AutoPilot with Variable Speed Pump?

[TreeFiter]

I have a customer that has an Auto Pilot SWG and a Pentair SVRS pump. I don't know much about variable speed pumps. My boss doesn't like to work with them (I think hes an idiot). I've been struggling with this pool every week. There are multiple problems that the customer doesn't want to address (losing water). I regularly find the pool with low FC. I finally made a bit of a breakthrough when this customer went away on vacation.

I realized that the AutoPilot system would not function at the lower pump speeds. So I left the pump running at the highest setting and surprise, surpise, there was plenty of FC in the pool the following week, even after several inches of water was added.

I'm no expert on AutoPilot SWGs (again, my idiot boss doesn't want anything to do with them), but I've been able to figure out quite a bit up to this point. Within the Installer Menu, there is an option to set it up for a 2 speed pump. Will this allow it to function with an SVRS at lower speeds, or does this just let you use the AutoPilot controls to change the pump speed?

Did this customer get screwed by the pool builder, or is there a way to make this combination work at lower speeds?

 

[jblizzle]

Sounds like they have the pump speed set too low and thus not enough flow to let the SWG run. I do not know what the setting in the Autopilot related to 2speed pump would be for though

 

[TreeFiter]

I did try changing the setting, and it let me use the AutoPilot controls to change the pump from speed 1 to speed 2 and to off instead of just on and off. The pump only ran in one speed in both 1 and 2, but the off function did work. It might be so that you can set a schedule to run at full speed and run the SWG for so many hours and then switch to the slower speed to keep filtering and circulating without the SWG at a more energy efficient speed.

I do remember reading somewhere that the AutoPilot wouldn't work with variable speed pumps, but I don't know if that's accurate.

 

[ping]

What you need to do is find the lowest speed setting that still allows the SWG to get enough flow to work. The low setting is too slow to produce enough flow and the pump needs to be set to a higher low-speed setting. Try raising the low-speed a couple hundred more RPM and see if that works. A little experimenting with pump speeds is needed in order to get the most benefit of the variable speed pump and SWG combination.

The AutoPilot will certainly work with a variable speed pump as AutoPilot has one of the lowest flow requirement. What people fail to understand is that variable speed pumps can not run at their lowest speed and still have enough flow for SWG's.