Does using my gas heater cause my electricity use to go up too?

[poolgal13]

I feel pretty stupid, but my electrical use this month went up quite a bit, even though I haven't needed to run my house A/C and nothing else seems to have changed. I have been running my gas pool heater about 4 hours each day, however. It's a pentair gas heater. Could this cause my electrical KWH usage to go up approximately 15%?

[poolgal13]

Our pool installer set our timer on our Pentair 1 HP whisperflo one speed pump to run 9 hours on, 3 hours off, 9 hours on, 3 hours off, in a 24 hour period. The pool is 25,000 gallons. He said it should turn the water over twice a day. After researching this site, it seems excessive to run it that much and my electrical bill has been high all summer long even though we've had to run our AC much less than previous years. How do I know how long it should run? I have found all sorts of calculations but they talk about pipe size and head and all sorts of things I don't understand. Anyone have a rough estimate? We have no water features. We use the BBB method.

[mas985]

Way too much run time. A pool doesn't necessarily need 1 turnover per day. Most pools don't. With a single speed pump, you can probably get away with 3-4 hours of run time.

You might want to read this article: http://consensus.fsu.edu/FBC/Pool-Efficiency/FAU-FPL-NSPI_1984_study-efficiency_of_circulation_systems.pdf

[mas985]

The heater doesn't but the pump attached to it does. What pump do you have?

[poolgal13]

It's a pentair whisperflo 1 hp 1 speed pump. I'm the same person asking another question about why my pool installer set out pump to run 18 hours day, which apparently is way too much. The heater is only heating when the pump is running anyway so I guess that's not the source of the extra electrical usage. Thank you so much for answering.

[mas985]

That pump could be using as much as 1900 watts which would be 34 kwh per day.

[CarlD]

Gas appliances don't use much electricity at all, which is why they are popular. We have gas heat, hot water and even a gas clothes dryer. During the blackout of Super Storm Sandy I was able to run my gas heat off my generator and STILL run two fridges. (as it's now October I'm wondering what the end of THIS month will bring: Last year was Sandy, the year before the FrankenBlizzard).

18 hours a day for a 1 hp pump and is an awful lot unless your pool is gigantic. I have a 1hp 2speed and I run it 12 hours a day on low speed (about 1/4 hp I guess) with a 19,000 gallon pool. That's almost certainly the cause of your increased bill.

[CarlD]

Since you had two nearly identical threads I have merged them. Please don't start multiple threads on the same topic. Thanks.