Swimming Pool heaters / chillers

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toggleswitch

toggleswitch

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Thinking aobut my soon-to-be visit to Phoenix, AZ has led to some discussion about the need to heat and chill swimming pools, and the following link provides info.

(Where I am from my thoughts go to electric or hydronic snow-melting, so this is a refreshing change-of-pace).

With electric reates what they are for me here, such a use makes me shudder at the thought of the cost of all that energy.

http://www.aquacal.com/
 
from pool to home

I wonder if there is a way that a heat pump could be connected up so that the system would cool the warm pool water, and the heat could be transferred into the house to warm the domestic hot water.
 
Funny you should mention that.

I was looking for a heat-saver that I had seen years ago that harnesses the waste heat from the outdoor (condenser) coil of a central air-condtioner to create domestic hot water.

....or that uses that waste heat to heat the pool. (which we would need to do hear in eary and late summer.)

Can't find it anymore.
 
Here is another device I cant find anymore.

"economizer" for a central A/C system. When the outdoor air temp is low enough and when the humidity is low enough it sucks in outside air alone to cool your home or with the system running to supplement it.

Can anyone find me that link, please?
 
Here in Las Vegas, we put in a solar pool heater last year. 8 panels on the roof, thermostat control, which has now just conked out. The filter pump runs the whole system. There is an additional gas heater. However to keep to pool at a comfortable temperature in the Winter, we were quoted around $1500/mo for a gas bill.

One would think here in the desert the pool would be boiling in the Summer, but it isn't. We're more high desert, so it does cool down at night and we get strong winds. Right now the pool is running around 90 or so and feels pretty good.

Before the heater, the swim season was from around late June throught early September. Now we can run it from April to October, if the weather and sun cooperate. As it does get to freezing here and below, the panels get drained in November and the bypass turned on. The filter still runs to keep the pool clean.
 
pool heating/cooling

That's what most people do in CA, NV, AZ to heat pools nowadays by other than gas. Those solar blnkets also work quite well. I can't imagine where the water woudl get so warm that anybody would want to spend money to COOL it. For one thing, it would take DAYS of 100+ heat to do that. The only place that comes near those conditions that are near me is the lower desert area (Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Indian Wells, 29 Palms, Indio)
 
Ironrite, have you tried one of the insulated blankets over the pool at night to prevent heat loss and leaving it on during the day to capture heat? My sister said their's works well. Solar has to be the way to go. A friend in Florida put in a huge heat pump to heat the pool. He used it one month in the early spring and, after seeing the power bill, shut down the thing and never used it again. For that month however, he had an airconditioned garage. Another friend in Virginia installed a pool and a huge LP gas tank to run the pool heater. They went through the first filling of the tank so fast with so little rise in the temperature of the pool water that the LP gas company figured there must be a leak in the storage tank and filled it for free. When that batch disappeared, they finally figured that it was just very expensive to heat the pool water. As for chilling pool water, friends from Florida relocated, briefly, to Dallas and the summers were so hot that if you wished to use your pool for a party, you had blocks of ice delivered that looked like big ice cubes in the pool. I think it would be more fun to have dry ice delivered and make the pool look like a happy Fizzies party because, unlike frozen water which is less dense than liquid water, frozen CO2 sinks and boils furiously from the bottom. We discovered that on the day when the Omaha Steaks boxes arrived in Zero Beach. Being shameless, I went through the immediate neighborhood collecting the styrofoam boxes with dry ice once I saw what it did in water.

The heat recovery device that pulls the heat from a central AC system to heat domestic water works great where the system runs a lot to cool the house. The hottest water is in the evening and if you use that for laundry in a top loader and run the dishsmasher, your hot water will will not be quite so hot in the morning for showers, etc. You really have to have a long air conditioning season to make it worthwhile and, if you live where it gets below freezing in the winter, the unit cannot be outside so the installation gets trickier. One other saving from this device is that with a thermal switch on the condenser fan, the water can remove enough heat from the refrigerant to keep the coil cool without the fan consuming electricity.
 
Tom:

Great to hear your "voice".
I find all of this stuff fascinating.

My sister has a gas heater on her pool and I warned her of the (rumored) cost to run it. Must inquire and actually see it running one day soon...

I also encouraged her to get the heater with the greatest heat output she could afford. The quiker it heats the less wasteful. Logic: If you have to wait hours to get in something will come up and you may change your mind. Therefore the enrgy consumed (to that point) is a total waste.

To me the speacialized electrical sub-panel with built-in GFI (a/k/a GFCI) and timers (two- filter and heater) that is specifically made for a pool setting is SO cool.

The link is similar but not the exact thing I saw..

http://www.polytecpools.com/aqualink-power-center-subpanel-12024-p-269.html
 
Mystery Heater Fix

We looked into the pool covers, and they do work. However, you can see from the photo, there is a planter behind the pool. If we used a cover, it would be one that was cut into pieces, which our wind here would take them off the pool There are very nice roll up models, but those won't work with the pool at this time. The backyard is undergoing it's renovation, so it looks a bit bare right now.

As I mentioned the thermostat stopped working. Called the solar people about a week ago. Got a very snippy, customer no-service person that quoted $150.00 to fix it, about 3 months out of their 1 year warranty for the electronics. The panels have a 10 year warranty. They would "send" a repair person and our choice whether or not to pay them was their response. I said no thanks and we'll be sure to pass along our experience with their company, and left it at that.

This morning, while making my rounds checking the filter and pump for the pool, I noticed a cut piece of wire and what looked like a sensor on the ground. Then I looked at the control box, was set to automatic. Then I noticed where the sensor went and new one in its place.

In a nutshell, the repair people came into a locked yard, with a loose dog, with no permission or authorization and changed the thing! Checking with my neighbor, she confirmed that she saw a pool truck in front of the house during the week. So, I'll wait to see if I get a bill for this!!
 

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