Anyone heard of Ikeric and Hybrid-Pumps pump makers?

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i found both...just like you, but there is little information out there on them. they do look like great products, but unless you live close to the manufacturer or a dealer who specializes in them...you might have a hard time convincing yourself to go with them. they are also smaller companies, so you won't find prices as good as the pentair...at least that was the summary of my research
 
There have been several discussion on Hybrid pumps on the forum if you search for it. Those who have them have speak very highly of the performance. They have a bit more refined vector drive and supposedly use a more efficient impeller so they claim to have better efficiency than the other variables but the performance has yet to be verified by an independent entity such as the CEC.

Ikeric has been around a long time but I don't have much information on them. Again, I think they have been discussed on the forum a couple of times.
 
Both are small companies and both make interesting products. We really don't know a whole lot about either one other than the basics. Ikeric uses a Hayward pump with their special variable speed controller. There was a previous discussion of Hybrid-Pumps here.

Any variable speed pump is going to be way more efficient than a single speed pump. The differences between the variable speed pumps are more subtile.
 
I have the Hybrid X2 but I'm still playing with it and since the company is relatively close to me, they have been very cooperative in customizing the performance of the pump. I'll put a post up with gpm/rpm/watts in a couple of weeks - something I haven't seen another Hybrid owner do so far.
 
I have the Hybrid X2, and am very pleased with it. I am also very close to them, and have a great working relationship with them. Where I was once running a 1 HP StaRite pump, I have placed the X2, and I use it to push 4 returns in my pool, my spa bypass, roof mounted solar and a large waterfall. I am able to make it all work at 2,200 rpm, and about 2.2 amps! It is also a 1st Gen. version, and I know they have made many advances since mine.

Like the above poster said, they are very cooperative and work very hard to make happy customers. Way more personal touch than the big guys (and, while they are not perfect, I have had way more frustration with the "other guys" pumps than I have had with Hybrid!). Would I use them again? I do every month :goodjob:
 
ttmatsu,
Thx for your generous PM reply and thoughts on the Hybrid. I have to confess, I jumped the gun and had their X2 installed just yesterday! Your recommendation to first speak to Bruce @ PST for his take and prices came just a day too late and may have saved me some and given a TFP member my business. Oh well, though I'm consoled by the $200 rebate and the anticipated monthly savings from SoCal Edison. Admittedly I dove in a bit fast without more research, but I was taken by their performance claims and impressed with the founder's background as a pool designer, which led him to developing the Hybrid pump, but am glad to find other more versed TFP members on board too.

Unfortunately my older pool has 1.5" plumbing out of the ground from skimmer and in back to the returns, so I'm not benefitting from their efficiency as much as your all 2" plumbing. However, the installer showed be how my old 1.5 HP brass single speed was screaming to push 3450 rpm at 9 amps (more than the plumbing can handle all these years) when the Hybrid X2 was doing 2200 rpm at 2 amps, enough to drive my PoolCleaner without the wailing and hissing. He added a relay to let it auto switch to 2450rmp at 2.2 amps when the solar heater kicks in. He thinks the 2200 rpm might be enough to drive the solar heater too, but said I should play with it to settle on settings I like.

I'm now trying to figure out how much water is being pushed at their recommended six hours of run time. Their engineer said 2200 rpm will push 76gpm but that's data for 2" plumbing (they haven't tested on 1.5")--anyone know how to convert that to 1.5 plumbing?
 
Search for Ikeric on these boards. I have a VS and have posted a bit about them. I am on my 3rd year and still like it a lot. I have the relay on my solar hooked up to close the "boost" relay on the Ikeric controller so that when the solar goes on, the pump goes into high speed, otherwise it runs at low (almost silent) speed. When I bought mine, they were pretty much the only game in town for variable speed pumps.

My understanding was (from someone that posted recently) that Ikeric had stopped selling pumps and was now only selling the controller (which is a separate box). My experience with the company was great, but they are definitely small. They had no distributors here on the east coast but they did ship my unit directly to me.
 
Just my opinion, but Pentair rushed to market with their pump, and it wasn't ready. That resulted in too many problems, with too many pumps, and they just couldn't service fast enough. I sell an awful lot of Pentair products, and I think they make top of the line stuff, but the IntelliFlo is a little finicky!

One of the other things that I like about the Hybrid is that it does not require a computer to work, which the Pentair does. Here, as of January '08, we are required to replace all single speed pumps with a minimum of a 2 speed pump. For folks that do not have a computer, that has meant that they needed to buy a computer to operate the pump as well. A lot of people just do not have the money to do that. With Hybrid's VFD, you can make their pump do whatever you wish, and they can easily add a switch to allow you to manually switch from one speed to another. Real simple!

