Hooray! New Pentair/Sta-Rite pad

[DoAsFan]

Hello all,
We just had our 30+ year old pad gutted. The pump was an old, noisy single speed, and just didn't want the hassle of handling DE. We had the rusty old Lars/Teledyne Mark V removed as well. We pulled the trigger on a new IntelliPro, cartridge filter, and EasyTouch. No gas heat yet. I'm waiting for Craigslist to turn up a gently used 325-400k btu.

The installer had set the pump to run at 2700 rpm, consuming about 1.1kWh, which puts 12 psi on the filter gauge. He recommended a 3 hour runtime in the winter, and doubling it in summer.

I was expecting to simply halve the speed and double the runtime to cash in on that oh so well advertised energy saving, but the installer says that I need to maintain 10-12 psi to filter properly.

My question (which I've also submitted to Pentair support) is: What is the minimum operating pressure for my filter? If I can't utilize the lower speeds, seems like I've sunk in a chunk of cash for nothing...

 

[mas985]

Your installer is incorrect. There is no minimum pressure. Pressure does not affect filtering. However, flow rate does and the lower the flow rate, the better the filtering although you have to compensate with run time.

 

[DoAsFan]

That's good news... well, not good that the installer is providing shoddy info.

I'll be tweaking speed and runtime asap.

Regarding cleaning though, will I need to run the pump at higher speed during clean cycles? I have a Polaris with a booster pump, but not sure if the booster needs the filter pump to be on high also.

Thanks!

 

[JasonLion]

As long as you have a separate booster pump for the cleaner, the main pump can be on a low speed while the cleaner is running. People without a booster pump often need to turn up the speed, but you shouldn't have to.