It seems like a simple question with an obvious answer, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t be difficult to figure out how long to run a pool pump. And really, it’s not.
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⏰ Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to How Long To Run A Pool Pump
00:51 - Why You Need To Run Your Pump 8 Hours A Day
01:45 - How To Calculate If You Have The Right Sized Pump And Filter
04:25 - Different Types Of Pool Pumps
05:35 - When You Run Your Pool Pump
08:03 - When You Need To Run Your Pump More Than 8 Hours
08:33 - Pool Care Video Course
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Swim University®️ has made swimming pool and hot tub care easy for more than 10 million homeowners. And each year, we continue to help more people with water chemistry, cleaning, and troubleshooting. We know taking care of a swimming pool or spa can be difficult. And it’s hard to find a trusted source of information. We get it! This is the reason we created Swim University®️.
😎 Visit our website for more in-depth information on swimming pool maintenance: https://www.swimuniversity.com/
💦 Get 10% off our pool maintenance video course and ebook by using the promo code VIDEO: https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-care-handbook/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description'>https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-care-handbook/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description
⏰ Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to How Long To Run A Pool Pump
00:51 - Why You Need To Run Your Pump 8 Hours A Day
01:45 - How To Calculate If You Have The Right Sized Pump And Filter
04:25 - Different Types Of Pool Pumps
05:35 - When You Run Your Pool Pump
08:03 - When You Need To Run Your Pump More Than 8 Hours
08:33 - Pool Care Video Course
🏊♂️ Our Favorite Pool Maintenance Gear: https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-maintenance/'>https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-maintenance/
📺 Subscribe to our channel if you want more information on swimming pool and hot tub maintenance: https://www.youtube.com/swimuniversity
Swim University®️ has made swimming pool and hot tub care easy for more than 10 million homeowners. And each year, we continue to help more people with water chemistry, cleaning, and troubleshooting. We know taking care of a swimming pool or spa can be difficult. And it’s hard to find a trusted source of information. We get it! This is the reason we created Swim University®️.
😎 Visit our website for more in-depth information on swimming pool maintenance: https://www.swimuniversity.com/
I get this question a lot. How long should you actually run your pool pump? Well, my answer is very very simple: all day every day, every hour and forever. Obviously, that's not realistic. So let me give you a better answer, but let's roll the thingy real quick.
Do it okay, so seriously? Ideally, you would want to run your pool pump all day every day, because the more you run your pump, the more the pump is pumping water through your filter, the more the filter is filtering out, bacteria and other debris, and everything is gon na be great. But that's gon na make your electric bill, like I don't know a million dollars a year or something I don't know some ridiculous amount of money, and so we don't actually want to run your pool all day 24/7. So, let's think of a better option. What is the ideal time to run your pool and that's eight hours a day at least eight hours a day if you can run it more? More is always it's gon na be better really okay.
So what does a pump actually do so? A pump pulls water in from your swimming pool and pushes it through your filter and then back into your swimming pool. It's really it's like the heart of your entire pool and depending on what kind of filter you have, whether it's sandy E or cartridge, your pump is going to be pushing the water through that at a certain speed, and your filter is gon na either filter it Or not, and so we're trying to create the ideal situation to where you're pushing you're pulling in enough water from your pool and pushing the right amount of water through your filter system so that it can work effectively and then push that clean water. Back into your pool now, ideally, we want to move all of the water from your pool through your filter system and back into your pool at least once a day, and that is called turnover rate. So turnover rate is what we need to calculate in order to find out if you have the right size pump and the right filter for your pool.
So, let's calculate some so the first thing we want to know is how many gallons are actually in your swimming pool. We need that in order to determine what the turnover rate is gon na be, and luckily at some University dot-com / pool calculator, it will just put the link on the bottom. You can find out how many gallons your pool is by simply entering the size of your pool, length and width and and what you know kind of pool. You have and it'll give you the amount of gallons.
