We have an 8x4 semi-interred above ground pool. I was thinking about buying a plug & play solar panel to run the pump. Has anyone else done this? I have a south-facing spot just by the pool house so no issues there. The pool pump has a 0.75kw motor. I’ve been told we would need a 1.5kw panel (or 2 panels?). But I’ve no idea how to work out whether investing around 1000€ on panels is worth it. How long would it take to pay for itself? We’re currently on HP/HC, as I couldn’t face the red days on Tempo, but am considering changing back again. Thanks for any shared experience or advice!
It’s the add more to achieve what exactly? You would be better served by reducing the required electricity. Fitting a pump speed control would benefit you in several ways, we know that a slower flow produces better filtration, think of a chef making a consomme they let it filter slowly to produce a better clearer liquid, if the chef squeezes the muslin bag it would be cloudy, same in the pool. Adding a speed control drastically reduces the amount of electricity you use which drastically reduces the cost of running the pump. This also improves the water quality. Reducing the speed of your pump by as little as 20% could reduce the electricity used by 50%. That would pay for the speed control in a year or two. To give an example, your pool is about the same size as mine. My pool was re engineered from the .75hp pump the same as yours to its current setup to be as energy efficient as possible and it runs 24/7 on the variable speed pump .05 HP! That means I run my pump for 24hours for the same cost as your pump in an hour and a quarter. Not saying you’ll achieve that level without additional mods but you could at least half the energy. The other part is if you are using sand as a filter medium, swapping to Dryden Aquas AFM ng would mean removing far more dirt etc from the water so maximising the return from each filtration cycle.
Thanks, Corona. What speed reducer do you use? We bought the house 18mths ago, and I think we’ll need to change the sand this year (I don’t know when/if last done) so I’ll look into the Dryden Aqua stuff.
I use a variable speed pump, generally a more expensive way of doing things when you have a usable pump already. Mine was coming to the end of its life so I changed it. In terms of speed controllers. There is the CleverPool, I sold and fitted a number of these but now they are on the mk2 improved version which I haven’t played with. Or the Welsh version, Invertek Optidrive E3 IP20 1.1kW AC Inverter Drive for Single Phase 230V motor - AC Inverter Drives (230V) https://share.google/jMuj2GeP89VNrhWqx
I have still got one of those in stock, it was used for a short while on a customers pool but they sold up and went back to the UK so we removed it.
The Dryden Aqua AFM ng is marketed in france by Bayroll, often it can be obtained via mail order, just make sure you get the new ng version as it filters really fine (1 micron).