I want to reduce my hydro bills by running my vs pump at night rather than 24/7 on low. My off-peak rate (7pm-7am) is half the cost of my on-peak rate (11am-5pm). One article recommended starting at 8 hours but some posts recommend 2-4 hours and state that a full turnover is not necessary. What should I start with and at what rpm? Right now it's at 1250 but I find that it's not enough for the skimmer to adequate gather surface debris. It hasn't been a big problem since we don't have trees, but I find myself manually skimming off more bugs and pollen than my old two speed that ran at a higher rpm.
getting started with overnight runtime
- Thread starter abfab
- Start date
- May 3, 2014
- 58,717
- Pool Size
- 6000
- Surface
- Fiberglass
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
With a SWCG, run time is mostly tied to the time needed to generate your chlorine, followed by the time needed to keep the water clean.
When generating chlorine at night, you need to be sure you are generating enough that at sunset, you still have target level FC.
Pump speed is first what is needed to close the flow switch on the SWCG, followed by what is needed to skim the pool surface.
Take care.
When generating chlorine at night, you need to be sure you are generating enough that at sunset, you still have target level FC.
Pump speed is first what is needed to close the flow switch on the SWCG, followed by what is needed to skim the pool surface.
Take care.
CJadamec
TFP Expert
Depending on how much you heat the pool running the pump at night with increase your heat loss in the water which might make the economics of saving money to run the pump end up costing you more in lost heat.
If you are running that pump at 1250 rpm it's only consuming around 150watts of power which is about 1kW/hr of use per day.
If you are running that pump at 1250 rpm it's only consuming around 150watts of power which is about 1kW/hr of use per day.