We’ve always talked about ECO pool pumps and how they can save you money in the long run, but how efficient are they in reality? We’ve crunched the numbers here at Mr Pool Man so that you’ll have a clearer picture of how ECO pool pumps are a great investment, especially for those who use their pool the whole year round!

Standard pool pumps only have 2 settings, “on” and “off”. This is a simple, no-frills approach to pool pumps which has worked over the years, but it’s not terribly energy efficient. Once you flick that on switch, the pump will run at full speed until you turn it off. ECO pool pumps on the other hand will have different speed ratings, you can have it run at full speed for heavy pool usage or at a lower speed if you just need to circulate your pool water.

Short Answer: Yes

Long Answer: Yes, Definitely.

All kidding aside, the more stars a pump has, the more energy efficient it is. Every star on the rating represents a 25% bump in efficiency over the previous star rating. So let’s say a pump has a rating of 5-stars, when we compare that to a higher rated pump like the Water TechniX Pump Dual ECO Variable Speed that’s rated 7-stars, the energy efficiency jump is 42%! It’s 25% more efficient than a 6-star model, which is 25% more efficient than a 5-star model. When comparing an unrated pump (non-energy star rated) to a 7-star pump, that’s almost up to 81% more efficiency!

Here's an example of a standard 1.0HP Hayward pool pump. To get the actual energy usage, we need a couple of pieces of information from the label.

• Voltage, we use 230 volts here in Australia
• Amps, since we use higher voltage, we get the lower amperage rating which is 6.9

The first thing we need to do is multiply the volts by the amperage which will get us the number of watts. So 230 x 6.9 will give us 1,587. We divide that number by 1000 to give us the kWh used by the pump. In this case, 1,587 / 1000 = 1.587

Multiply that by the number of hours per day, in our example we'll go with 8 hours a day. So we have 1.587 x 8 hours a day = 12.696 kWh per day

In NSW the average cost for electricity is $0.26 AUD per kWh. To get the cost per day, we multiply the usage (12.696 kWh) by the cost of $0.26. Which will give us roughly $3.30 electricity use per day.

SEE ALSO: Are Cheap Pool Pumps worth it?

You’re going to say, well, percentages are fine, but how much am I going to save in terms of actual dollars and cents? There’s no one answer to that as your location may have different price points for electricity but let’s take NSW for example. The energy costs here averages around $0.26 AUD per kWh. Taking that value into account, here’s a quick table of how much you’ll spend on electricity running your pump at 8 hours a day, on a 75,000L sized pool.

One look at the table and you can see that the difference in operating costs of your pump is staggering! That’s almost $936 in savings when it comes to electricity costs. Now we admit we’ve skewed the numbers a little bit as we’ve compared running the standard pump to a 7-star pump running at the low/ECO setting to a standard pump. But let’s say the pool is used 110 days a year, or three times a week and you’ll need to run your ECO pump at full speed for those days, the energy savings will still be north of $300 to $400! More than enough to pay for the difference of a standard pump and an ECO pump in just a year. And after that, you can put the savings into must have pool accessories instead!

Not only do ECO pumps save you money, but it’s great for the environment as well! The pump also runs quieter and cooler than your standard pumps, making it last longer by reducing wear and tear. Some people will reason out that you can save money with standard pool pumps by running it at off-peak hours and they’re right! But those energy saving tips and tricks can also be applied to ECO pumps as well! Increasing your savings even further!

Mr Pool man has a number of flexible payment methods that will allow you to pay for your new ECO pool pump in installments! Turn your electricity savings into a new ECO pump today and reap the benefits!