Savings at the pump: today's high-efficiency pumps can save operators thousands of dollars annually.(Bottom Line)

Faced with ever-shrinking budgets, today's aquatics facility operators are looking everywhere they can to save money. But many may be forgetting to look for cost savings in the most basic of places: their pumps.

The fact is, a higher-efficiency, 15hp commercial pump can save more than $5,000 a year on a 205,000-gallon pool and more than $37,000 over the pump's product life. With those kinds of savings, a new pump can quickly start pumping money back into your facility.

Those savings are largely due to advances in manufacturing that are producing some of the most efficient pumps ever. For instance, pumps today are built to last longer, and also are built to be incredibly efficient, quiet, lightweight and corrosion-resistant. Some manufacturers are making plastic injection-molded pumps for more durability. All of this adds up to a pump that is highly cost-effective and suited for a wide range of commercial water applications. Other manufacturers look at the competition when designing pumps so they know they are meeting the needs in the marketplace and offering both a user-friendly and cost-saving pump.

How do you know if it's time to trade in your old model? Here are four considerations:

1 The impeller

An impeller is the rotorlike part in a water pump. The impeller drives or pushes the water into motion. Impellers are constructed of durable and long-lasting materials such as Noryl, and come in a variety of sizes based on horsepower and the model size of the pump.

To design an energy-efficient filtration system for a pool, spa or waterfeature, we must understand basic hydraulic principles. Poorly-designed systems create excessive friction losses, which waste energy and money. At the heart of every filtration system, the circulation pump must overcome all of the resistance to flow (friction losses) created by all other components, such as skimmers, drains, valves and other pieces of the circulation system. And at the heart of the pump's extraordinary performance is the impeller.