Filtration / Run Time...

[The Crow]

Great forum! Finally have my pool chemisty under control after 3 yrs of fighting the pool supply stores "balances" My question is what is the best filtration/run time for my system (10 hrs straight or 5 morning/5 late afternoon)

I was running from morning, 10 am, to 7pm but no longer use my inline clorinator, thanks to the BBB method.

[Watermom]

Splitting the run time is probably best but to tell the truth, I usually run mine in one stretch. It's on a timer from about 11am to about 8pm once the season gets going.

[PoolDoc]

I'm the one around here always trying to get people to split their run time.

Keeping chlorine gas out of inline chlorinators is one reason for doing it. Another is to avoid chemical dead spots, that can occur in stagnant pool. I've SEEN this happen in the large commercial pools I service; my guess is it can happen in small pools. But I haven't actually done the chemical sampling required to prove it.

[mas985]

I would think that the largest consumer of chlorine in a private pool would be the sun and therefore, it should be more important to both chlorinate and circulate the water while the sun is striking the water. Any run time beyond that could be split up but off hours where no one is swimming and the sun is not shinning should not consume as much chlorine and therefore not require as much circulation.


During the summer, I usually run the pump about 8 hours mostly on low speed but I target the heat of the day and into dusk so chlorine levels stay relatively constant during the day and through the night even though the pump does not run at night. However, whenever there is night time swimming, I will manually turn on the pump until everyone is out of the pool.

[MountainStone]

... I usually run mine in one stretch. It's on a timer from about 11am to about 8pm once the season gets going.

During the summer, I usually run the pump about 8 hours mostly on low speed but I target the heat of the day and into dusk so chlorine levels stay relatively constant during the day and through the night even though the pump does not run at night. However, whenever there is night time swimming, I will manually turn on the pump until everyone is out of the pool.

I've read here that one should add liquid chlorine at night, when the sunshine will not impact available FC. How long should one run the pump to circulate the newly-added liquid chlorine? Do you factor that run time into your daily run time? (sorry if the question seems very basic; I'm new here...)

[PoolDoc]

Actually, we need a how and when to run page . . . and I hadn't realized that before. There are too many issues, and several have come up today.

For your specific question, the pump should probably run 1/2 hour after adding any chemicals, and probably longer if you added any sort of granular materials to the pool.