How Long to Run the Filter?

[dfiletti]

Hey folks-

Been reading your post, good stuff! Had a couple of quick questions if I may? I'm inclined to run my pump 24/7. It's a Jandy 1.5 HP motor which is not at all noisy, so there's no down side there.

Seems to me the reason people do not run thier filter 24/7 are as follows:

Noise: (as I said this does not bother me at all)
Cost: (my data is confounded due to air conditioners -not sure what running the pump 24/7 would cost over not at all -any input?)
Wear/ Tear: I can see how motor life is finite and all, but I'm thinking that increasing the on/off cycles will have an impact on logevity as well. Is one better tha another on the motor?

Any others?

I'd be curious what some of you folks do in this area and why if you would not mind.

Thanks,

Dan

 

[mas985]

Cost is the biggest issue for most people. A 1.5 HP pump will use about 2 kwh/hr. 24/7, that is about a 1400 kwh per month. We pay close to $ 0.32 per kwh so that is $460 per month but your rates may be less. Even at $0.10 per kwh, that is $140/month.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

Hi,
We have a 2hp 2 speed pump. Into our 7th pool season now and we have always run it on low 24/7 except when vacuming the pool.

Our June bill, the kwh incrased by about 300, so that would account for the pool pump and 2 weeks of the air conditioner. About a $35 increase.

I am a terrible procrastinator, I should have bought a timer years ago, I just never bothered....so the 24/7 is out of shear laziness...

 

[flintstone]

I have a 2 hp Sta-rite and it is noisy. I live in a very quiet neighborhood, so like to keep the noise to a minimum, especially at night. I read a post this past winter regarding pump run times that I use and seems to keep my water clean; I run my pump one hour for every ten degrees of water temperature. That gives me four hours in the winter and 8 hours in the summer. Hasn't failed me yet.

 

[dfiletti]

Hi,
We have a 2hp 2 speed pump. Into our 7th pool season now and we have always run it on low 24/7 except when vacuming the pool.

Our June bill, the kwh incrased by about 300, so that would account for the pool pump and 2 weeks of the air conditioner. About a $35 increase.

I am a terrible procrastinator, I should have bought a timer years ago, I just never bothered....so the 24/7 is out of shear laziness...

I must say, I like your numbers better than Marc's

OK, so I did a little math and I think I'll fall somewhere in the middle between the two. Although I do not have a big enough sample size, and there are +/- 1 million confounding variables to controle for before I couls know for sure, but, such is life...

What I can surmise; My filter ran for 24 hours/ day for 5 days prior to the billing/ read date. I had an additional 105 kwh this bill over last bill. My per kwh charge is .1485 cents per kwh. Extrapolating; this would mean that my cost for running 24/7 comes to an additional $93.56/ month. I also have the A/C on now so again it will be difficult to account for. I know I could turn everything in the house that's potentially variable off and measure the kwh for a fixed amount of time with the pump in both states subtract and multiply... but that's a fair bit of trouble just now, so I'll take the wait and see approach. (That is of course my next bill looks more like Marc's prediction in which case I'll be out there with my stop watch...


Anyone care to chime in on whether it's better for a motors' longevity to run it 24/7 vs. multiple on/ off cycles?

Thanks folks!

Dan

 

[mas985]

Ok, so at $0.15 per kwh (rounded) and 1400 kwh/month (this is probably pretty close), your bill just for the pump should be about $210/month. If you went to 8 hr cycles, that would reduce to $70/month or a savings of $140/month.

A 1 1/2 HP pump will turnover your pool in much less than 8 hrs so I wouldn't expect that you wouldn't actually need more than 8 hrs of run time per day so why do it? With the savings in only 4 months, you would pay for a new pump so it really doesn't pay to worry about cycling it on and off. So what if it puts more stress on the pump you are saving so much money that you could replace the pump several times and still come out ahead. The fact is that new pumps made today are probably not really affected much by the power cycle once a day.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

Let me just point out that here in the Chicago suburbs our electricity is controlled by the politicians and powers that be that decide how much the local energy companies can charge per KWH. They are unnaturally low and have been that way for a decade.

Don't get me started......

 

[dfiletti]

Ok, so at $0.15 per kwh (rounded) and 1400 kwh/month (this is probably pretty close), your bill just for the pump should be about $210/month. If you went to 8 hr cycles, that would reduce to $70/month or a savings of $140/month.

A 1 1/2 HP pump will turnover your pool in much less than 8 hrs so I wouldn't expect that you wouldn't actually need more than 8 hrs of run time per day so why do it? With the savings in only 4 months, you would pay for a new pump so it really doesn't pay to worry about cycling it on and off. So what if it puts more stress on the pump you are saving so much money that you could replace the pump several times and still come out ahead. The fact is that new pumps made today are probably not really affected much by the power cycle once a day.

Marc-

I gather you're a bit of an expert on this, but help me out understanding my results please? If 24/5 = 105 kwh then 24/30 would be 630 kwh, not 1400. Your number comes from firmly grounded physics I'm guessing?

Let me know?

Thanks,

Dan