They are both good pumps. I just happen to prefer the ease and flexibility of the Hybrid (plus John and Lisa are great people!).
 

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Some of the numbers they are quoting seem to be a bit unrealistic. 2 amps at 2200 rpm is 460 watts assuming 230 volts. The Intelliflo has a total efficiency electrical power/hydraulic power of about 40% at 2200 RPM. So let's assume the Hybrid is twice as efficient as the Intelliflo, which is very unlikely because wet ends are not all that efficient no matter how they design the impeller. So with a total efficiency of 80%, the most power that 460 watts could deliver to the water is 368 watts or 0.49 HHP. With 76 GPM, the head loss cannot be more than 26' which is extremely low for 76 GPM. For 2" pipe, 26' of head is about 300' of equivalent pipe which is pretty low for a typical pool. Most pools will have closer to 500' of equivalent 2' pipe. Even if you assume 100% efficiency, the head loss could not exceed 32' of head which is still extremely low for 76 GPM.

The laws of physics cannot be violated no matter how good the pump may be so I just don't think the numbers they are quoting are realistic. I would really be interested in ttmatsu's numbers from an actual installation.
 
Bruce, (and Mark)

Thanks for the replies. Bruce, one of the things you mentioned was that the Pentair requires a computer to work, and that for folks that don't have a computer, they would have to purchase one.

I don't have a computer. But can't I just buy a Pentair Intelliflo VF, and run that directly? I see the VF on Amazon for less than $1200.

I have a older 28,000 gal pool with 1 1/2" piping, and 48 sq ft DE filter, current pump is 1hp, but is probably oversized, I think. No solar, or spa, just a pool. Oh, there is also a Pool Vac suction vacuum.

Thanks again
 
Pentair suggests using the manual mode on their pumps for service and testing only (http://www.pentairpool.com/pdfs/IntelliFloOm.pdf). The VF is the 4 function IntelliFlo, which gives you 4 speeds/flow to choose from. You have to "hope" that one of those speeds is right for what you are trying to do. The Hybrid allows you to choose any speed (in increments of 1, 10, 100 or 1,000) to fully customize your needs (for example, if you wanted to run everything on your pool, and 1,824 rpm's is ideal for that, you can set it there).

It really just depends on what you are trying to achieve and what your parameters are. I happen to have automation on my pool, so I could use any pump. If you don't, then you need to know what is needed to really make this work best for you. maybe a 2 speed pump will achieve your needs, and you don't have to go up to a pump with 4 (or more) speed options.

Again, I love Pentair equipment, and have a great working relationship with them. I just feel like for total flexibility and water movement/energy savings, the Hybrid pump is a better product. Just my .02!
 
From what I understand, the 4x160 allows you to program each of the four speed to anything you want you are just limited to a total of four speeds but not limited to what those four speeds are.
 
mas985 said:
From what I understand, the 4x160 allows you to program each of the four speed to anything you want you are just limited to a total of four speeds but not limited to what those four speeds are.
Click to expand...

I believe you are mostly right, although I don't believe that you can work within parameters of 1, and it may only go as low as increments of 50. With the Hybrid, you can make the water do what you want, independent of flow or rpm alone. Like I said, if your pool runs best at 1,824, with whatever items you wish to run, then you can set it at that and go. I'm not sure that that is that critical, but I do like that I have the ability to dial it in to wherever I think it is running the best.

With that said, mine is set at an even 2,200 :oops: .......
 
Bruce,

Do you sell pumps? I see the Hybrid on your website. And a connection with Pentair.

The Pentair Intelliflo VS3050 (or I think the older 4x160 that Mark referred to) has 4 speed settings according to the Pentair VS3050 instructions. But you can set them to any speed between 400rpm and 3450 rpm, in 10 rpm increments, not the 50 you suggest.

Looking at the PDF file for Pentair VF instructions, can't you effectively select the speed or flow of the Pentair VF pump, by just selecting the amount of time you want the pump to work?

For instance, say you had a 24,000 gallon pool.

If you pumped all 24 hours in a day, that would be 1,000 gallons an hour, or 16.67 gpm.
If you selected to pump 16 hours, then that would be 1,500 gallons/hour, or 25 gpm.
If you selected to pump 12 hours, then that would be 2,000 gallons/hour, or 33.33 gpm.
Etc.

And there is Feature 3 - Feature 9, which look like you can program for GPM flow rates.

So, I a bit confused when you said the Pentair Intelliflo VF I had referenced earlier has only 4 speeds to choose from. The VF is actually Pentair's most programmable variable speed pump, from what I can tell.

Thanks,

Jeff
 
Well, I'm going to leak some of what I am preparing to write in my review of the Hybrid in my response to Peter and ride525.

