Aquacal SQ145 Heat pump (im swiming on halloween in NH)

[Davegnh]

Electric done but I made a color mistake hooking up HP to panel I got red white black colors . White should have been green for secondary panel as ground and neutral are separate. Was thinking bonding wire was ground. Whoops will change in the spring. hopefully finish plumbing over next 2 days.

Looks like apprentice did some of the soldering. A little disappointed for how much this cost. Joints look okay but
sloppy.

 

[Davegnh]

Started the plumbing this morning got the bypass dry fitted and the filter moved. Took longer then I thought first working with PVC but should be able to finish this afternoon.

 

[Davegnh]

All the plumbing is complete. Overall pretty happy with how it turned out other than two pipes I rushed with and I ended up having the printed portion pointing up so I need to do a little sanding to get rid of that. All in the plumbing took me four and a half hours. Another 45 minutes for clean up. All that I have left is hooking up RS 485 and cleaning up all my wires to make them look respectable.

I also wanted a bit more straight pipe in front of my SWG. But to get the recommended 12 to 18 in I would have another foot of pipe vertical in the air and I was worried about it getting damaged if somebody leaned up against it.

 

[Davegnh]

I let the pipes cure for 2 hour. I just fired it up for a test run no leaks yay. I manually controlled the heat pump and turned it on. It seemed to work but I have not hooked up the output temp sensor yet so I cannot see if it actually was raising the water temperature. As far as the marketing super quiet goes here's the feedback.
The boss said this is definitely not super quiet and little one said it's not too bad it's manageable. I definitely think the marketing is not quite right when they call it super quiet it creates unrealistic expectations. It's definitely acceptable and you can hear conversations about 8 ft away but it does make a bit of noise especially when you're close to it. There's also several rattles from loose panels which I think I can correct but given how much it cost it's disappointing I have to do that. I've seen other videos of inverter models that are truly silent so this is definitely a bit of a letdown especially for how much it cost. But most of the time it'll run when we are not home and the pool be warm when we get home from work and school/camp.

 

[pjt]

Looks like a clean and professional job. Are you going to need a pipe support beneath the IC40?

I ended up having the printed portion pointing up so I need to do a little sanding to get rid of that.

Acetone will remove that in a couple seconds.

It seemed to work but I have not hooked up the output temp sensor yet so I cannot see if it actually was raising the water temperature.

Are you getting cold air from the exhaust? You should also be able to feel warm water coming from the returns.

There's also several rattles from loose panels

I had a rattling panel and stuck a big rubber band in the panel gap to silence it.

 

[Davegnh]

I wasn't planning to put support under the IC40 I hadn't seen that done in other builds? It feels pretty rigid to me since it's supported to ground by 4 pipes.

Thanks for the hint on acetoneI'll give that a try. I was also very happy with the fusion glue that I used super simple and worked great. I was able to wipe up any excess and made a super clean joint.

I was able to get the output temperature sensor working today All my wiring is done and it's communicating with my EZ touch.

The good based off my calculations it was adding about 82,000 BTU/h to the water in non-ideal conditions(with my pool size that's almost a degree an hour). This was with an air temperature of 65° and almost no humidity and the pool water was 50. I did measure the current going to the heat pump and it was only 18 amps which equated to 4000 Watts with a power factor of 1. The specifications indicated 5100 watts so I'm not sure if that's with some tolerance built-in??? In either case I was happy with this COP between 5 to 6 depending on which input power I used.

The bad. I was able to chase down a few other rattles and quiet them down with some shims under the plastic. But there's still some rattling I think coming from the metal grate on top that I have not been able to fix. You can't have a normal conversation unless you're about 10 ft away and then you have to speak up. I was told that the DB of this unit was 55 right next to it. I'm measuring over 65 DB 10 ft away. That's with an app on my phone but I plan to bring home some calibrated instruments from work next week to confirm. I also had the HP while I was finishing up the wiring and be a next to it for about an hour or 2 and it was definitely annoying being that close to it.

Mixed
With all my added plumbing and the heat pump at my normal pump speed of a thousand RPM I ended up losing about 2 gallons per minute which I didn't think was too bad. In order to run the heat pump I have to run at 1670 RPM at a minimum which is about 300 watts also not too bad so happy with the minimal restrictions of the heat pump (and the 8-90° elbows I had to add). I did lose the ability to get high flow rates when I crank the pump up to maximum 3000 RPM I got about 52 GPM before I was getting over 70. I never really operated there only used it occasionally to have some fun to shoot my deck jets 30 ft up in the air so maybe it will only go 25 ft now.

I'm not sure if I should have paid a premium for unit that was supposed to be super quiet other than that I am pretty happy with it. Most of the time when I plan to have it running is during work and school hours when nobody is home and then have it shut off and late afternoon. Only time it would be an issue is on the weekends and maybe on the weekends I'll run it overnight instead of during the day.

I do plan to give aquacal a call next week with my concerns to see if maybe something is wrong.

 

[PoolBrews]

If you had gotten any other heat pump, it would have been even louder. It's only labeled as Super Quiet because if you run it next to any other heat pump, it will sound very quiet compared to the other heat pump. That 55 dB was under perfect conditions with a unit with no rattle. I'm near 100% certain that a call to AquaCal will result in no useful information other than "that's how it's supposed to run". If you hear anything different, please post here.

