Buying a new spa heater - recommendations?

[CombatYoga]

Hello everyone,

I need to buy a new heater for my spa. It will be plumbed in so that it could heat the pool, but I have no plans to do so (propane too expensive and I live in Texas). This will be used to heat a small spa (approx. 1000 gallons).

I'm thinking something in the 250K BTU range.

I had a first generation Hayward Low Nox heater and it did not work well - had ignition problems from the get go.

Any recommendations on a quality heater?

 

[Guest]

Go 400K. Not much more than the smaller units cost, and will heat up much faster and maintain easier. You will use whatever gas you use to heat the spa anyway, so that is not a real big concern.

You'd wait all day for a 250K to heat a pool A 400K will, on average, heat a pool a degree an hour. A 250K, obviously, much slower.

I'd look at the Pentair MasterTemp. Great heater.

 

[csoukup6]

See link for my post below. I'm trying to do the same thing as you. Looks like we have similar setups. I'm replacing my Pentair 444000 BTU Mini Max NT heater with the Reheem 267.


hayward-universal-h-series-heater-t25885.html

 

[Guest]

Don't base the Pentair on the MiniMax, which was discontinued a long time ago. That's like basing your decision to buy a Corvette on the Vega

Why would you go smaller?

 

[csoukup6]

Don't base the Pentair on the MiniMax, which was discontinued a long time ago. That's like basing your decision to buy a Corvette on the Vega

Why would you go smaller?

Living in Florida so I don't heat the pool only the spa. Have no desire to heat the pool to swimming a couple of times (maybe) in the winter. I use the hot tub all the time in the winter and heating my spa 15 minutes faster isn't really a big deal to me so I don't need 440000 BTU heater.

 

[4JawChuck]

I would go with a RayPak, they are very reliable and use spark to pilot ignition which is hammer simple. This company only makes boilers and heaters for commercial uses and have been around for a long time. Mine is almost 20 years old and still works perfectly, parts are still available for my old units design and the new units are almost identical except for the digital readout and plastic sides.

They haven't jumped on the high efficiency bandwagon (82% EFF) which would make the unit more complicated so if high efficiency is what your after I would look elsewhere.

I use a 200K-BTU unit to heat a 15 000 US gallon pool and I can raise the temp from 50F to 93F in two days running full tilt with an outside air temp below 50F while its covered, for a 1000 US gallons this would likely equate to a 1-2 hour heat up time for equivalent temps. Size your heater for the time you are willing to wait for a hot dip.

I doubt you will need more than 200K-BTU for such a small water volume.