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Well our new pool is up and running. I was wonder what hours do most of you run your pump for? I was told by the dealer to turn it on the morning and off at night. I was going to hook it to our christmas light timer and have it come on when it gets dark and run for 6 hours or so. Would that be good or is the day better for some reason.
thanks
What I do is take the rate of the pump which I assume is about 40 GPM ( I believe I read that figure here) and divide the # of gallons of the pool by the pump' s GPH #. That'll give you the time the pump will filter the pool water 1 time and then I add an hour or two for good measure.
ex: 13000 gallon pool / 2400 gal per hour (that's 40 GPM x 60 min) = 5.41 hours and I run the pump for 7 hours.
I have it broken up into 2 seperate times 4 hours from 4 PM to 8 PM and 3 AM to 7 AM. I believe I also read here to split the hours into 2 sessions. By running the pump without the sun shining on it (my pool is in the shade from 3 PM on), I am able to add chlorine and have it's full effect working on what's in the water without being destroyed by the sunlight.
I've had my pool for 2 years and I've always ran the pump 24/7. It does raise the electrical bill a little. I'm just concerned with having stagnant water and the bugs coming to live. Then spending a lot of time cleaning before swimming. The family likes to just jump in. We live a couple hundred yards from a pond and have no tree cover at all.
I don't bother with the GPM calculations, mainly because the water in your pool is always mixing, so if you run it long enough to turn your pool water over once, I really don't think you do since you may have turned some of the water over twice, while you didn't turn some other water over any.
I run from sunup, to sundown, make maximum use of my solar gain and try to retain that gain by not running the pump over night.
I tend to take my solar cover off at 5:00 pm when I get home, and put it back on at 9:00 or 10:00 pm or whenever we're done swimming, usually I'll connect the vac during that time. reasons I keep the cover on while I'm at work are:
1. less bird crap
2. less dirt - it lands on the cover and blows off again for the most part.
3. Most importantly for me - little to no evaporation
So far it's worked great, never have algae issues and the water is always clear.
When it is extremely hot, like this summer (day after day of mid 90s), I add bleach and turn the pump on in the evening and let it run until the water sparkles. Sometimes it hits that point by bedtime and sometimes it needs to run all night. When the pool temp hovers around 86-90 degrees, running it at night keeps it from climbing any higher and allows the chlorine to do it's job without me driving my CYA level higher and using more bleach.
When it is just warm (days in the low to mid 80s) I run the pump in the early morning or afternoon and turn it off before bedtime. I have less heat loss this way. I have teenagers at home that can turn the pump on and off when I request (theoretically- if they can tear themselves away from vegging away in the house). I'm just too lazy to use the solar cover anymore, because it precludes the sudden, impulsive dip in the pool whenever someone is in the mood.