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.