Is My Pool Costing Me a Lot of Money (on Utility Bills)?

This customer story involved a large home in Atherton, with a very nice older couple who wished to stay in their home as long as possible despite some mobility problems.  One of the ways they stayed active and kept their joints flexible was to use their pool to exercise daily and to keep the pool heated as well.  The downside to this of course were the very high monthly bills for both gas and electricity.

Their pool service had mistakenly told them that it was less expensive to run the pool pumps and heat the pool 24 hours a day!

The pool equipment was variable speed (meaning the pumps could run at lower speeds and use less energy) but they were  set to run at high speeds regardless for much of the day and night.

It was fairly simple to set the pool equipment to run during the early morning hours leading up to 9AM when the homeowners liked to begin their routine, and to set the variable speed pumps to much more reasonable speeds as well.  The first month after the change dropped the gas bill 28% and the second month (a full month) after the change by 43%.  The savings continued throughout the Summer and Fall when the outside temperatures were still warm but started to creep back up as the nights turned cold and the heater had to work harder to keep the pool satisfactorily warm.  The savings could have been greater still had the pool been covered during the unused hours but the homeowners found the previous mechanical cover they once used to be too difficult at their age to remove and restore in place.

The moral of the story?

Always double-check the settings that the pool service is using to run your pool equipment.

Their goal is to leave you with a clean pool but with the least amount of time and effort on their crew’s part to maximize their work day.  But you can still have a clean pool and a sensible utility bill that benefits you and the planet.  And one last reason to check the pool settings?  We have found more than one home with Intermatic pool timers that had lost one of the triggers for controlling the pump hours.  These pumps were always on because the Stop trigger had fallen off the timer.  Ouch.