 

[Davegnh]

Unfortunately I did not get to talk to aquacal last week due to a business trip. However Id say there's a huge difference between 55 DB and 65 DB is that almost a three times increase in noise level way more than a rattle would cause. In hindsight I would not have paid $1,000 premium to get a quiet unit that sounded this loud.

 

[Davegnh]

Pool was 48 Tuesday night and it was 44 degrees air temperature. I have had the heatpump on for less than 24 hours over the last 2 days and the pool now sits at 71F (air hit a high of 76F today). Supposed to hit mid 70's again tommorow and 60's tonight. (20 f higher than avg) I can't believe how happy it made me to be swimming on October 31st in New Hampshire I couldn't stop laughing to myself as I kept jumping in. Heat pumps depending on the size of your pool do definitely work Even on the fringe of the fringe season. It will cost me over $25 per 24 hrs to heat the pool and that's with New England's crazy electric rates($.22/kwh) . Totally worth it considering a cost of a mid-range hotel with a pool is at least $100 per night.

 

[Davegnh]

Spent 2 hrs in the pool in Nov. It only hit 80 today due to 15-20 mph winds and lost almost 1" of water loss to evaporation. But family time in pool this time of year priceless.

 

[Davegnh]

Again I can't believe I was swimming this time of year. For less than $50 in electricity.

 

[PoolBrews]

I'm not going into a pool that is only 80 - way too cold. I keep mine at 88... minimum swim temp is 85 for me.

 

[Davegnh]

In the summer I would agree with that temp. But when it's 50 and windy 80° felt like a hot tub.

 

[robotrobinson]

Thank you for posting all of this!!
I want one!

Are you using a pool blanket?
Do you get winter frost or snow?
Do you plan to swim through the winter?
Do you get a lot of condensate?
Will the condensate freeze?

I live in the San Franciso East Bay.
My 20,000 gallon pool has been my daily go-to exercise until temps crossed below my 65 degree morning swim threshold on Oct 28.
I estimate it would cost me $4.24/therm-hour for a 7.2 kw 140K BTU heat pump that can deliver 85K BTU at 50F at a current winter electric rate of ~ $0.50/kwhr (rates are rising, and higher in the summer).
I estimate it would cost me $3.24/therm-hour for an 85% efficient gas heater at a variable winter natural gas rate of ~$2.75/gas therm.
I use rooftop solar water to keep the pool swimmable mid-April to mid-Oct.

If I get a gas heater, I would probably avoid a higher efficiency heater because I have a concrete backyard, and nowhere to route the acidic condensate.

 

[Davegnh]

I expect to probably run at mid April through mid October. On a normal winter highs would be in the upper 20's to upper 30's and not unusual to see Low in the teens at night. However I can't remember the last 4 or 5 years having a normal winter so the way the climates going I'll probably be running it more in the years to come. I really only ran it end of October this year in into November due to the mild weather and I just installed it so I wanted to give it a test drive. I actually just put my pool to bed today.

I currently do not have a solar cover I would love one however with a freeform pool I think it would be a nightmare to take on and off. It would help tremendously. On cool dry fall nights there was a lot of evaporation when the pool was mid to high '70s. One night I think I lost about an inch of water which takes a huge amount of energy with it. With that it was just barely be able to maintain the pool temperature and not increase it.

When the weather was in the '50s with low humidity(20%) I was getting a COP of around 3. This could barely keep up with the heat loss due to wind evaporation. On windless days it could raise the temperature about a degree every 2 hours. On nicer days in the high 60s low 70s I was getting a COP of around 5. It would raise the temperature during the day of about 1° a hour. In the summer this would be better due to the higher humidity in the air. I would definitely use a lower efficiency and your calculation if you're going to be running a lot in the 40s and '50s I don't think you'll hit the minimum rated spec unless your humidity is 60 plus. My heat pump rated with a COP from 4.2 to 7 using the normal Florida testing procedure(60-80% humidity).

The only day I got any noticeable condensation was when there was a light drizzle. Other than that due to the low humidity I hardly got any. I'm sure it would freeze if it's getting below 32. The lowest I've seen pool heat pumps run to is around 40° f and they typically have to do a defrost cycle. I'd imagine that efficiency running in those temperatures would be horrendous.

 

[PoolBrews]

Depending on the shape of your freeform pool, there may be solutions for a cover. My pool is freeform as well. I have my solar blanket cut into two pieces, and they roll up at the widest width on each end of my pool. I use the DIY reels that were posted sometime ago here on TFP. Each piece is easy to remove or replace - many times I will just roll up one side and use the pool for a bit.

In this image, the blue lines are my reels, and the dashed red line is where I cut my cover at.

 

[Davegnh]

@PoolBrews I plan to do what you did for solar cover. Can you show some pictures on how the reals work? I plan to get a 20x40 cover cut it in half and size it to the pool

 

[PoolStored]

@PoolBrews I plan to do what you did for solar cover. Can you show some pictures on how the reals work? I plan to get a 20x40 cover cut it in half and size it to the pool

I think he means this thread:

DIY Solar Cover Roller

Someone in another thread had asked about how I built my own solar cover roller. So here it is. Initially, I had purchased a SolarRoller and it worked pretty well for about three years after which the aluminum pipe corroded through. So I looked at several alternatives and came up with the...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[Davegnh]

After 5 (4 asleep) already seeing rust on the fan motor. Looks like scratched pant that is rusting. Not impressed