Peter,
The numbers used by Hybrid are from a test tank so they really aren't applicable to a real pool. Of course, every pool is different and even with the same plumbing and equipment, pools next door to each other will come out with different numbers. But in my situation (2 inch pipe, DE filter, Heater and a bunch of 90s before the pipe ever gets into the ground), 2200 rpm pushes 30 gpm with 432 watts. If I open my pressure side valve to pool and spa, gpm goes up to 34 and if I also open my suction to pool and spa, it goes up to 38. As Hybrid told me, the pump can only suck as much as it is pushing and it can only push as much as it is sucking. So if I had more efficient plumbing, I would see a big increase in performance. You are probably seeing less than 30 gpm at 2200 rpm due to having smaller pipe but if you have fewer 90s and more efficiency elsewhere (like no heater), you may be getting the same or better performance.

ride525,
Why I chose Hybrid over Pentair. First, as others have posted, pentair customer support via their centralized phone/email center stinks. I'm sure that if you know a pool professional, you will get better support from the local Pentair support reps that work with pool pros but their central customer support leaves a lot to be desired. Second, Jason (he is just an incredible source of information - same with Mark...thanks guys!) reported that users are starting to report failures in the VS/VF as they get to the 3 or 4 year mark in age. Third, when I was making the purchase decision, Pentair still didn't have the drive or timer field replaceable so you were buying a new pump (that seems to have changed but I don't know how much they charge for a new drive). Conversely, when you email or call Hybrid, you can talk directly to their main R&D guy. No one has reported a pump or drive failure online for Hybrid and they claim to have never had a pump failure in the field (meaning they've blown up pumps in the lab during testing but never had a pump fail at a customer site). Hybrid uses an external drive and Hybrid estimated the replacement cost just for the drive at around $300 retail. So I knew the pump and drive were replaceable independent of each other and I knew the cost of the drive plus Bruce lives near me and and has run his for years.

Additional advantage the VF/VS+SVRS has is the built in timer that allows you to switch speeds without an external device. The VF has a flowmeter although no one can tell you how it works (whether it is an actual measurement of flow or an algorithm that converts data to flow). I have a $70 blue-white flowmeter (the 18 - 70 gpm model). If you don't need automation or you already have automation, the Hybrid costs a couple of hundred less than the VF. An interesting thing with the Hybrid is that you can hook up a rheostat to the drive and control the speed via the rheostat.

If you are just filtering and running 24X7 at the slowest possible speed, the VS/VF will be more economical. All the postings on gpm and watts translating to cost per turnover indicate a linear relationship - meaning the slower the rpm, the lower the cost per turnover. Hybrid is designed a little differently. It is most efficient closer to the mid rpm range. If you graphed their cost per turnover, it would look more like the Nike swoosh - slightly higher at low rpm then going down then back up. That's why the installers all recommend using 1800 to 2200 as your default speed.

Lastly, if you are thinking about getting a variable speed pump and you are close to the San Diego area, contact Bruce - he's the simicrintz poster at Pool Services Technologies and get a quote from him - tell him you saw his posts on TFP and he might give you a TFP discount. He and Sal installed mine and although they sell other services, no hard sell on anything and he didn't even mention that they sell the liquidator - I had to read about it on this forum after they told me I had to switch to liquid chlorine because of my CYA level. And yes, Bruce, you were right that I should have used your reverse osmosis process on my pool instead of draining it.
 
ttmatsu,

Thanks for replying.

I do like the idea of separate controller and pump. But it's hard to find out much information about the Hybrid pump online,nor can I even find instruction manual for it, or it's controller. And the Hybrid website claims it is only sold and installed in 4 counties in Southern California. I do not live in those 4 counties, I live in Northern California.

I do see Bruce, or simicrintz, has posted to this thread above both about the Hydro pump, which he sells, and some about the Intelliflo. As for cost, I can find the VF on Amazon for a bit less than $1,200. Bruce's website has the Hybrid X2 for almost $300 more at $1,495.

I'm probably going to run the pump most for filtering, and some with the Pool Vac, suction vacuum at the skimmer. It's not clear to me if I will need to change the flow when using the Pool Vac.

Jeff
 
ttmatsu said:
And yes, Bruce, you were right that I should have used your reverse osmosis process on my pool instead of draining it.
Click to expand...

I never said a word, Ted :cool: Thanks for the admission though :-D

ride525 (I assume you are a KTM owner :goodjob: ): Here's a copy of the Hybrid Pump Manual attached (at least the one that I have). Hopefully it will give you a little more information.

Edit (Before Posting!): The file is too big to post here. I can email it to you if you want to PM me your email.
 

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