Reasons to run your pump are:
- To generate chlorine if you have a SWCG or tab feeder.
- To skim your pool.
- To mix chemicals if you manually add them.
Few more:
4. To filter your water (until it's as clear as you like.)
5. To heat your water (until it's as warm as you like.)
6. To run water features (if you like looking at water falls, bubblers, for hours on end.)
7. To run a suction- or pressure-side vacuum cleaner.
Usually, one of those seven determines how long you must run your pump. And it's usually seasonal. For me, it's SWG in Spring and Fall (8 hours @ 1600RPM), and solar heater in the summer(8 hours @ 2100RPM). And filtering in the winter (4 hours @ 1500RPM). Everything else gets done within the runtime of that one governing schedule. For others, it might be some other set of "minimums" throughout the year.
But it's never "turnover."
The first step to figuring out efficiency, is to determine which of that list takes the longest, and then what pump speed gets the job done. And that can be tricky. For example, does your surface look best if you skim at 2800RPM for two hours? Or does it look best when you skim for 12 hours at 1200 RPM?
What your graph-method is not accommodating is aesthetics. How good the bottom looks, or the surface, or the water clarity is up to you. It's not something you can determine with pump curves alone. If you don't mind a handful of leaves on the bottom, then you might only vacuum for a couple hours a day. But if the least blemish makes you crazy, you might prefer to run a vac all day long. Same with skimming. Or how warm does your family want the pool?
Your
pool, and the seasons, tell you how long to run your pump, and at what speed. And unless you're willing to settle for less, your "efficiency" will cost what it costs. And it usually takes at least a couple seasons to fine tune all those runtime/speed scenarios. You can't sit down in an afternoon and figure it out with some math...
