Pool Equipment Check List for New and Remodeled Pool Builds

There are two upgrades to your pool equipment that I highly recommend. If you have the money to invest, I would put in a Variable Speed Pump (VS Pump) and a Salt Water Generator, also known as a Salt Water System. The Variable Speed pump will save you a ton of money on your energy cost, and a Salt Water Generator will generate and add chlorine to your pool for you, saving you time on your pool maintenance.

I will focus here on the money savings that a Variable Speed Pump (VS) can help you with, and you will be amazed. I think of how much you can save yearly on your pool care budget. The pool pump can be the highest energy hog in your house, passing your air conditioner and refrigerator just by the hours it runs each day. If you have a 1 ½ or 2 HP pump installed and you run it 8 hours per day, not to get into complicated conversions of kWh (Kilowatt Hours) and how your Electric Company charges you each month, imagine it as having on Twenty 100 watt light bulbs every hour it is running. That is a lot of electricity each day, and if your bill is tiered by usage, the more you use, the more you are charged, and your bill can get very high very quickly. On average, a pool pump will cost about 40% of your monthly electricity bill.

You don't save any money when you convert to a salt pool. It costs a lot more than using Chlorine or Bleach in your pool. Factor in the cost of the unit plus install, say $1,000, and then a new salt cell every 3-5 years at $500, and the salt to start at $150, and you're looking at over $1,600 for the first five years. So, you would have to spend over $320 a year on chlorine to match that number. Typically, you do not pay over $100 a season for chlorine.

I believe bigger is better, so I suggest using the most oversized filter your system can handle. If you have a 15,000-gallon pool, I wouldn't go with anything smaller than a 300 sq ft Cartridge Filter, a 60 sq ft DE filter, or a 350 lbs Sand Filter. There are a lot of filters for that size pool, but you will notice an increase in flow and water clarity right away. The cartridge has more square footage of filtration area, so I always suggest a Cartridge Filter over DE and Sand, and the larger the Cartridge Filter, the better.

A gas heater will be one of the most significant investments on your equipment pad. You can't interchange those once you go with a gas heater or heat pump. The cost of running a dedicated 230-volt line or a natural gas line cancels any benefits of switching from a gas heater to a heat pump or vice versa.

You can't go cheap on a gas heater and get a 200,000 BTU model if you currently have a 400,000 BTU model. Going with less BTU means the heating time will increase and sometimes double. So, you will lose any money you save upfront because now you must run your pump and heater longer to heat your pool or spa.

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