A test like that is not accurate unless the parameters are tightly controlled and all contributing factors noted. The meter reading includes all household electric use, not just the heat pump. Cooking? Bathing? Dishwashing? Laundry? Sunshine vs. overcast? Wet vs. dry weather (affects heat pump defrost frequency)? Did the 3°F recovery involve use of auxiliary heat strips? 2°F and 3°F setback is very minimal. More savings is potentially garnered with larger setbacks. I'm in TX. We had a rare snowfall during a wet norther on Dec 4. After that Dec 4 weather incident, I didn't run the central heating (heat pump) for several weeks. Instead, I used a space heater only in the bedroom at night. I noted that even with occasional nighttime temps into the upper 30°Fs, the unheated rooms in my house rarely dropped below 60°F. So ... if I had been running the heat pump at 70°F normal with a 2°F setback (68°F), it still would run to maintain 68°F during the setback periods ... but an 8°F to 10°F setback (setpoint of 62°F or 60°F), it would run very little during the setback periods, if at all. That'd make a difference on KWH usage in regards to setback vs. none.

You'd have to pull the top cover to see what I am talking about, but you don't have to pull the cover to install an air vent. The reason I say about the air vent is because I recently installed an auxillary boiler in my garage and its air vent was at the ceiling, the highest point in the house. Everyday I would hear the air going through the pipes, yet the air vent never bled it out. I finally realized that is was the air in the dome of the boiler and I bled alot of it out through the pressure relief valve that day. Everyday I crack the valve and a tiny bit of air still comes out, but the system is now whisper quiet. As long as you have circulation, your air scoop and air vent will bleed out the air. And any that is trapped in the dome of the boiler can be handled as I explained above.

moved

Kgolby Great questions regarding in floor systems vs traditional cleaners. This is a personal decision with pros and cons both ways. We have an in-floor system and have never had a traditional cleaner so this is based on our own experience with in-floor systems without comparison to other options. For the most part, we like our in-floor system and we do have a heat pump also. Not sure of any differences between delivering heat to the bottom of the pool or delivering it to the side of the pool since we have only an in-floor and I have never seen any data supporting advantages of one method over another other than sales brochures. Logically, in floor systems make sense since heat rises and the pool floor also gets heated with the return pipes being internal to the pool floor, similar to radiant heating in concrete slabs. Again, I have not seen any data to support this and no experience with an alternative system, just thinking logically about the application of in-floor systems. What we donÂt like about the in floor system is the deep end is not always clean. Leaves blow around on the pool floor around the main drain in the deep end and donÂt always get sucked in immediately. We only run our floor system for an hour a day at high speed, so longer high speed cycles will probably do a better job but at the cost of more energy. We donÂt mind that it takes a couple days though to sweep clean the deep end and if guests are coming over, it only takes a minute to scoop the leaves from one small area of the deep end and the rest of the pool is spotless. Not sure if this is also a problem with traditional cleaners or if we are just being too picky. We always get comments like "how do you keep the pool so clean?" even when we know there are leaves in the deep end. This is probably because the shallow areas of the pool which are most visible are always spotless. What we like about our in floor system is no unsightly cleaning devices or cleaning lines in the pool to detract from the natural theme we were after, no messing with the water and lines to hoist a cleaning device in and out of the pool (especially on cold winter days), shallow end of pool is always spotless, no need to worry about beaches, shallow steps, grottos, shallow sun shelves getting cleaned and overall worry free operation of the in floor system. I travel a lot and when IÂm gone there is no need to worry about the floor cleaning system doing itÂs job because it is part of the pool return system and not an add on device that may need attention. About twice per week, we clean the skimmer basket and filter pump basket of leaves and large debris. The in floor cleaning manufacturer sells a separate leaf canister as part of their system, but our filter pump has a large basket capable of holding a lot of leaves and we opted not to get the leaf canister as it would only be one more basket to empty. We have only cleaned our cartridge filter twice in the last 7 months of pool operation and it seems to be a good match with the in-floor system as it looked in pretty good shape both times. Only time will tell, but so far we are happy with the in floor cleaner combined with cartridge filter and heat pump on the same 2 speed filter pump circuit. Regarding your question about number of heads, this will be determined by the in-floor cleaning company based on our experience. Once they had our pool design, including steps, beach, sun-shelf, grotto and all depths and dimensions, they engineered the head placement on a dimensioned drawing that the PB then used to place the heads during plumbing rough-in. They also provide head sizes based on the pool design and pool depths (smaller heads for shallow water and closer head placement and larger heads for deeper water and wider head placement). The most common design is a 6 zone system with 5-8 heads per zone. Very large pools or pools with intricate internal profiles will require more zones but this is not very common and 6 zones will work with most pools including your 16x30. Regarding the $3K investment, again, this is a personal decision, but we are happy with our investment so far. Hope this helps.