Heater suggestions

[EvilTwin]

I am new to this forum as my wife and I recently purchased a house in February that has an in-ground pool (approx 25000 gallons) with an elevated spa that spills over into the pool. We have never owned a pool before so the experience is a new one for me. The pool was closed when we settled on the house (in PA) so nothing could be tested. It was professionally closed in the fall and we had the same company come out and open it for us. During that process we discovered that the existing heater was not working.

The heater (like all of the equipment) is a 20 year old oil fired unit. Yes, oil. It draws oil from the same tanks that are used to heat the house. We need to replace the unit and I have been looking at both gas and heat pump units, trying to figure out which will be best. I want something that is really efficient so I was looking at heat pumps. Most of the feedback I get from any of the local pool places is that a heat pump will never heat the spa as hot as I would want and will take a long time just to heat it up, anyways. They have all recommended propane units from 300k-400k BTU in size. None of them seem to have any experience in dealing with heat pumps so I wonder if that is the main reason they steer us away from them. Most negative reviews I see for heat pumps seem to come from people that say that their pool/spa takes too long to get hot. I am looking for someone with practical experience with a pool/spa combination and a heat pump that can give me first hand impressions of their experience with the heat pump. If you have questions for me about out setup, I'll try to answer as best as I can.

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

Where do you live? Heat pumps are only practical in some parts of the country.

Heating the pool can quickly get wildly expensive, so many people end up only heating for the occasional special event.

If you want the water heated all of the time, then a heat pump can be a good choice (unless your electric rates are very high). Heat pumps heat slowly but steadily and cost less to use in all but the highest electrical rates areas. However, if you want to heat only for the occasional special event or to heat the spa, then a large gas heater is far superior, as they will heat things up in 1/4 the time, and we are talking days, not minutes, to heat the pool to a useful temperature from cold.

 

[EvilTwin]

Thanks for the quick reply. We live in PA near Philadelphia. As for the pool, it sits in an open back yard and gets sun nearly all day long. The pool was in full sun at 10 AM the other morning and gets full sun until maybe 7PM. I also purchased a solar cover so that should help to curb some of the daily heat loss. I have two teenage kids and I expect that they will both use the pool extensively throughout the summer. Keeping it at an acceptable temperature all of the time is probably going to be desirable. With a pool that gets sun all day and has a blanket, I don't know what that will be like with/without a heater, regardless of the type. I just don't have any experience there. Given that we opened the pool only to discover a non-working heater, this puts us in a pinch to replace sooner rather than later. Given that the old heater was oil fired, and we will be replacing the house heating system this summer with geothermal, I was even looking into finding a way to tie the pool heating into the geothermal system but the information available is very limited and anyone I have talked to from either the pool or the geo sides has never seen such a thing. I think that if this were strictly for a pool, a heat pump would be fine. But having the spa and knowing that when you want to jump into the spa we wouldn't want to wait an awful long time for it to heat up, would a heat pump do a good job of heating the spa in a reasonable amount of time? I know it would take longer than gas. But I can't seem to find any data on how much longer.

 

[ps0303]

A heat pump seriously will not cut it to heat your spa. You could be waiting forever. Gas for heating a spa is the only real way to go. Imagine coming home and within 10 minutes of turning the heater on you have a nice toasty warm spa. Slide in and enjoy. You can't do that with a heat pump. Well maybe but that's if the outside temp is say 90+ degrees but it probably will be longer than 30 minutes.