Water temperature coming out of Heat Exchanger?

[jeffblue]

I am used to swimming in friends' pools who have traditional gas/propane/electric element heaters where the water simply passes through a hot element of some sort and returns to the pool warmer than it left it. when you feel the jets/returns in these pools the water feels significantly warmer than the surrounding water when the heater is on. Now i have a pool of my own after recently purchasing a house. It has a hayward heatpro titanium heat exchanger 110k btu model hp21104t. I turned it on for the first time today and i noticed that the water coming out of the jets is barely any warmer than the pool water. is this normal? its about 75 degrees outside and my pool is about 67 degrees. i had it set to 90 just for testing purposes. is this normal performance for a heat exchanger? i'm not complaining that it isn't heating the water fast enough in the pool, i'm just curious as to how it can even heat the pool if the water coming out of it is barely warmer than the water leaving the pool? FWIW, the heat exchanger read a temperature of 69 deg, the SWG (downstream from heat exchanger) read a temperature of 70. I understand how a heat exchanger works, as it is basically just an air conditioner in reverse. the pool water runs through the condenser and the refrigerant that is 'cooled' by the pool water absorbs heat from the air at the evaporator. i know they do not heat as quickly as gas/element heaters but i imagine that the water should be more than a degree warmer than the pool water.

Side note, when i first turned it on the fan wouldn't turn on. i called hayward and they said either my fan motor is bad or that the motor is not getting voltage. i take off the front panel to see that one of the wires on the board going to fan was CUT. anyway i fixed it and it fired right up. the compressor was working as i could hear the relay.

 

[Geebot]

Heat pumps heat incrementally (they extract heat from ambient air) so there's no other source of heat to draw from. You get a lot less immediate response than a gas or conventional electric will give you. It's also not the best solution for a 30,000 gallon pool. Look at the chart on page 5:

https://www.hayward-pool.com/pdf/manuals/HeatPro-Owners-HP2xxxxT-HP2xxxxBT.pdf

At an ambient temp of 75 degrees it will take about 160 minutes to heat the pool by 1 degree (or roughly 61 hours to heat it to 90 degrees - assuming no heat is lost over 2-1/2 days).

 

[jeffblue]

Wow thanks for the detailed reply. So it sounds like these are great for barely heating the water as efficiently as possible lol. So without replacing the unit is my best bet to just get a solar blanket? It sounds like relying on this to actually heat my pool is a waste of time and energy so I guess I'm just best served letting the dark liner absorb as much light as possible and use a solar blanket to keep heat in by reducing evaporation?

After looking at your numbers I don't even understand the purpose of having one of these to heat a pool.

 

[Geebot]

Wow thanks for the detailed reply. So it sounds like these are great for barely heating the water as efficiently as possible lol. So without replacing the unit is my best bet to just get a solar blanket? It sounds like relying on this to actually heat my pool is a waste of time and energy so I guess I'm just best served letting the dark liner absorb as much light as possible and use a solar blanket to keep heat in by reducing evaporation?

After looking at your numbers I don't even understand the purpose of having one of these to heat a pool.

Actually, once the pool gets up to temp heat pumps can maintain the heat relatively efficiently (would be nicer to have a larger unit for 30,000 gallons), so I wouldn't discount it completely.

 

[danpik]

make sure the unit is clean. The evap and condens coils can get clogged up with stuff inhibiting air flow

 

[jeffblue]

make sure the unit is clean. The evap and condens coils can get clogged up with stuff inhibiting air flow

i will try that and see if it makes a difference. but basically my understanding is that its normal that the water coming out of the jets is not significantly warmer than the water in the pool?

Actually, once the pool gets up to temp heat pumps can maintain the heat relatively efficiently (would be nicer to have a larger unit for 30,000 gallons), so I wouldn't discount it completely.

oh i didn't mean its a flawed system, but it seems like in this application it is kind of underwhelming

 

[jblizzle]

A cover will certainly greatly reduce the heat that is typically lost at night and to evaporation.