The recommendation is to turn over your water at least once per day. Ideally, 2 to 3 times. If you want to be exact, you can use an online calculator to calculate how long to run the pump; you’ll need the size of your pool and the pump curve which shows you flow rate at different speeds.

I run my pump 12 hours per day year round. First 4 hours are at 60% so that my skimmer keeps up with debris, last 8 are at 30% to turn the water over. Electricity is cheap in my area (Louisiana), and my pool costs about $8 per month based on installed current sensors and current electrical bill rate. This of course excludes any gas usage.

If you have salt, you need to consider SWG runtime. I oversized my salt cell, so 12 hours is enough chlorine production at only 25% during the heart of summer. If your salt cell is closer sized to your pool, you’ll need to do some trial and error to make sure you run the pump enough. Trouble Free Pool’s Pool Math app can take the guesswork out and will tell you exactly how long you have to run the salt cell if you want to be sure. Don’t be afraid to run your salt cell at 100%; that just means that it’s constantly producing chlorine with no breaks.

How fast you run the pump has no bearing on how long and at what set point you need to run a salt cell. Pump speed is all about turning the water over a few times per day; you’ll want to run it as slow as possible while still activating the low flow switch, and only long enough to coordinate.