Energy Efficient Pool Pump

New pool pump law raises concern by contractors

Its purpose is to reduce the energy consumed by swimming pools, but a new law slated to take effect at the end of this year has some pool contractors concerned it will cause a tide of “underground activity” by people not qualified to repair or install swimming pools.

The new law, originally scheduled to go into effect July 1, requires all new residential swimming pools to use a variable-speed circulation pump instead of a single-speed pump. It was passed by the Florida Legislature in 2008 as part of a sweeping energy conservation bill; Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation Friday that delays the new pool pump requirement until Dec. 31.

The idea behind the change is that variable-speed pumps, if used properly, consume 30 to 90 percent less electricity than single-speed pumps because they run at a less intense level. That kind of energy savings can mean a reduction of up to $1,000 annually in the electric bills of swimming pool owners.

Todd Starner of Bradenton’s Starner Brothers Pools Inc. is all for saving money through more efficient swimming pool pumps. But he’s also concerned that the variable-speed pump’s higher initial cost, coupled with an overall lack of enforcement and regulation, will influence swimming pool owners to skirt the new law.

“What we feel they’ve created is a huge underground market for unlicensed activity to put these single-speed motors in,” says Starner, who is also the regional director over Florida and Georgia for the Independent Pool Servicing and Spa Association. “The single-speeds are still going to be available through Home Depot, WalMart, Lowe’s and other places. So people will hire their pool guy, or a handyman, or anyone who can run down to Home Depot, to replace their motor.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that it will create more underground activity.”

Hiring a handyman or swimming pool cleaner to install a motor or pump is not only illegal, Starner says, it’s also dangerous. Licensed pool contractors are the only people qualified and trained to conduct pool repairs including the wiring necessary for pool pumps. People who clean swimming pools aren’t required to have any credentials at all, he said, except for in a handful of counties throughout the state.

Having an unlicensed person install a pump or motor can create problems for swimming pool owners years down the road, the veteran contractor said. He’s heard of insurance companies researching who completed what repairs and refusing to pay claims in situations where homeowners cannot prove that a licensed contractor performed repairs or maintenance.

The most energy efficient two speed pump ... - Trouble Free Pool

Physics tells us that the efficiency of a pump is highly correlated to the head curve which in turn is correlated to the THP of the motor. It takes more energy and a larger THP motor to produce higher flows and/or higher pressure, so the lower the head curve, the more efficient the pump will be. The actual efficiency of just the motor has an impact on energy use as well but for similar THP pumps, motors tend to have similar efficiencies. Higher THP motors tend to have better electrical efficiency (Watts/BHP) but because it takes more energy/GPM for a larger pump, this will dominate and the larger pump will end up using more energy/GPM even including a more efficient motor. With two speeds, most of the motors are generally standard efficiency (at least in the CEC list so far) so the efficiency of the pump (wet end) itself is will dominate the total efficiency of the pump and the differences between motors will have a much smaller impact. So again, the head curve drives efficiency more than anything else. So even if you did not have any CEC data, physics will tell you that a lower head curve pump will be more efficient than a higher head curve pump. So I tend to rely upon THP and the head curve to rank order the efficiency of a pump. However, I try not to ignore data either. Now back to the CEC data and how it is used. First, any pump that does not show a speed is full speed. Next, I don't have a lot of detail on how they do the measurements but there seems to be more measurement error at low speed than high speed but you might expect that depending on how the measurements are down between low and high speeds. One way to tell is that low speed should be within +- 1 GPM of half of the high speed GPM. However, in most cases, this is not true which leads me to believe that the low speed measurements were not necessarily done with a lot of precision. They should have adjusted the plumbing curve for high speed and then just set low speed without any plumbing adjustments. I believe they use a PSI gauge to measure the head loss for both high and low speed and we all know that there is higher error at lower PSI. Plus if they use flow meters to measure the flow rate, those also have significant error at low flow rates. So it isn’t a surprise that they probably have a lot of error at lower speeds. And finally, the Whisperflo data is all screwed up and they swapped some of the models with others.

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