Does anybody use a voltage regulator for their pool equipment?

[SantiSuk]

Not talking about pool lights, does anyone successfully use a voltage regulator for their pool pump/chlorinator?

In the last 3 months my pool pump ran slow and hot and my chlorinator produced so little chlorine I nearly junked the cell. Around the house I could only run two aircon units in cooling mode at one time and some neons were taking minutes to warm up. My Mitsubishi domestic water pump would fail to switch off as we switched off a tap and ran until auto cut-out on overheating. One hour gaps in water provision proved mighty annoying. Voltage must have been down around 180 I would guess.

In the last couple of weeks power consumption in my area must have been a lot lighter. With the onset of cooler weather (I assume that is the reason) everything is back to running smoothly. Pool pump sounds and looks (filter pressure gauge and height of water in the pump unit filter inspection housing) to be on full power. Chlorinator back to producing 1.5 ppm on half power setting - d_mn wish I hadn't bought so much Chlorine granule now!

So, for next year, is it worth considering putting in a voltage regulator? My house-builder (not a local yokel - a regional domestic/commercial builder and reasonably technical) says that they are only useful for small items of electrical equipment like computers etc and would not work with larger ampage kit like pumps. I did show him pictures from the internet of regulators that looked to my untrained eye to be something more substantial than the sort of thing you might plug in line with a desktop/TV etc, but he was still dismissive.

Any thoughts/experience from pool users. If no answers here I'll post on the DIY forum to get Crossy's attention.

[Crossy]

Plenty of big AVRs around, 10-20kVA and up that will quite happily start your pool pump etc.

Have a look in the sparking forum, a couple of recent threads.

[IMHO]

I use both a whole house voltage stabilizer - which keeps my mains stable at 220V so long as the grid voltage remains above ~130V, plus as an added precaution I have a phase protector - which cuts off supply to my pool control box in under/over voltage conditions. This only reacts when the mains gets too low to stabilize, but not low enough to cause the stabilizer the shut off (~100-130V grid).

In my part of Thailand, it's just a necessity.

Your technical guy is wrong BTW - my voltage stabilizer is rated to 20kVA. Readily available at Global House for a little over 30K Baht.

Edited July 22, 2015 by IMHO

[SantiSuk]

Many thanks. I suspected as much. I need to find a decent electrician! Crazy for a 6 year old house, but I should probably get the whole premises rewired as well with earthed sockets. I credited him with being a big local builder, but I've always recognised that his electricians do basic and tatty work.