So now, once we have the amount of gallons that are in your swimming pool, we need to divide that by eight, which is eight hours, and that is gon na give us the gallons per hour, so that once you have that when you buy a pool pump, It's usually calculated in gallons per minute, so we're gon na have to do some more calculations, which means take that gallon per hour number and divide it by 60, which is 16 minutes in an hour, and that will give you your gallons per minute. Okay, now that you have the gallons per minute, if you're looking for the right pool pump, there is one more calculation you could do and that's called the feet of head and what you're gon na do to calculate. That is determine all of the lines that are going into your pool, so you might have a main drain line. You might have a line from your skimmer. You might have a line from two skimmers. If you have an above-ground pool, you just have one line, and so you measure the length in feet to the skimmer or the main drains all the way into your pump. And then, if you have multiple things, so let's say you have a main drain and you have two skimmers: that's three different things and you're gon na take all of those you're gon na. Add them all up in feet and you're gon na divide it by three, because you have three things: if you have two things, maybe yeah, I just have a main drain and a skimmer, then you're gon na take the length of those two going from those places Back into your pump and you're going to add them together, divided by two, because you have two things: if you have a above-ground pool - and you just have one line from your skimmer, you just measure that and that'll give you your feet of head.
So now that you have the gallons per minute and your feet of head calculation, you can go online or you can go to your local swimming pool supply store and you can figure out which pump is gon na work best for your swimming pool. To turn over. All that water into eight hours now there are a couple different types of pumps you can choose from and those are single speed, dual speed or yet dual speed and variable speed pumps. Now, I think in California, in Arizona they actually forbid, adding in single speed pumps to your brand-new pool or to your brake if you're buying a brand new pump, and the reason is because it just goes one speed and it's not very efficient.
Or you know energy-saving, and so they make dual speed, which is you have your high setting, which is your max speed and you have your low setting, but even better than that, you have variable speed pumps which can do all types of different flow rates. And we have an entire article on that, so just check out again the link below you know. You have your pump, you know your gallons per minute. You got your feet ahead.
You have the perfect pool pump in horsepower. You know that it's the right pump you're. Turning over that water in eight hours, so the question is: how long do you run your bull pub? The answer is eight hours now. Do you have to run it in eight hours consecutively, like just an eight-hour period? No, you don't have to do that.
In fact, you can run it multiple times a day and as a little tip, sometimes in the middle of the day when it is hot out in the summer and everybody around you running off the same electrical grid is all running their air conditioning. That's gon na raise the price of your electricity, so if you're running your pump during the day, you are running it at the peak electrical hour, so you are running it and you're gon na pay the most for that. Now, if you have a bunch of people in the pool and you're running it while they're all in there that's great, but we actually like to run it at night. Sometimes, okay, so you add chemicals to your pool and when you add chemicals to your pool, you need to run your filter system to mix them in. So that means you need to run your pump and when we add something like shock to the pool, we want to add that at night and the reason we added at night is because this Suns gon na burn off like one part per million every hour. Because if you're doing shock, it's unstabilized chlorine and that's just a waste of money, so if you're gon na shock your pool, you want a shock at night we talked about it, just go to some university again. The link will be at the bottom. But if you want to shock your pool, you're gon na, do it at night.
So therefore you should run your pump at night, and so you need to run it at least eight hours. Then so you can run your pump at night and when people are swimming, no pump is running or you can split it up. You can buy yourself an automatic pool timer and you can have your pump turn on maybe four hours during the day. Four hours at night, seven hours during the day, one hour at night, whatever you can split it up, you can have it run.
You know two hours in the morning two hours in the afternoon two hours in the evening and two hours in the middle of the night, totally up to you as long as you run it at least eight hours a day. You should be good to go as much as you should run your pool pump. 24/7. You really don't have to you, can run it just eight hours a day as long as it's turning over all the water in your pool, make sure that you have the right horsepower for the size pool that you have doing all the things that we talked about When it comes to calculating turnover rate and make sure you got a good filter system, that's filtering the water and you can run it eight hours a day.
If you have a lot of activity in the pool I mean or you don't want to do or if you don't want to calculate turnover rate you're, just like hey, I have what I have. That's fine, then maybe bump that number up right. So minimum eight hours a day, but maybe if you're a little bit unsure what's the harm and going to twelve hours a day, so you can bump it up to twelve hours a day. Maybe six in the afternoon.
Six in the middle of the night should be good to go, so that's it also before we before we get out of here. I want to talk about our course. It's how we keep the lights on here at Swim, University calm. It's called the pool care video course and the pool care handbook, so we have an e-book and we have a video course together.
