Calculating Pool Pump Run Time

How Long Should I Run Your Pool Pump For?

So, pool season is upon us and this is the time of year when questions start to arise about pool maintenance and upkeep. You might be wondering ‘how long should I be running my pool pump?’ This is a great questions! Your pool pump consumes the most energy out of any component of your pool so making sure it isn’t running for unnecessary durations of time is vital, and you’ll be saving money. I mean, who wants to be spending additional money on something that isn’t doing anything extra to your pool.

Before we give you a run down on the math behind calculating your run time, we’ll share with you some of the basics:

What Is My Pool Pump Doing?

Before we dig into the run time of your pool pump we’ll take a look into what your pool pump is actually doing. You can think of your pool pump as the heart of your pool. It is responsible for circulating the water and chemicals throughout your pool while also filtering the water. It is highly recommended that your circulate (turnover) your pool water at least once a day. This helps to ensure that the water is circulated along with the chemicals which allows your water to remain clean and clear. If you don’t circulate the water you run a risk of allowing algae to grow due to stagnation and the water will become unbalanced which makes the water unsafe for swimmers. It can also be the cause of pool pitting in the surface of the pool.

Is My Pump Strong Enough For My Pool?

For starters, you’ll need to figure out how fast your pump is. This can be accomplished by figuring out how many GPM or Gallons Per Minute your pump can circulate. This information can be found by either looking on the pump itself or my looking at the manual that came with the pump. If the pump isn’t labeled and you’ve ‘misplaced’ the manual you can always call the manufacturer or do an internet search to find the GPM.

How Much Water Is In My Pool?

Once you’ve identified how may gallons per minute your pump is capable of moving you now need to figure out how much water your pool is holding. This is a vital piece of information every pool owner should know because it dictates a lot when it comes to your pump, chemicals and just about everything else. If you don’t know this information, you need to, and we’re here to help.

To find out how much water is in your pool you’ll need to do some math. To calculate the number of gallons in your pool you need to calculate:

Length * Width * Average Depth * 7.5 (Square Pools)

Area * Average Depth * 5.9 (Oval Pools)

If math isn’t your strong suit that’s OK! You can simply do a Google search for ‘pool volume calculator’ and there are tons of calculators that you can punch your measurements into and they’ll tell you exactly how many gallons your pool is holding. Once you have this number, WRITE IT DOWN!

Let’s Figure Out Out Pool Pumps Run Time!

Now that we’ve figured out out pumps GPM as well as out pools volume we can now do some simple math to figure out exactly how long we should be running our pump for. The math for this is simple, so just follow along:

Our Pool Volume = 30,000 Gallons

Our Pump = 40 Gallons Per Minute

These are the equations you’ll need:

GPM * 60 Minutes =

Pool Volume / Gallons Per Hour =

So for our pool the calculations would look like this:

40 (GPM) * 60 Minutes = 2400 GPH (gallons per hour)

30,000 Gallons / 2400 GPH = 12.5 Hours

So, if you have a pool that is 30,000 gallons and we have a pool pump that move 40 GPM then we would need to run our pool pump for 12.5 hours to fully ‘turnover’ or completely circulate the water in the pool. If you have any further questions you can always reach out, we’d love to help you calculate your run time!