While H2Flow is the only company we know of that has actually tested their flow meters for accuracy in float water, it’s not hard to imagine that other similarly designed flow meters would be inaccurate as well. That’s over 2 extra minutes that the pumps should be running between each floater. Those 4 turnovers actually take a full 20 minutes. This means it actually takes 5 minutes to do a single tank turnover. However, we now know that 45 GPM is actually 40 GPM. This makes the expected turnover time 4 minutes and 26 seconds for 200 gallons and, therefore, 17 minutes and 44 seconds for all 4 turnovers. The perceived flow rate on the standard, pool industry flow meter reads 45 GPM. A 45 GPM reading on the flow meter correlates to about 40 GPM, whereas a 80 GPM perceived rate equates to about 70 GPM in reality.Īs you may have deduced by now, an inaccurate flow meter reading will throw off the calculation of how long you need to run the pump in order to meet the target number of turnovers.Ī 200-gallon tank needs to complete 4 turnovers between each float. While it would be convenient to just transpose the perceived flow rate to the actual rate, the relationship between the flow meter reading and the actual rate is nonlinear. To say this another way, they overmeasure the amount of liquid flowing through a system. Thanks to testing by our friends over at H2Flow, we now know that their regular flow meters generally read 5-10 GPM higher than the actual rate with the saturated salt water. Multiply that by 4, and you’ll have the amount of time necessary to do 4 turnovers. In order to make sure that 4 turnovers are actually occurring, you attach a flow meter, which monitors the speed at which the liquid is flowing through your filtration system.īy taking the volume of your tank and dividing by the gallons per minute (GPM) shown on the flow meter, you are able to calculate how long you would need to run your system to filter the volume of each tank. The capacity for your system to do this will depend on the volume of liquid in your tank, the power of your pump, and systemic head loss (resistance). Your local health department has mandated that you have a minimum of 4 turnovers between each float. The standard is generally 3 to 5 turnovers per cleaning cycle, and this number is often dictated by local health guidelines. The answer, therefore, is to filter for a longer period of time, giving the all of the water a better chance of getting through the system at least once.įor the recirculation method to be fully effective, we need to pump and filter the volume of the tank a number of times. This means that the filtered salt solution mixes back in with the solution that is still waiting to be filtered, making it hard to know when all of it has actually gone through the system. In this method, the solution goes right back into the float tank as it’s being pumped through the filtration system. Other float tanks use the “recirculation” method, where there is no holding tank. Once 100% of the solution has emptied into the holding tank, it can be refilled into the float tank this is typically known as the “reservoir” method, and lets you confidently know that all the water has gone through the filter in a single pass. Some float tanks pump the entire volume of their solution into an external holding tank after each float, passing it through the filter and the other sanitation equipment along the way. Whatever combination of sanitation methods are used to achieve this (UV, H2O2, ozone, bromine, etc.), each tank must also be filtered between floats.įloat tanks accomplish this in one of two ways. Because the solution isn’t drained after each float, a diligent approach to ensure the highest level of water sanitation is essential. One of the foundational realities of float tank sanitation is cleaning the solution between each float. They found that the density of the solution did, in fact, make a difference, and that their standard pool flow meter was quite a bit off from the real flow rate.Īs we will explore below, this can have some ramifications for float tank sanitation, and may make you want to change how long you run your pump between clients. We’ve recently gained some insight into that question on one piece of equipment in particular: the flow meter.Ī company called H2Flow, maker of the FlowVis (a flow meter that is widely used in the float industry), recently tested their device with float water. Float tanks tend to use a lot of parts borrowed from the pool and spa industry and, whenever that happens, it’s always important to question whether that pool part works accurately with our salt water solution.
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