All for one price, you buy it it as everything you could ever want to know about taking care of your swimming pulled, charts graphs. Just just about everything - and you can just use the promo code - video to get 10 % off thanks for watching this video and that's it. So thanks for watching happy swimming.
I just turn mine off at night before bed and turn it back on before work. I probably run mine 12-14 hrs a day. I have a 14-28ft saltwater pool
What if your pump has two speeds? New pool owner here. Are you in Ottawa ?
I have a 6,500 gallon above ground swimming pool with a 1.5 hp pump that pumps almost 7,000 gallons per hour, I know that’s weird but I was given that pump. Should I still run the pump 8 hours a day? Are you in Nepean ?
don't bacteria and algae grow faster in the heat and sun? so wouldn't running your pump at night instead of during the day cause more algae and bacteria?
I have started using cotton balls instead of sand… pool much clearer and not bits of sand ever on bottom !
So my question is do you shock an run the pool before a rain an thunder storm or just best too do it after a storm?
I run my Pentair Intelliflo at 1500rpm for 14 hours a day for a little less than $10 a month
How do you factor pool heating into this equation?
There's no net gravity head on a pool plumbing system. The equivalent head created by line pressure drop is a calculation based on flow rate, line size and line conditions. 10 feet of line length is NOT equivalent to 10 feet of head.
You need to run the pool 24/7 that’s why a variable speed pump is mandatory on all new pools sold in America. If the water is moving it takes less watts of energy. The average pool water weighs 200,000 pounds try moving that after 16 hours of not moving it takes a lot of watts to get it moving again so it takes more energy. Best answer is get a variable speed pump
There's no easy answer, but much of the time it will depend on the bather load and how much crap is floating in the air from trees, bushes, and other debris. In an ideal situation with one or two users that SOAP SHOWER before each use you can get away with much less filtering than a pool full of sweaty hot bodies jumping in every afternoon. (pool party?) Sunscreen will also cloud the water and clog filters.
I live in the California foothills. I just got the Pentair super max variable speed installed. Three hours on high speed and two hours on medium speed. The third speed is not needed. My pool guys say that’s fine. They set it. It replaced a single speed Hayward that cost a kings ransom each month. Super quiet 🤫 Service area Ottawa??
Never had a problem with pool chemistry since I started running pump 24/7. I highly recommend it.
You must work at the electric co. because I have owned pools for 40 years and only run it 2 hours a day with no problems.
How do I know if my husand put the hoses on right
I love above ground pool. It is easy and all the instructions that I get here are easy. I bought a house that came with a very gross dirty pool. But with these and other videos, I’ve been able to been able to get a handle on this. It’s clear and amazing!
Hi everyone 👋🏻
Do you have to detach the filter from the pool when you're not using it? I've seen that they aren't water proof so I'm worried about the great British weather 😳
Just run it……and check your pool care…../ testers…….
This is so complicated 🤦♀️
Inherited a pool with a house we bought last year. I closed it last year in October just a few weeks after moving in. Opened it today. Watched this video and other videos – almost finished opening it, but done for tonight. Gonna follow your system to run the pump at night – hooked up my pump to a photocell light sensor timer outlet which I used to use during the winter at the front of the house so the Christmas lights would come on immediately when the sky got dark… Got a switch to control how long it stays on – I switched it from 6 hours for Christmas lights and 8 hours now for the pool. 👍🏽
I’d turnover 6.2 times @ 8hrs a day.
I run my pump from April to September straight through. 3/4 hp sat-rite pump, sand filter with a 17000 gallon doughboy partial above ground with deep end in ground pool. I hate to have water standing still. Heat with a heat pump. Costs a little under $100/mo combined. Eastern Washington.
Why is it not realistic to run it 24/7 Service area Nepean??
Is there such thing as running it to long
I run mine 24/7 all summer. I may shut it down on a cooler evening to put a liquid blanket on it overnight. Are you in Orleans ?
Thanks so much! Such good information!
