Heating question

[mitch08]

Sort of a crazy heating question for you guys.

My heater usually gets me about 1 degree every 2 hours or so. Maybe at best 2 every 3 hours...
Its been that way forever. I think its a 250k btu and the pool is about 25000g.

Everything appears to be running properly. Pool is heating perfectly to about 85 degrees.
Then seems to be getting stuck at 85.

My question is, can this be weather related? The outside air temp is about 75. Which is 10 degrees cooler than my pool. Am I just fighting an uphill battle against the air temp? Or should I be looking for an issue with the heater? Thanks a lot

 

[danpik]

You have a little over 200,000lbs of water in the pool. A BTU is the energy required to raise 1 lb of water 1 deg. Assuming a 250,000BTU/hr heater at 80% the input to the pool is roughly 200,000 BTU/hr. That is right at the 1 deg/hr temp rise that I would expect. If the air temp is lower than 85 deg the temp will likely not get much over that due to heat loss.

 

[mitch08]

Thanks for the quick response. It has been pretty cool at night. I normally heat the pool to about 84 during the day. Then around 3pm ill turn the heat back on and try to get it to about 88 or so for the night. I dont usually have too much trouble doing that but its probably much warmer than mid 70s in the summer. Its still pretty early in the season.

I never really get a degree per hour. But my heater is pretty old so prob less efficient than most. Thanks again...

 

[danpik]

Remember, once the water temp gets over the air temp you will loose heat to the air which will reduce the perceived efficiency of the heater. Kind of like leaving a window open in the house during the winter heating season.

 

[mitch08]

Yeah very good point. I probably might as well have been burning $20s all weekend by running that thing all day and night

 

[Richard320]

The bubble-wrap solar blankets will help a lot when you're heating. They're just such a pain to remove.