Hayward Tri-Star Variable Speed

[Keithb]

We just had our pool completed, and get the luxury of watching it until next year because I'm not a polar bear. The kids did get to swim in it a day or two right before one of the earliest cold fronts in South Texas blew in. I wanted to post some results I've seen with the Hayward Variable speed units. When I ran electric for the pool equipment, I wired in a 100 amp meter service behind my primary residential meter so I could tell exactly what this pool is costing me. (bad idea to know that now)

We have a 1.85 hp Hayward TriStar variable speed on our pool and a 1.25 hp single speed on our water features. We kicked it on for the first time on November 11th full speed. On November 14th I cleaned the filters and on November 15th, I changed the run times for 4-5 hours on high speed and the remainder of the day on low speed.

Top-left graph shows the pool pump demand for full speed. If it ran non-stop that would be 1.57 x 24 hr = 37.68 kwh/day. The top-right graph shows the pool pump demand running at 50% which running non-stop would be .23 x 24 hr = 5.52 kwh/day.

The middle-left graph shows the pool pump and water feature pump kicking on yesterday morning due to the freeze protection. At approximately 5 am it kicked on and then again around 6:45 am. Combined kw for both the pool at full speed and water feature pump is 2.94 kw. The middle-right graph is the pool pump running non-stop until I changed the settings to 50% for a majority of the day. The bottom-left graph shows the KWH/day usage for the pool pump running non-stop until November 14th where I cleaned the filters and on November 15th where I changed the schedule.

Granted the water flow is relatively low on 50%, you can see the energy savings if you can still turn the water over. I plan to play around with the different % on high speed to see what the demand looks like on those as well. I may never run it on high speed if I can get the turn over and have savings on the electric meter.

Hope this is beneficial to others. Now to figuring out this water chemistry and I'll be happy.

 

[JasonLion]

Unless you have a spa or large water feature that require it, there is never any reason to run on high speed. Even medium speed is questionable. You want to run on the lowest speed where the skimmer, heater, SWG (if you have one), etc. all work well. That is typically a quite low speed, perhaps 20%, though you need to experiment to find out exactly what speed that is on your pool.

Turnovers are not a meaningful goal. That is just an old rule of thumb developed for commercial pools with high bather load, and does not apply to residential pools.

See the ideal pump run time article in Pool School for more information.

 

[Keithb]

If you have a Polaris 360 or similar pool cleaner that doesn't require a booster pump, I don't believe a low speed/volume will be enough to run the appliance. My intentions are to at least run it with enough speed/volume to move the cleaner at the proper speed for about 2 hours or however long it takes to clean it on average and the rest on low speed. Our pool is plumbed for a booster pump but I'd prefer to not have another pump. The Polaris was an add-on, as we purchased the TigerShark but I have a feeling it won't get put into the pool routinely like it's supposed to.

 

[JasonLion]

That makes sense. A pool cleaner powered by the main pump often needs a higher speed. Experiment to find the lowest speed that still gives you the desired movement from the pool cleaner, likely to be somewhere around 50% to 80%.

Note: a side conversation about pump speed and run time has been moved to here.

 

[Keithb]

Unless you have a spa or large water feature that require it, there is never any reason to run on high speed. Even medium speed is questionable. You want to run on the lowest speed where the skimmer, heater, SWG (if you have one), etc. all work well. That is typically a quite low speed, perhaps 20%, though you need to experiment to find out exactly what speed that is on your pool.

Turnovers are not a meaningful goal. That is just an old rule of thumb developed for commercial pools with high bather load, and does not apply to residential pools.

See the ideal pump run time article in Pool School for more information.

To revive an old thread, I'm considering only running on low speed 24 hours/day. My only concern is the chlorinator water flow is so minimal if any on low speed due to the pressure I'm assuming. Is there a way to increase water pressure to chlorinators? At first build, the valve was on the bottom plug of the chlorinator, but we had low chlorine issues so they moved it to the top plug. I'm not sure if that made any difference at all. We did find the screen & check valve on the bottom of our chlorinator plugged up once. The chlorine was depleting in the chorinator with 0 chlorine in the pool.

 

[1poolman1]

To revive an old thread, I'm considering only running on low speed 24 hours/day. My only concern is the chlorinator water flow is so minimal if any on low speed due to the pressure I'm assuming. Is there a way to increase water pressure to chlorinators? At first build, the valve was on the bottom plug of the chlorinator, but we had low chlorine issues so they moved it to the top plug. I'm not sure if that made any difference at all. We did find the screen & check valve on the bottom of our chlorinator plugged up once. The chlorine was depleting in the chorinator with 0 chlorine in the pool.

You would be better off using a floating tablet feeder if you are going to use them. An inline/offline tablet feeder usually will not be able to keep up with the chlorine demand of a pool. A floating chlorinator won't either, but at lest the chlorine will get to the pool a bit faster and they don't clog. An SWG is your best option.