8 hours
If you want to activate the pump once a day, start with six hours, but never go lower than five hours, especially in the summer. If your pool is in constant use, you may need to run the pump for up to eight hours per day, frequently checking the water clarity and chemical balance. Using a smaller pump for fewer hours per day is effective and will drastically reduce your electricity bill. Launch Video Indoor Pool Dangers. Pump Timing. A pool pump should run for as long as necessary to circulate all of the water through the pump and filter system. This turnover rate varies based on pool size and the pump. Pumps can typically circulate all of the water within a 6 to 8 hour period; some pools require pumping for up to 12 hours. Begin using your pool pump in 6-hour intervals, and if the water doesn’t appear to be clean, increase the time in 30-minute increments until it does. Wondering how long most people run their filter cycle for each day. I have a 24 hr circulation pump plus Ozonator. My filter runs twice a day for periods of 2,4,6,8 hours. Right now i run it twice a day for four hours. Sees a bit much. I have one to two people in the spa day for about 45 minutes at a time.  Different pool manufactures specify different run times for filter systems. The general consensus from pool professionals is that to ensure high water quality you should run your pool filter system for at least 8 hours a day. You should increase this during peak summer months to at least 12 hours a day. If you decide to operate the circulation system for 10 hours per day you should split the 10 hours into 5 hours in the morning and 5 hours in the evening. You should avoid running the filter when the pool is being used. Click here for our pool timers. Swimming pool pumps should be run an average 8 hours a day to properly circulate and clean your water. The pump should push your entire pool in gallons in this 8 hour period of time. However, often times swimming pool pump horse power is overrated for their size swimming pool. In this case you can reduce the time you run your swimming pool pump. According to Florida Power and Electric reducing a pool pump by 2 hours will save you about $10 per month. Here is the average monthly costs for the average 1 HP pump to run. The purpose of run time is to circulate the pool water long enough to “turn over” the volume of water in a pool (have all the water pass through the filter) at least once per day. Current code requires systems to be designed to turn over the pool water at least once every 12 hours in residential pools.  06-24-2010, 07:32 AM. It depends on the pool size and the pump size. I believe that the recommendation is that the pump has to run long enough and be big enough to run 3x the number of gallons in the pool each day. So if you have a 10,000 gallon pool, your pump needs to run long enough to push 30,000 gallons through. That being said, it is just a rule of thumb. It is also going to depend on the pool temperature, the number of hours of sun, the chlorine level, etc. 40 (GPM) X 60 (minutes per hour) = 2400 gallons per hour. 20,000 (gallons) / 2400 (gallons per hour) = 8.3 hours. So in this case you would need to run your pump 8.3 hours per day for one circulation or “turnover” of water, which is right where you want to be in terms of run time. Now that you know the gallons per minute and the amount of gallons in your pool you can find your run time. The math is simple. For the example lets just say you have a 20,000 gallon pool with a GPM (gallons per minute) of 40.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/swimming-pool-pumps-run-all-the-time.htm http://homeguides.sfgate.com/many-hours-should-swimming-pool-pump-run-94574.html http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22951 http://www.howardswimmingpools.co.uk/swimming_pool_pumps.htm http://www.inyopools.com/HowToPage/how_to_reduce_your_pool_pump_energy_bill.aspx http://www.bayareapoolservice.com/blog/pool-run-time.aspx http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-67986.html http://www.poolsupplyworld.com/blog/calculating-pool-pump-run-time/
how long should the pool circulation run