Time to Upgrade Your Pool Equipment?

Of course, before you replace any of your pool equipment you should have a pool pro assess it thoroughly as sometimes a simple repair is all you need. He or she can also advise you on if you need to replace something and with what particular brand.

The pool pump can be the highest energy hog in your house, passing your Air Conditioner and Refrigerator just by the sheer amount of 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 you are charged each month by your Electric Company, just 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, meaning the more you use the more you are charged, your bill can get very high very quickly. On average a pool pump will be about 40% of your total electricity bill each month.

The best way to save money is to cut into your monthly electricity bill and that is exactly what a VS pump does. Simply put, your standard pump runs at 3450 RPM (Rotations Per Minute) which is about 1800-2000 watts. A VS Pump can be set to different RPMs and at every lower RPM, the total wattage used is lowered. So just lowering the VS Pump down to 2100 RPM, cuts the watts down to 685 watts. At 2100 RPM the water will appear to flow just as strong as a standard pump running at 3450 RPM. Cut it down even lower to 1200 RPM and you are down to 165 watts. So instead of having twenty 100-watt light bulbs running you only have a little over one light bulb running each hour. This is the reason your electric bill can be cut almost in half by simply installing a VS Pump.

If your pool filter has been struggling all season it is time to look at upgrading it. By struggling I mean the water had issues with being cloudy or you had more algae blooms than normal this season. Poor filtration is the cause behind 80% of your pool problems so if you have an undersized or poorly running pool filter it is time to upgrade.

I am a big believer in bigger is better so I suggest going with the largest 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. That is a lot of filters for that size pool but you will notice right away an increase in flow as well as water clarity. 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 biggest investments on your equipment pad by far. Once you go with a gas heater or heat pump you can’t interchange those. The cost of running a dedicated 230-volt line or the cost of running a natural gas line cancels out any benefits of switching from a gas heater to a heat pump or vice versa.
You also 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 any money you save upfront you will lose because now you have to run your pump and heater longer to heat your pool or spa.
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