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[JamesW]

If you send unfiltered water through the sheer, it's going to get clogged with debris.

In my opinion, a single pump is enough.

The pump can get to 130 gpm as long as the plumbing is big enough. Plumbing size is critical.

The amount of water going to the sheer depends on the height above the water and how far you want it to project.

For a 3 foot elevation and a 15" projection, you need about 12 gpm per foot.

For a lower elevation or less projection, you can use less gpm/ft.

Ask the builder about automating the valves to do everything with one touch.

If you really want two pumps, I would definitely put a filter on both pumps.

You need a big cartridge filter to minimize the resistance of the filter at high flow.

If you want to use a second pump, you might want to use a dedicated feature pump, which is designed for fountains.

The ePump is a high head pump, which is not good for a fountain, which is low head.

Using a high head pump on a fountain uses a lot of unnecessary energy and is loud at full speed.

 

[PoolGate]

I am not familiar with the laminar jets but if they are color changing and the color can be changed with the iAqualink, then they should be able to set up the laminars on 2 circuits instead of one (2 on 1 circuit, 2 on the other), allowing each color pair to be controlled independently.

 

[Kozman23]

If you send unfiltered water through the sheer, it's going to get clogged with debris.

In my opinion, a single pump is enough.

The pump can get to 130 gpm as long as the plumbing is big enough. Plumbing size is critical.

The amount of water going to the sheer depends on the height above the water and how far you want it to project.

For a 3 foot elevation and a 15" projection, you need about 12 gpm per foot.

For a lower elevation or less projection, you can use less gpm/ft.

Ask the builder about automating the valves to do everything with one touch.

If you really want two pumps, I would definitely put a filter on both pumps.

You need a big cartridge filter to minimize the resistance of the filter at high flow.

If you want to use a second pump, you might want to use a dedicated feature pump, which is designed for fountains.

The ePump is a high head pump, which is not good for a fountain, which is low head.

Using a high head pump on a fountain uses a lot of unnecessary energy and is loud at full speed.

Thank you for the thinking points. I (and my builder) were concerned about running an 8' sheer, 4 laminars, 2 bubblers and the pool off one pump, but I understand your concern on filtering the sheer. Our feature wall is 2' tall so the sheer will probably sit at around 18" high.

With that in mind, what do you think of this setup:

Jandy 2.7HP VS E-Pump powering the pool and sheer (through the filter)
Jandy WFTR160 Water Feature Pump (160GPM) powering the Laminars and Bubblers (unfiltered)

Thinking the laminars and bubblers would have a far less chance of clogging as the outlets are larger? I'm really not interested in a second filter.

 

[JamesW]

The laminars have a filter screen that will get clogged with debris. It's not easy to access. In my opinion, the water needs to be filtered.

The installation manuals for the laminars and the sheer require a filter. If the features have any type of problem, the responding technician will note the lack of a filter and probably deny warranty because the filter is specified in the manual.

The height of the sheer means that you can probably go with about 80 gpm for the sheer.

I would estimate the laminars at 30 gpm (7.5 gpm each) for a 5 ft height at the top of the arc.

What will the bubblers require?

In my opinion, having all three at the same time will seem cool for a few runs and then, probably not a big deal.

Also, note that the colored laminars are nice while they work. But, my understanding is that they typically fail within a year or so. Maybe that's not accurate, but it's a big expense that's usually a disappointment when they fail and you can't find anyone who will work on them.

To make everything work on one pump, I would suggest that you have two skimmers each with a 2.5" pvc line to the pump and two main drains with 2" pvc into a T by the main drains and then a 2.5" line to the pump

The line to the sheer should be at least 2.5". Go to 3" if the combined total equivalent length of the pipe will be greater than 50 feet.

Try to keep the pump as far away from the pool as possible or in a pump room.

Variable speed pumps are pretty quiet at low speed. They can be quite annoying at full speed, especially when you're sitting out by the pool trying to relax and the pump is nearby. The back mounted fan is particularly annoying.