How long should I run my pool pump every day?

Here’s a quick example. Let’s say your pool volume is 70,000 liters and let’s say you’re using the Water TechniX Pump Alpha 1.0hp which has a flow rate of 210 liters per minute with a head of 50 feet (head means the pipes to and from your pump, 50 is pretty much average so we’ll stick with that).

70,000 liters / 210 liters per minute = 333.33 minutes

That means that your pump is a good size and you’ll need to run your pool pump for about 5½ hours every day, let’s call it 6 hours per day for good measure. Do you see now how important it was to know exactly how long your pump circulates the water? If you have the exact same setup as our example and you were running your pump for 8 hours a day, you would have wasted a couple of hundred dollars per year on electricity costs alone since you were running your pump longer than what’s required.

Let’s look at the other side of the coin. Let’s say you have a pool that’s 110,000 liters and a pump that has a flow rate of 210 liters per minute.

110,000 liters / 210 liters per minute = 523.80 minutes

This means that your pump is undersized and you’d need to run your pump for 8 hours and 40 minutes to fully circulate your pool water. If this was your setup and you were only running your pool pump for 8 hours a day, you would find that your water will progressively get harder to blanance and it will be tougher to keep it clearer as it has not been fully filtered out.

Need help to figure our your pool volume and pump flow rates? Check out our sizing guides through the buttons below.