Intelliflo vs 2-speed for pump replacement

15 years ago

Good day to all, we moved into a house in Southern California with an older pool, and I would like to upgrade the pump. The pool is about 15,000 gallons, has a jacuzzi but no other water features. It has two pumps, one is a single-speed 2-hp just for the jacuzzi jets, this pump is always off unless we are actually using the jacuzzi. The filter pump is a single-speed 1-hp with 1.5 SF, goes to a 48 sq ft vertical grid DE filter. Plumbing is 2-inch.

Both pumps are working fine at this time, but I thought it would be smart to change out the filter pump to one of the newer models. Our electric utility has a rebate program in place to help offset the cost. Don't really want to mess with the jacuzzi pump now, it sees very limited use.

I have been leaning towards using a 2-speed pump to be able to utilize the low speed for daily filtering operation. With 15000 gallons it would take only about 25 gpm to turn over the water once in 10 hours. I have seen a lot of posts in this forum for the Pentair VF pump, though, it seems to have some vocal supporters. I am wary of buying such an expensive pump, especially since it runs on a circuit board. Found a post of someone who had a bad experience with one,

http://gpsinformation.info/joe/PentairIntelliflo.html

This was for a 4X160, apparently now called the VS 3050, not the VF model. But still, this sort of confirms my worst fears of high-cost devices run on electronics, this guy's expensive pump turned into a high-tech paperweight even though it was mechanically fine just because Pentair has no replacement for circuit boards when they fail.

Also saw a post on this forum from last year, someone had three Intelliflo pumps go bad, he sort of got rescued by a three-year warranty, but it sounds like he just got lucky. I would expect an expensive piece of hardware like this to be both robust out of the box and repairable outside of warranty, especially if it needs a lot of electronics to run the thing. This policy of not fixing the electronics and making you buy a new pump doesn't seem like smart customer support. Someone can pay for a lot of not-quite-optimum two-speed operation for the price of a failed Intelliflo.

Anyone else run into this situation, no servicing for failed electronics? VF seems like the most efficient out there, and mechanically I am sure they rate well, but hard to justify the cost if one blown transistor turns the whole thing into a doorstop.

-Hank

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (3)

tresw
15 years ago
We built our pool early last year and at that time I heavily researched the 4X160 and ran across no reported problems with it. It's the only pump our PB uses. Ours has performed flawlessly. I haven't been posting here for a good 6 months, so haven't seen the problems you mentioned. Perhaps it's a problem with the newer pumps.
trhought
15 years ago
hajbo-

Good question and this is going to be mostly a personal preference. You're obviously doing your homework and have read this forum and others. The variable speed pump at low speed will be marginally better than the 2 speed at low speed. As you mention, the variable speed does require a circuit board (actually a high current wave chopper, as they're know in the motor industry) to operate. If the circuit board (drive) fails, then the pump will not work. Not sure what Pentair's policy is regarding replacement drives. In HVAC, there are some manufacturers that replace the drives and others that require a full motor/drive combo replacement.

From my experience with variable speed technology in HVAC, I personally decided to go with 2 speed technology. Both of my 2 speeds were put into service in 2007 and no problems to report.

I would get a quote for a 2 speed installed plus rebates and compare to a quote for a variable speed plus rebates and then calculate how much money you will save annually with the variable speed assuming 300W/hour difference to see how long you're payoff will be and also look at manufacturer's warranties to help with your decision.

Example, if you plan to run the pump at low speed for 8 hours per day, the daily savings with a variable speed will be 8 hours x 300 watts = 2,400 watt-hours. Multiply the 2,400 watt-hours by your utility rate to determine daily savings...so if your utility rate is $.30/KWH (you said SoCal so this is a guess), then your daily savings with variable speed will be $.72 per day (not too bad) and the payoff will likely be less than 2 years, assuming no failures or drive replacements.

For me, at $.07/KWH, it would have taken over 10 years to recover my investment for variable speed technology. From my experience, relying on any high speed rotation equipment to last more than 10 years is a risky assumption regardless of variable speed or 2 speed technology. As you said, it will obviously be more expensive to get the variable speed technology working again when problems occur.

It's a personal preference but wanted to share my logic....you're mileage may vary as they say.

Hope this helps!

