Multiple pumps on one pool

[SA Pentair User]

I have 2 pumps (complete with individual filters, ozone, UV etc.) at my holiday home. The reason for the double up is the size of the pool (110,000 litres).

I have been running these for 12 hours concurrently for the last couple of years and the pool looks great. I increase this to about 16 hours when we are in residence (about 10% of the time).

Before asking my question, I do acknowledge that the obvious answer is “if its not broken, don’t change it”.

I have become a little more electricity (and cost) conscious of late and was wondering how long I actually need to run the pumps. Also, is it best to run the pumps at the same time or is it better to run them at different times, meaning the pool is filtering more hours a day?

As I ask myself this, I do wonder if I even needed 2 filtrations systems. But that is not the question for today!

Three small wrinkles:
1. There is an IntelliChem on one of the circuits - so if I move to running them at different times, should this circuit run day or run night or should I be running both circuits for a shorter time period twice over 24 hours?

2. There is a heat pump on both circuits (irrelevant when we are not I residence, but I guess that when we are in residence, one wants this running during daytime hours?)

3. There are also 2 Paramount in floor cleaning systems (PV3). One on each pump - doing half the pool each. They currently keep the pool floor perfectly clean!

I was thinking of dropping the run times (when we are not in residence) to 4 hours for pump A, 2 hours off, 4 hours for pump B, 2 hours off, 4 hours for pump A, 2 hours off etc. Which would be a 33% power saving.

Thanks in advance!

 

[rstrouse]

The reason for the 2 pumps/filters is because of the dual PV3s. Perhaps you could designate the one pump/filter as your main circulation pump and run that one with the IntelliChem long and slow. Leave the other one on a feature circuit that only turns on when it is cleaning the other zone. So you would have a schedule that ramps up the RPM for the one PV3 to do a cleaning cycle then reverts back to low flow and the other that only comes on when it needs to do a cleaning circuit. The driver for the high flow times would be based upon how much debris you get. The IntelliChem should operate at very low rpm. In the end you have one of the filter circuits that only comes on for the minimum amount of time required to run the PV3.

When you are in residence you could set up a feature that kicks the second circuit on to run the other heat pump. If you set up vacation schedules in IntelliCenter you could also use those and simply switch between here and away. Be warned they are a bit clunky.