Pool - Air Conditioner heat exchanger

[wayner]

Does anyone have one of these (or anything similar): Heat Recovery Pool Heater | Compare To Solar Pool Heater | HotSpot Energy LLC

This product has a heat exchanger - it circulates your AC coolant through a coil in a vessel that you run your pool water through.

It seems to make infinite sense to use the heat that you are removing from your house to heat your pool.

 

[Isaac-1]

This topic came up a month or so ago, but I did not follow the thread in detail, you may want to do a search on air conditioner compressor, or something like that over the last month or two in order to find it.

 

[Donldson]

I like the idea as an idea, but I am very dubious of real world practicality. It takes a lot more to heat a pool a few degrees than to cool a house a few degrees, so as a pool heater this will not work especially well. Now factor in that during a heat wave and your pool warms up to a nice cozy temperature. You either keep the device running and continue warming your already warm pool, or you shut it down and lose any savings on your cooling system. They talk about an AC running 8 hours a day, well mine only runs that much when the temperature is up near the 90's F (sorry, US imperial units) and the pool is already warm. When it gets cooler the AC runs less so your heater runs less right when it is needed the most. This device won't help at all in the Spring and Fall when you are trying to warm the pool up but the AC isn't running. By its very design it works best when it is needed the least and doesn't work at all when it is needed the most.

I really do like the idea, I have thought of stuff like that before. I suppose it could be worth it at night to help keep heat loss minimal in the pool while enhancing the AC system, but I'm guessing if I were to call for a quote I would assume they misplaced the decimal point.

 

[wayner]

Here is a thread on this product from last year with recent updates. It makes sense to me, at least if you live in an area where the ambient temperature of the pool is rarely as warm as what you want it. I live in Toronto and have used a Nat Gas heater to keep my pool in the mid 80s. Without a heater I doubt the temp would be above 80 very often, even though my pool gets direct sunlight all day. And our AC runs very often in the summer. Last year I installed a solar heating system - but I wonder if this type of system would makes sense to augment a solar heating system - I still keep my Nat Gas heater set at 81 so that the pool temp doesn't drop too low if the solar heaters aren't getting it warm enough.