Filter cleaning vs robot cleaning?

[smallpool]

What should be the balance between pool filtering (going the filter, ozinator, clorinator) vs what a robot cleaner (such as the Dolphin Premier with a 2 micron filter)? Or do you even take into account the cleaning robot's cleaning ability?

If I run my pool pump @1200 gph, I'd run it for 10 hours to turn over the water once. The Premier cleans @4500 gph, so in it's 2.5 hr cycle, it'll almost (11250) filter the same amount of water. My Intelliflo will use 1500w vs 540 for the Premier for the same 12K gal of filtered water.

Power-wise, it would seem better to split these two uses to get a 2x turnover of my pool. However, I don't know how to judge the cleaning tradeoffs.

 

[mas985]

Filtering of the water isn't exactly necessary. Most debris that a filter can remove will either float or sink. So if you don't need any skimming time to remove the floating debris, then the only other factor is chlorination. So I would just run the pump long enough to get enough chlorine in the pool.

My pool is almost twice as big as yours and I only run the pump 4 hours in the summer (1 hr on high, 3 hrs on low) and 2 hour in the winter. I would go shorter if my SWG could keep up.

 

[pwrstrk]

Don't be too focused on getting one or more water turnovers a day. Most pools can be just fine with less than one turnover.

I run my pump about five - six hours a day, split up in two intervals. I could get by with less if there were no trees around. My water is just fine with that. Nice and sparkly !!