I'm minimizing wasting water).