Too much booster pump

[chem geek]

I was considering replacing my 3/4 HP booster pump and my current 1 HP main pump with the main IntelliFlo pump I plan to get, but when I looked into it it does not seem that this will be possible because most pressure cleaners expect very high pressures (50 psi) though at low flow rates (12 GPM) and this won't be achievable if you are connected in parallel with returns (most of the water will go through the returns so the pressure won't build up as high as the pressure cleaner wants). You could valve it to operate ONLY (or perhaps mostly) the pressure cleaner, but then won't get the filtering and skimmer action.

I could be wrong about all of this; perhaps someone else knows more about it. It looked to me like using a main pump without a booster pump requires one to use a suction cleaner since they require far less pressure difference (and, of course, you hook up the cleaner to a suction line and could even convert a separate pressure line that was used for the pressure cleaner into a separate suction line so that the skimmer still gets enough suction).

Now that said, if you are truly having lots of water come out of the pressure relief valve, then maybe a smaller sized pump would work in your case, but I don't know if you can just throttle down the voltage to the pump to slow it down or if that causes any damage to the pump, etc. I hate the idea of getting an efficient main pump while still using an inefficient 3/4 HP booster pump for the pressure cleaner, so I sympathize.

Richard