Hey all,
Bought my first house, came with my first pool. My electricity bill is absolutely ridiculous, most likely due to the pool pump running all the time.
Previous house owner was loaded, so I don't think this phased him at all, but I need a solution.
Anyway, have been doing homework, here is some background.
I have what I think is a 15,000 gal pool (estimated based on dimensions, it's a weird shape), with a spa that is elevated which dumps water over a fall into the main pool.
There is a Jandy SHPF-2.0 Stealth primary pump, a secondary pump for a few waterfalls (which we rarely run), and a heater. Everything is controlled via an Aqualink RS panel, which has a small remote panel in the house.
The previous owner had the pump set to run from 9am until 6pm every day. Being a know-nothing noob, we just assumed this was correct and let it roll. A few months later and a handful of massive power bills have led me to a lot of research.
I installed a flow meter in one of the check valves, and looks like the pump is doing about 70gpm when running. So that's about 3.6 hrs run time needed to circulate the entire pool, so I dialed the run time for the main pump down to that run time, and am hoping that solves a majority of the issue. However, I'm very interested in getting a variable speed pump, to reduce this power consumption even further, since we're gonna be in this house for many years.
Looking at specs on Jandy pumps at this URL: http://www.jandy.com/~/media/zodiac/global/downloads/sa/sa6228.pdf
If I'm reading this correctly, my SHPF-2.0 pump, pushing about 70gpm, it would appear as if my Feet of Head is about 80' or so, which I gather is relatively high. Without knowing any of the details on the pool piping, my guess is this is mainly due to the pump having to send water up to a higher elevation to the spa, which then overflows via the waterfall into the main pool.
Anyway, in researching what type of variable speed pump might be suitable, via that same link listed above, I'm concerned that these variable speed pumps, when running at a lower RPM, will not be able to accommodate that amount of Feet of Head, and that I may be stuck having to run a high HP pump to circulate the water properly.
Where I live (Pasadena, CA), the city will do a rebate on one model of Jandy pumps (I'm looking at them, mainly because that's what's hooked up there now) which is the VS FloPro pump.
However, looking again at that link, it would appear to accommodate 80 Feet of Head, I would need to install the larger VSFHP270 model, which has similar THP to the current pump (2.7) and would still need to run it at high speed, for a relatively similar amount of time, to be able to circulate the pool properly - which I would imagine that would end up being a complete wash, power-savings-wise, and hence not be worth the investment.
I guess my main question is, is there a minimum speed at which you must run a pump at, to overcome the Feet of Head metric - i.e. if I install a variable speed pump, will I still need to run the thing at high speed, to push the water through the pipes effectively? Or does that not really factor in, and I could indeed run a pump at lower speed, for a longer amount of time, and it would indeed be able to circulate the water correctly, but at a lower overall power consumption?
Apologies in advance if I'm being a complete dork here, and missing something that should be obvious.
Any help much appreciated!
Bought my first house, came with my first pool. My electricity bill is absolutely ridiculous, most likely due to the pool pump running all the time.
Previous house owner was loaded, so I don't think this phased him at all, but I need a solution.
Anyway, have been doing homework, here is some background.
I have what I think is a 15,000 gal pool (estimated based on dimensions, it's a weird shape), with a spa that is elevated which dumps water over a fall into the main pool.
There is a Jandy SHPF-2.0 Stealth primary pump, a secondary pump for a few waterfalls (which we rarely run), and a heater. Everything is controlled via an Aqualink RS panel, which has a small remote panel in the house.
The previous owner had the pump set to run from 9am until 6pm every day. Being a know-nothing noob, we just assumed this was correct and let it roll. A few months later and a handful of massive power bills have led me to a lot of research.
I installed a flow meter in one of the check valves, and looks like the pump is doing about 70gpm when running. So that's about 3.6 hrs run time needed to circulate the entire pool, so I dialed the run time for the main pump down to that run time, and am hoping that solves a majority of the issue. However, I'm very interested in getting a variable speed pump, to reduce this power consumption even further, since we're gonna be in this house for many years.
Looking at specs on Jandy pumps at this URL: http://www.jandy.com/~/media/zodiac/global/downloads/sa/sa6228.pdf
If I'm reading this correctly, my SHPF-2.0 pump, pushing about 70gpm, it would appear as if my Feet of Head is about 80' or so, which I gather is relatively high. Without knowing any of the details on the pool piping, my guess is this is mainly due to the pump having to send water up to a higher elevation to the spa, which then overflows via the waterfall into the main pool.
Anyway, in researching what type of variable speed pump might be suitable, via that same link listed above, I'm concerned that these variable speed pumps, when running at a lower RPM, will not be able to accommodate that amount of Feet of Head, and that I may be stuck having to run a high HP pump to circulate the water properly.
Where I live (Pasadena, CA), the city will do a rebate on one model of Jandy pumps (I'm looking at them, mainly because that's what's hooked up there now) which is the VS FloPro pump.
However, looking again at that link, it would appear to accommodate 80 Feet of Head, I would need to install the larger VSFHP270 model, which has similar THP to the current pump (2.7) and would still need to run it at high speed, for a relatively similar amount of time, to be able to circulate the pool properly - which I would imagine that would end up being a complete wash, power-savings-wise, and hence not be worth the investment.
I guess my main question is, is there a minimum speed at which you must run a pump at, to overcome the Feet of Head metric - i.e. if I install a variable speed pump, will I still need to run the thing at high speed, to push the water through the pipes effectively? Or does that not really factor in, and I could indeed run a pump at lower speed, for a longer amount of time, and it would indeed be able to circulate the water correctly, but at a lower overall power consumption?
Apologies in advance if I'm being a complete dork here, and missing something that should be obvious.
Any help much appreciated!
