Solar Pool Heating

[RC]

Anyone with experience on pricing and install of solor pool panels? I've gotten estimates for two products. Heliocol and Ecosun. The Ecosun is $5,570 installed for 8 4x10 panels. All parts for a self install are $3,200. The Heliocol is $6,200 installed and $4,200 for all parts if I install myself. I am told this system is much easier to install. They both would come with a Goldline 235 control box. The surface square footage of my pool is approx 600 and the roof it will install on faces south. Both pool and panels would get full sun all day. Anyone use any other systems or have some good personal experience to share?

Thanks

 

[itstippy]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

Get one of those blue solor pool covers that looks like heavy bubble wrap. They help a lot to warm the pool on sunny days when the pool's not in use, and they keep the heat in the water at night. Also get some garden hose and a fan sprinkler (like for a yard or garden) and a cheap 120 volt water pump. During a sunny day you take the cover off and drape it over the fence with the lower edge in the pool. Then you hook up the sprinkler & water pump so it sprays pool water on the cover and the water drains into the pool. It's hard on the chlorine but it warms the water up fast. The kids spash around in the "rain". Gotta do stuff like that in Wisconsin because our pool season is about two weeks long.

 

[i386]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

Lots of black garden hose?

 

[Caveman Charlie]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

I've seen some articles on this in home power magazine

 

[island boy]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

This is an iteresting topic for me i am from maine so i know all about the two week pool season lol. What we have done that worked really well is to take several hundered feet of black garden hose and arange it on the large roof of our house and get a circulator of some sort and run it back and forth along the top of the roof and by the time it gets back to the pool it is actualy quite warm. It takes a while to set up the garden hose but it really works.

 

[MrBigStuff]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

island boy- your setup is interesting. I put in a 10k gallon above ground pool late last year. We only got a few weeks use and it was brisk toward the end to say the least. The solar cover does a good job but only goes so far. I've been considering all options.

Solar heat calculations I found on the net say I need something like 2 4x8 panels to be effective. The pool is closest to the house and the roof is 3 stories above the pool. That complicates things a bit with both pumping (head) and return lines (suction). But I hate to abandon the almost free heating method. I could run it over to the garage roof which is less convenient but might lose a lot of heat before it gets to the pool unless I insulate the return side.

I made a test manifold to see if wood heat could work. I heat the house with wood in the winter so it's convenient for me. I put the thing on my Weber grill (as a test) and used a single bag of charcoal. I managed to get a 6 deg rise in only a few hours! The trouble with this kind of heating is the soot that will eventually coat the exchanger. I don;t want that kind of maintenance. Plus, if it's not stainless, the pool chemicals will attack it in the long run. The conventional wood heaters are too expensive and large for my liking.

For circulation, I teed off the existing pump with an adjustable valve to limit the flow through my exchanger. With the hose, it could work the same way so no separate pump required.

I also looked into the reverse air conditioner type heat pumps. Large capital outlay but then just electricity cost to run. A co-worker has one and it can heat to 80 in May so no problem with capacity.

With your hose set up- how long of a run do you have? What's the max height? What's the earliest time of year it can be effective? What flow rate do you think you are running through it? Has it ever been a problem with the shingles being damaged from using it?

Any concerns about the water not being potable after running through a "garden" hose? I suppose it's so diluted that it doesn't matter much...

Thanks in advance for any info/help you can provide!

 

[island boy]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

My house is a one story ranch style house that is about 23 feet at the peek, so that aleviates some of the verticle lift problem you minght have with your setup. I have about 400 feet of black garden hose which runs through a water filter that is normaly used for home water purification. The electric pump we use actualy came off an old yacht that was used to pump the potable water for the sinks and other utilities. It pumps about 50 gallons per hour and isn't to bad on electricity. We use the same pipe channel that is used for radient floor heating to hold the hose in place securly. Before we put the cahnnel up we painted it blact to blend in with the black shingles and then ran them verticaly so that they would still shed water, we also coated the screws that it was put up with in a sealing compound so they don't undemine the integrity of your roof. In the fall the hose comes out easily and the channel is left in place. We have set this up two years in arow and has worked great. Good luck

 

[island boy]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

P.S.
We put it up around the 4th of july and usualy take it down around the end of august. My pool is a 28k pool also and i can definatly tell a difference.

 

[bandit86]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

run some 2 inch abs pipes in a grid pattern back and forth on the pool house roof. saw it done, cheap too

 

[seafox 257]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

I have 8 pannels on my house and they face south my pool is 20,000 gallons and I can practically swim all winter long i am in florida within the last week it was in the upper 70's and low 80's and my pool is almost 80 degrees pretty soon I will have to turn them off they are great but bad for your roof if you dont have tile

 

[island boy]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

seafox 257 how expensive are the solar pannels i was thinking about trying them out?

 

[emoney]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

Look into gas heaters while you're at it. We bought this current house 3 years ago and it came already equipped with a solar heater for the pool and quite frankly, I don't think it's very effecient at all. Now, granted we live in the Tampa bay are of Florida, but still, I don't think it adds more than 3-4 degrees to the water and it seems to evaporate a LOT of water (constantly filling the pool back up). Plus you have to pretty much leave it on all the time, whereas a friend has a gas heater and he can just turn his on when he goes to bed at night and wakes up to a 88 degree pool (or wherever he sets it). From the prices you're getting quoted, I've got this feeling that Gas will end up being a lot more economical too.

 

[Don S]

Re: Solar Pool Heating

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