Intelliflo VS 3050 question

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ajones02

ajones02

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Feb 4, 2010
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Keller, Texas
Ok, I've posted several times on a separate forum on this website which has proved to be VERY beneficial. Now i'm moving on to the technical side of things if that possible with pool ownership.

I have a Intelliflo VS 3050 pump for my pool and spa. The PB originally set it up (and still is) @3000 RPM for 8 hours to turn over 18,700 gallons 1.5 times per day. it's currently set to run everyday of the week from 8-5. part of the reason i "negotiated" for the variable speed pump was the electricity savings which quite frankly i don't feel that we are benefiting from.

So, my math tells me that being set at the RPM's above, i'm turning over 28,050 gallons of water per day or 3506.25 gals per hr or 58.44 gals per minute. common sense tells me that if i set it considerably lower than 3000 RPM's but run the pump longer, my savings would be more significant.

not sure this can be answered here or not as i'm not familiar enough with head pressure and that kind of thing but i can say the plumbing is 2 inches and the pump and filter sit approximately 60 feet away from the nearest return to the pool.

i feel confident that i've not included enough information here so i will be glad to answer any questions that are asked.

obviously my main goal is electricity savings and not comprimising the chemical side of it and if i need to run the pump 12 hours a day at 2000 RPM's i'd be very happy to do that.

any help would be appreciated! :hammer:
 
Using a spreadsheet put together by Mark with pump data gathered by the California Energy Commission, you could run your pump for 2 hours at 3000 rpm to run the pool cleaner with the booster then have it run at 1000 rpm for 15.75 hours for a estimated 1.5 turnover rate. As you stated, there are other factors in determining rpm and flow but those numbers will get you close. If you weren't concerned with the cleaner, you could run at 1000 rpm for 21.25 hours to get 1.5 turnover.
 
As ttmatsu suggested, the least expensive way to run the IntelliFlo is at about 1000 RPM. You will need to run it longer at that speed then you would at 3000 RPM. Despite the longer run time, the total electrical usage will be much lower. I suspect that a run time around 12 hours will be fine at 1000 RPM, but it might need to be a little longer.

The pool cleaner does not need a higher IntelliFlo speed because it has it's own booster pump. Nor do you need 1.5 turnovers per day, 1 turnover should be plenty.
 
The only thing that I would add is that the slow speeds can have an effect on enough flow for the skimmer to work effectively. I currently run mine for 8hrs at 2000 rpm and will slow it down and increase the hours as the temperature gets hotter. 3000 rpm is definitely not taking advantage of the energy saving features of this motor/pump.

The PB's in our area are not quite with it on the energy efficiency stuff - mine was set up exactly as yours when our pool was turned over to us in February.

You're on the right track - try different times/speeds to find your optimal settings.

Regards,

Jim
 
Definitely run the pump at a lower speed for more hours. I think I'm currently running at 1,200 RPM for 10 hours. I seem to remember that the watts used at this speed is approximately 400 watts. Therefore in 10 hours I'm using 4,000 watts of power. I'm currently paying $.10/KWH so my cost to run the pump is about .40/day or about $12 per month. This seems about right. Attached is a video that really helped me understand the energy usage of a variable speed pump.

[youtube:1pu07zzz]4dIz4R-1d2k[/youtube:1pu07zzz]
 
thanks for all of the information folks. i've actually seen the video a couple of times and it really makes sense of all the madness. i actually reduced the speed several times during the winter due to the freeze guard kicking in. i did notice that at slower speeds, when the cleaner comes on at 10 am through 1 pm, it raised back to 3000 RPM. is that a setting i can change to not do that? i cleaner does have it's own booster pump so i'm a little confused why the speed kicks back up to 3000 RPM's during this time. also, if i'm thinking correctectly and ran the pump at 1500 RPM's for 16 hours a day, i would get the same impact of turning the water over 1.5 times a day?

thanks again everyone.
 
Since you have the Easytouch controller, all of the speeds are configured there. If you go into settings for the intelliflo, you should be able to configure what speed the pump runs at for circulation and for cleaner. When the schedule kicks off the booster pump it also is changing the speed of the intelliflo. I think you can set up to 8 speeds in the intelliflo for different situations. In my case, I also have settings for SPA mode, and spillway mode.
 
Things like that usually happen when something completely unrelated goes wrong, the service technician thinks the problem is because the IntelliFlo is on too low a speed and gets that fixed in their mind, then much later figures out what was really going wrong. Forever afterwards they think "an IntelliFlo needs to be on at least 3000 RPM for everything to work right", even though that was never the issue in the first place.
 

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We have an in-floor cleaning system which has a dedicated pump separate from the main circulation pump. The reason that the main circulation pump speed is increased when the cleaning cycle is running is to increase the flow from the 2 fixed nozzles which are pointed at the main drain and also to increase the suction at the main drain. In my pool, I run a cleaning cycle 3 times a day for 1 hour each. I do this from 8-9, 12-1, and 4-5pm. The rest of the time, the Intelliflo goes back to a low speed to circulate the water at a much lower energy rate. When the Cleaning pump is off and the Intelliflo is running at low speed, the fixed nozzles are still directing debris down to the main drain, but the flow is not as stong so its not as efficient. My Intelliflo is set to 2,400 RPM during the cleaning cycle. That seems to work fine in my pool.

With your setup with a Polaris and dedicated booster pump, I'm not sure why it would even matter what speed the main circulation pump runs at. I would keep setting the Intelliflo lower and see how well the Polaris cleans.
 
ok, i've had some time today to mess with the setting. set the pump to run at 1800 RPMs since that appears to be the lowest speed that will allow my skimmers to work properly. i also changed the pump speed so that when my cleaner comes on for 3 hours, the pool pump remains at 1800 RPM and the cleaner appears to be working fine. now just need to try and figure out how long to run it at 1800 RPM's.
 
jcourt said:
The only thing that I would add is that the slow speeds can have an effect on enough flow for the skimmer to work effectively. I currently run mine for 8hrs at 2000 rpm and will slow it down and increase the hours as the temperature gets hotter. 3000 rpm is definitely not taking advantage of the energy saving features of this motor/pump.
Click to expand...
I think I've seen posts suggesting that running at high speed maybe for an hour a couple times a day will let the skimmer do its thing properly. Of course if you have a solar cover there's no point, as there's no true skimming action regardless of pump speed.
--paulr
 
yea, i've seen that as well. i actually adjusted it back up when the cleaner is on in hopes that the skimmers will be able to do a better job. i'm going to run it at 1800 RPM for 10 hours and then for three hours bump it up to 2500 RPM's.
 
just wanted to thank everyone for the input on this post. i actually spoke with my PB looking for some assistance and he referred me to the PENTAIR rep for this area who in turn referred me to PENTAIR SME in regards to the VS or VF pumps. he was EXTREMELY helpful and echoed many of the sentiments and suggestions that were made here on this website. he actually made the comment that we was familiar with troublefreepools and felt that everyone was extremely helpful on this website. he actually took the time to help me reprogram my remote to better utilize the equipment that i had installed. so i programmed my pump to run for 12 hours at 1700 rpm and then bump it to 2200 for the 3 hours the cleaner is running. he suggested that i run the cleaner later in the day if the skimmers weren't working well enough at 1700 so that if i get home at 5 pm, i can go clean the skimmer baskets out before the speed kicks back down. so the cleaner is set to run from 3PM to 6PM, thought that was a great idea as well. also another lesson learned, if you extend the hours of your pump, reduce the chlorinator!!!!!!!!!! DOH
 
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