Swimming Pool Pump Question - Here or ???

[LowGear]

This category looked like where I'd get the most expert help.  

One of the nice things about Hawaii is the lack of space heating and because we're at 1,000 feet there is little need of space cooling but circulating the water in the swimming pool is a fact of life.  (OK, enough kidding.  Some of my neighbors don't have pools.)

I'm looking at the EP-6.  Power this month is 43 cents a KW.  So when you run a one KW pump for six hours a day ($2.58 per) you begin to see an opportunity for savings not to forget energy conservation.  Would you please to take a look at the website below and tell me how the Dickens they get 1.5 HP and only use 368 Watts?  As you can imagine cutting a 6 KW daily load down by 2/3s really catches a guys attention.  That's over $1.50 a day or complete payback on the pump ($824) in 18 months.  

I'm at the very least going to put a two speed motor on my existing pump (I have two other matching back-up pumps).  My pump will then pull about 500 watts on the slow speed but not move nearly as much water as these Eco Pumps claim.

http://www.ecopoolpumps.com/pool-pump-reviews.html

Is it Snake Oil, Bling Talk or a technological break-through?

Casey

MODIFIED:

I found part of the answer.  It tends to be Bling Talk.  It seems they rarely remind you that in high speed (Vacuum Mode) it draws 10 Amps.  If you think there is some other elements at play would you please post them here or email me.

http://www.ecopoolpumps.com/Media/EcoPumpSpecsCurve.pdf

Thanks

[cognos]

Bling Talk. Redirection. Legerdemain.

I would be very leery of buying a pump from a company a with marketing literature as oily as this.

"Cutting-edge condensors store electrons in dielectrics until the power is called upon. Then when the motor rotates in the optimal position, the stored energy is released, boosting this energy transferred to the impeller."

Wow. Quick, call the Nobel Prize committee.

There are plenty of pumps out there that perform equally as well as these 2-speed pumps. They just haven't (yet) attached the Green/Eco BS to it yet, and hired a wordsmith to obfuscate the engineering...

One needs the matched pump for the motor for the best efficiency. The pump must be flow matched to the pressure required, which will dictate the most efficient HP motor. In general, for something like a pool with a simple low-pressure filtration system, you want a high volume/low pressure pump that doesn't fall off the efficiency curve when it's over- or under-driven by the two speed motor.

Going from a single speed motor and standard pool pump -

2 speed motor + non-matched inefficient pump = some savings...

2 speed motor + matched pump is better...

Rated energy efficient multi-speed motor + high efficiency matched pump = max savings... but attendant high initial investment.

(I'm sure you already know this stuff...  )

[LowGear]

Thanks cognos,

No I didn't know about matching the the pump head up with the motor.  There are a lot of 2 speed pump motors out there and all drop down to around 350 watts on the low speed which on most pumps is half speed - 1725 and pump about 40% as much water on any given head.

I mess around with ponds a bit and the big sell there is, on the quality pumps, low pressure and high volume.  I was even considering this pump on Ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/300612758265?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2648

The problem is I often see 20 PSI on the pressure gauge which sets right on the filter.  I assume that is close to 50 feet of head which is off this scale. 

I also had a Solar pump program organization out and they wanted me to dump the DE (diatomaceous earth) filter and go to a cartridge style to lower the system pressure.  (And I decided for the price I'd rather just stick a 3 KW solar system in.)  It qualified for the tax credits because it's a stand alone system.  Perhaps they should become an Eco Pump dealer too.

Do you think the pump on Ebay would work as swimming pool pump?

Casey

[cognos]

I don't think those pond pumps will work - they are high flow, low pressure - even the largest would only put out about 7 psi. Great for circulation, though - you would have to bypass the filtration section.

(You would do this if you only wanted circulation, if you had one of those floating chlorine dispensers. I did this with my hot tub - put on a 60 watt pond pump as a circulator, shut off the 1.0/2.25 HP spa pump, heater, and filtration section completely when not required - most of the summer here...)

Sorry to say, I've never come up with an industrial substitute for a pool pump. Pool pumps - the good ones - are built with the right motor and the right pump for the job - keeping your pool clean, at maximum efficiency... not much parallel in industry. It used to be the other way around - industrial pumps were put into pool service, and not very efficiently.

Truly - the most efficient way to do this would be with 2 separate pump/motor combos - one for low, one for high, both optimized for flow/pressure/HP.

[LowGear]

Thanks for your input cognos.

My neighbor has decided on the two speed on an existing pump route.  I'm going to see how it goes for him.  I've made it 10 years with this albatross so another few months shouldn't change the angle of the sun too much.  I know all of the commercial pools - condos and the like - run their pumps 24/7 by health department regulation and most all are converting to multi-speed pumps which will pay for themselves in less than two years.  At six hours a day that payback really stretches out there.  On private pools the high speed is really only used for cleaning operations and an occasional show-off moment.

Casey