If you live in Arizona or Southern California, forget a clown telling you to go to your local swimming pool store who has no clue. For ever 10 degrees your average temperature run it 1 hour. So 80 degree average 8 hours. Don't split it up. It's most effective to run hottest parts of the day. If you have peak hours run it at night. If your pool guy shows up with a Hawaiian shirt buttoned up to the last button and a hat tilted to the side… call someone else
There always seems to be important things left out with these discussions:
a) Diffusion of chemicals in a liquid
b) Amount of suspended particular matter in a given season
c) Likelihood of an algae bloom from organic debris load
How much turnover of water is needed really depends on many factors. Summertime swimming in the pool will assist mixing/diffusion of chemicals naturally. Even with no swimming, there will be slow diffusion even if a pool pump was kept off entirely. Aside from salt pool run times to develop necessary chlorine levels, run times are really more about trying to filter out fine debris/particles to keep water clear. So in the summer with lots of swimming, particles get stirred up/suspended and one needs to increase run times to filter out the filtered particles to keep water clearer. Come winter time in many locations (say Phoenix) when people aren't typically swimming, the run times can be dramatically reduced as long as one has enough chlorine (or other algeacides) as particulate debris will settle to the bottom and be picked up by one's automatic cleaner.
One can run a filter 24/7, 365 days per year but that costs $$ regardless if one has a variable speed pump. It is worthwhile to experiment to find the pump run time for one's pool given the season/pool use/exposure to organic debris, etc. A pool service company will always opt for longer vs. shorter pump times because it makes sense to assure a customer's pool is staying crystal clear. If your DIY pool care, take some time to experiment on number of hours needed to keep things crystal clear depending on things mentioned above.
I have a splash pool.. So I run it for 2hrs per day.. Loving my electric bill. Pool is perfect.
If my pool is only 840 gallons.. Do I still need to run it 8 hrs a day…My buddy runs his 3 times a day for 30 min
Just seen the rest of video
But what if your pump is 1000gph and flow rate 783 with a 872 gallon pool? That’s 1 hour complete cycle
24/7 1350 rpm from 10pm to 10am, 1800 from 10am to 10pm. I have a high speed skimmer setup on a feature to flow more water over the spa tiered spillway and/or to get some high speed skimming. $18 a month to run the pump like this.
I have been running my pump 3 hours from 6pm to 9pm for the last 8years since I bought in 2013 and I only use chlorine tablets for my chemical maintenance I live in California high desert.Clean my DE filter once a year by removing the 8 manifolds ,I have no issue what so ever,I test the water with the strips to know if I am low in chlorine.If I plan to swim or my grandkids .
M
Depends on what kind of pump you have variable speed or single speed…
Ok so I know ideally run the pump 24/7. at what RPM? 750? haha no easy answer?
I’m in Texas now with the winter freeze. New pool owner… just learning the how to’s now. I might be in trouble. I know the water is flowing and pump is working. Has been continuously now. Have a Hayward VS pump.
Hi friend. Do you need a 2.5HP pool pump? Free sample will be provided for you to test. May I contact you further about the details? Service area Barrhaven??
Does the day temperature play a big factor in how many hours a day you leave the pump on? Like, a hot summer day of 90 degrees vs a cold day in the winter of 50 degrees? Thx.
My pool service co. say to leave pool pump on 24×7 because turning it on and off inceases chances of damaging the pump. ???
Hi there, I need help on my above ground pool!
Can I keep the water level at 4ft in an 8 ft deep inground pool?Thanks
I have a small above ground pool
600gal
Have a pump working with 800g per hour
Does this mean i can run it for 1 our ?
Since it takes 1 our only to do 1 complete turnover?
I have solar panels and like to run mine from sun up to sun down so I don’t spend a lot on electricity
UNWATCHABLE, STOP ZOOMING YOUR FACE, WHAT ARE YOU ON METH?????
My experience is I run 8974 gallon pool 2.5 hours during the coolest part of day 5am until 730am. My turnover rate is 1.24, calculated by pool company. Live in north Texas. Had capacitor go out his year & waited nearly one week with no pump. My pool look great & I added liquid chlorine daily & after the sun goes down. Chlorine does the best work at night as during day sunlight eats up the chlorine. I have a 2 horsepower pump with 60 square foot DE filter with a chlorinator(uses chlorine pucks for CYA) set on a medium setting. Never use shock. Chemicals are all within range including hardness, as this makes water feel soft. During winter, I run my pool only once a week as long as water temp is below 70 degrees as algae cannot grow in the lower water temp. I do have a freeze guard should in winter pool temps drop. Are you in Kanata ?
Is it bad to shock my pool during the day?
How long do you run your pool pump every day during the hottest part of the pool season? Service area Kanata??