What flow rate the regulations require of your pool
Put in the dimensions of the tank and out comes the turnover flow rate required by Resolución 929. A pump is not chosen by the volume of water but by how quickly all of it has to pass through the filter.
Pool turnover rate
7.5 to 11.2 m³/h
Recirculation flow · pool of 44.8 m³
| Volume of the pool | 44.8 m³ |
| Required turnover time | 4 to 6 h |
| Minimum flow · volume divided by the longest time | 7.5 m³/h |
| Maximum flow · volume divided by the shortest time | 11.2 m³/h |
| Daily running | 8 to 24 h/day |
The calculation runs on 100 % of the water volume, and the table itself says so. For the pool of a residential development the right type is «restricted use», even if two hundred people use it: what defines the type is whether it is open to the public, not how many people go in.
And a rule that is in no regulation: the plant room is sized by the maintenance, not by the equipment. The equipment nearly always fits; what does not fit is the person who has to work on it.
Where it comes from
The table
Resolución 929 de 2026, technical annex, clause 10, table 1. It sets the turnover time by type of pool: 4 to 6 hours for communal and restricted-use pools, 1 to 2 hours for children’s pools or those under 0.6 m deep, and half an hour for similar structures (spas, jacuzzis, hydrotherapy).
How it is used
The size of the pump and the filter is not chosen from the volume of the pool but from the turnover time: how long the system takes to pass a volume equal to all the water through the filter. The calculation must be done on 100 % of the volume.
What this tool does not claim
A tool that answers what its source does not say is worse than no tool at all. This is what is deliberately left unanswered here, and why.
- It does not select the pump. The flow rate is what the rules require; the pump depends on the head losses of the installation (length, diameters, fittings, height of the plant room), which the regulation does not cover and which do not come out of a form.
- It does not size the filter. The admissible filtration velocity depends on the filter medium, and was not transcribed from an official source.
- The volume it works out assumes a rectangular pool with depth running evenly between two ends. A beach entry, a step or a free-form shape change the real volume, and there the good measurement is the one on the drawing.
- There is no cost figure. Not for the pump, not for the work, not for the running cost.
I have a plot and I want to build on it.
We check what the planning rules allow on your plot, what can be built and what it costs, before drawing anything. Then we develop the full project through to the drawings and the permit application with the curaduría (the licensed private office that issues building permits in Cali and other large Colombian municipalities; in smaller ones, the municipal planning office).