Second year owning my pool and now that I have the chemistry dialed in I am working on learning as much as I can about the equipment. It's a 35k gallon pool with two skimmers and a main drain. The current pump is a Hayward .75 HP pump (no idea on age). I can't tell if the pump is undersized or if there is an issue with suction as the skimmers don't seem to pull much debris out of the pool. I used a drain king to make sure the suction lines were cleared and tried cleaning the motor impeller since I do have a lot of pine needles that probably get past my pump basket. Is a 3/4 hp motor too small for this pool? It "seemed" to do a little better job clearing surface debris last year but I'm not really sure. Any advice is appreciated. If I did replace I would likely go with a VS pump since the energy company rebate is $350.
Should I replace my pump?
- Thread starter batesjer
- Start date
No weir doors. Honestly I'm not sure how much the skimmers should pull out of the pool but debris tends to float by them with a minimal amount actually entering the skimmers. Additionally when I open my pump basket to clean it out it takes about 15 seconds for the pump to prime and begin pulling in water to pump. Is this normal?
Can you get weir doors for your skimmers?
One of mine didn't have a door when I bought my house and it works much better now that I've replaced it.
One of mine didn't have a door when I bought my house and it works much better now that I've replaced it.
borjis
LifeTime Supporter
Mine was missing too. Skimmers just can't do a good job without them. You can find replacement fit weir doors on Amazon. It makes a huge difference. I had a 3/4 hp motor on a setup with solar heating on a 20k pool (my former house). I think your ok with 3/4.
It is normal for prime to take 5-15 seconds if the pump basket was cleaned out. I usually fill mine with a bucket of water before securing the cover.
It is normal for prime to take 5-15 seconds if the pump basket was cleaned out. I usually fill mine with a bucket of water before securing the cover.
That would be a no-brainer for me. I was waiting for my 1hp to die before I replaced it, it was fairly noisy this year so I put a v-green variable speed motor on my existing wet side. My bill dropped considerably from last year, it should pay for itself in a few months. With a $350 rebate, I'd get my money back in a month. I should have replaced it years ago.
With that said, the VS does a poor job of skimming when on lower speeds. I run it about 1600rpm / 50GPM for about 18 hours a day and 3100 / 85 GPM for about 2 hours to skim and while the Polaris runs.
Do you have the ability to turn your main drain off? I had my drain off to improve skimming during the spring when we had lots of pollen.
Get the weir doors, I have them and they do make a difference. It only sucks from the surface of the water.
Crabboy I pretty much have myself talked into replacing it due to the rebate and what I hope are monthly savings. I partially closed my main drain last week to try to improve flow and did actually close it all the way last night, still not much of an improvement. I looked at my Hayward sand filter and it's 3.1 square feet which is about a 60 gpm/max for that filter I think? So a larger horsepower pump is probably too much for that filter? Do the weir doors improve suction or just prevent debris from back-flowing into the pool?
Edit: Just looked up weir door functions, makes sense why this would help.
Edit: Just looked up weir door functions, makes sense why this would help.