How long to run pump

[spartanduner]

We just purchased a home with a pool which is our first. I am looking for some advice on how long I should run my pump and filter each day. The pool/spa combo is probably about 13,000 gallons as far as I can figure. I have a chlorine generator, 2hp Whisperflo WFE-8 pump, and a Pentair CCP420 cartridge filter rated at 150 gallons per minute. I know that the actual flow rate will depend on the amount of head loss I have but I am looking for an educted guess based on my equipment and rules of thumb as far as head loss with my type of setup. Here are some photos of the pool and equipment labels.

Also does the 02 stamped on the filter label mean that it was manufactured in 2002? I am asking because this would help me determine how old the pool is.

Thanks,

Derek

 

[MEvan]

Do you have 2 inch or 1.5 inch plumbing? Is it 1.5 with a 2 inch manifold? You are correct in your statement about head loss. If you would calculate suction and pressure side head, or check what your getting with a flometer, we could give you an exact time. I can give you a pretty good estimate here though. A 2 HP wisperflow is a very large pump, almost excessively so. Your pool looks like it might be larger than 13,000 gallons to me but its tough to tell from a picture so we will assume your right.
Your target on any commercial pool is 6 turnovers of your water per day. Lets try for that and then these residential guys can tell me if im going overboard for you. A system with all 1.5 inch pipe rarely exceed 45 gallons a minute. 36 is the fastest you can move through it efficiently. 60 -80 GPM seems to be a pretty good ball park estimate to me for your system if it is 2 inch, im leaning towards 80 with that monster of a pump. Sorry im doing this from memory, I dont ahve my speck books here now.
So lets assume you are turning over 80 gallons every minute.
80 gallons times 60 minutes in an hour = 4800 gallons per hour
13000 times 6 = 78,000 gallons a day
78,000 / 4800 = 16.25 hours

run your pump for 16 hours a day. This is probobly overkill, so you might want to wait for more input, but if your pool was public this is right around what you would ahve to do...
In all honesty I think you will be good around 8-12 hours a Day.

 

[spartanduner]

Do you have 2 inch or 1.5 inch plumbing? Is it 1.5 with a 2 inch manifold? You are correct in your statement about head loss. If you would calculate suction and pressure side head, or check what your getting with a flometer, we could give you an exact time. I can give you a pretty good estimate here though. A 2 HP wisperflow is a very large pump, almost excessively so. Your pool looks like it might be larger than 13,000 gallons to me but its tough to tell from a picture so we will assume your right.
Your target on any commercial pool is 6 turnovers of your water per day. Lets try for that and then these residential guys can tell me if im going overboard for you. A system with all 1.5 inch pipe rarely exceed 45 gallons a minute. 36 is the fastest you can move through it efficiently. 60 -80 GPM seems to be a pretty good ball park estimate to me for your system if it is 2 inch, im leaning towards 80 with that monster of a pump. Sorry im doing this from memory, I dont ahve my speck books here now.
So lets assume you are turning over 80 gallons every minute.
80 gallons times 60 minutes in an hour = 4800 gallons per hour
13000 times 6 = 78,000 gallons a day
78,000 / 4800 = 16.25 hours

run your pump for 16 hours a day. This is probobly overkill, so you might want to wait for more input, but if your pool was public this is right around what you would ahve to do...
In all honesty I think you will be good around 8-12 hours a Day.

Wow thank you very much for the informative response. I too thought the pump seemed a bit large for my pool when I was looking at the flow ratings. But I would much rather have a pump that is overkill versus one that is too small. This pool does not see very much use as it is just my wife and I. It seems that the general consensus is 2 turnovers per day for a residential pool is adequate. When this theory is applied with your flowrate guess of 4800 gallons per hour I should theoretically only need to run the pump for 6 hours per day. Is this correct? If I can get the chlorine generator to maintain the level would this be alright? The reason I am trying to figure this out is that our first electric/gas bill was $213 for a 20 day period when I had the pool running for 8 hours per day and we hardly used the AC in the house and the pool heater was not running. This seemed pretty high to us and we thought that if we could safely reduce the run time of the pump it would help a bit.

Thanks again

 

[Rockcrawler]

I have a Pentair Whisper 2 h.p. 2" plumping 13,000 gal gunit pool no spa, with SWG I run my pool 8 hrs a day (timer) when I am swimming weekends, after work, the pump gets turned on.

Water crystal clear

hope this helps

Rob

winter time, 4 hrs a day, I do not winterize here, (El Paso TX)

 

[mas985]

With a 2 HP Whisperflo and 2" plumbing, the flow rate will probably be at least 95 GPM with 70 feet of head. Higher if you have multiple 2" pipe runs. At that rate, turn over is a bit over 2 hrs so you should not need more than 6 hrs of run time per day (3 turns). I get by with less than 2 turnovers a day which would be 4 hr 30 min for you.