Tres - Welcome back....missed you on the boards the last 6 months! Hope all is well.
Related Discussions
13 seer single speed VS 16 seer var speed heat pump
Q
Comments (3)
Are you referencing new ducts, programmable thermostat, high voltage wiring, equipment, and inspections? If so, $9,500.00 for the job is not to high. The variable speed may be $2,300.00 per ton. I am assuming you are speaking of the air handler as being variable speed. To answer your other question, for all practical purposes, you may never recoup the additional expenses. The energy savings in terms of dollars and cents are not worth the increase cost, normally. The cost to repair a variable speed blower is much higher than a multi-speed air handler. FYI, a per ton price is never a good conversation point for a change-out. At $1900, two tons equals $3800.00 Three tons equals $5,700.00. The difference is $1,900.00. But the equipment cost could be as little as $400.00 different. And, the labor is the same. Per ton price cause some contractors to oversize just to be able to charge more. We replaced a 5-ton unit in New Orleans for a 3.5 ton unit. The 3.5 ton unit will do a better job with the humidity. In Durham, NC, our customer asked us to replace his 3.5 ton A/C unit and furnace for a 2.5 ton A/C because of the humidity problem that he wanted to solve.
...See More
Users who replaced pump with IntelliFlo - saved as expected?
Q
Comments (57)
In fact, I just finished talking to him. I mainly just asked him about the Hybrid pump with just a couple of questions about the VF versus X2. John stated that there is no pump on the market that can move close to the same amount of water for the same energy consumed. For 2 inch pipe with a Sta-rite system3 DE filter, he estimates that at their default 1500 rpm filtering speed, the Hybrid pump would move 60 to 80 GPM using 1.8 amps. This equates to 230V X 1.8 amps = 414 watts. I searched TFP and found chemgeek listed a slew of speeds and wattage readings from his VF (60 GPM, 2710 rpm = 1305 watts). That's a little below what John estimated the VF would consume with my setup. If I drop the rpm to 1000 on the Hybrid, the amps would drop to 0.5 = 115 watts. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask him the GPM estimate. But it's obvious that he believes the hybrid to be the most efficient variable on the market. Using the 1.8 amps for 1500 rpm moving 60 GPM (low end of his estimate for GPM), to turnover 32K gallons 1 time would consume 3.68kwh in 8.9 hours. According to your spreadsheet using Curve A, the VF at 1000 rpm would take 3.15 kwh running for 24.24 hours. Getting the VF to turnover in 8.98 hours requires 10.4kwh (using chem geek's numbers, it would be 11.6 kwh). Unfortunately, no CEC data to perform apples to apples comparison via the spreadsheet. But given that another X2 user on the forum reports using 2.2 amps using solar and running his waterfall, the efficiency could be close to what John states. Replacement cost is another consideration I asked John about. Since the drive is the most expensive aspect of the VF with its custom application, the availability of an off the shelf driver for the Hybrid that they customize the programming on makes the cost much more reasonable - in the $300 range. The pump motor is custom made to their specs and they have not had a single failure in 3 years. John stated that the drive's job is to keep the motor safe so it won't allow it to run outside of pre-set parameters or it will shut it down. I also found out that I won't need an automation system to run the X2. The drive has an internal timer which will allow me to run X time at vacuum speed and the rest at filter speed. My intermatic clock would control on/off like it currently does for the single speed. Hybrid also has a 2 year warranty on everything. The only question left is longevity of the company itself. Can they sell enough and get PBs to start using their product to stay in business? I'm really impressed after running the numbers.
...See More
Can SunTouch reduce Intelliflo VS speed on a solar loop
Q
Comments (2)
The latest versions of IntelliTouch, EasyTouch, and SunTouch have solar priming mode whereby they run the IntelliFlo VS pump at a set speed for 5 minutes. After it is primed, the user defined Solar RPM (which is probably lower) takes over.
...See More
1-Speed, 2-Speed, or Intelliflo?
Q
Comments (3)
1.5 plumbing and 32k is pushing an IntelliFlo into the 20+ hours per day range. It will save on that install but most don't feel comfortable running that long. I would certainly not put in another single speed. 3250 rpm at any HP is not going to save $. I'd lean towards the 2 speed.
...See More
dustman007
14 years ago
hajbo,

I just installed a VF3050 and love it .... however the love affair lasted only 3 days. We had an area-wide power failure that wiped out the electronics (called the drive) of the pump. We are still waiting for Pentair to replace the "drive" on the pump. Their local warranty support vendor does not stock the drive, claiming that it is too expensive. Pentair refuses to ship me a drive, which is easy to replace (3 screws) due to "company policy".

So I agree with your assesment that to avoid an expensive paperweight, one should avoid this pump, which is sad as it is a great pump. Pentair needs to fix their product support.

One neat thing about it is that it will maintain a constant flow through the filter even as the filter gets clogged by normal crud.

Intelliflo vs 2-speed for pump replacement

Comments (3)

tresw

trhought

Related Discussions

dustman007

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US