This my second contractor built pool and I want to avoid some of the screw ups from the last one. I'm also switching from heat pump to natural gas heater. There were too many times the pool was not ready to swim in without a 4 day wait (January & February in central Florida) and too many mornings with cool water temps. Any opinions on adding a heat pump with the gas heater to save a few bucks?
Snowbird pool use
- Thread starter Carguy211
- Start date
- May 23, 2015
- 24,474
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
The upfront cost of adding both a gas heater AND a heatpump will obviously be the biggest drawback. It would probably be best to also add an automation system (for example, a Pentair Intellitouch) so that you can schedule and control them seamlessly. The benefits of having a rapid heat up (gas) and then using the heatpump to maintain water temperatures is an obvious plus. Depending on gas and electric costs on your area, it could get pricey so you’ll want to build the pool with the goal of making it easy to take a cover on and off. Covering the pool overnight is the only way to reduce the cooling effect from evaporative heat loss.
Are you building the pool with an attached spa?
Are you building the pool with an attached spa?
jtburf
0
One issue is trying to heat from say 56 degrees. If you maintained closer to 70 I know you would have some operational cost however it should heat much quicker. How warm are you looking for the temp to be?
JOhn
JOhn
- Jul 21, 2013
- 53,161
- Pool Size
- 35000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
Automation systems don’t seem to do a very good job of managing a HP and gas heater together and automatically switching between the two. Likely you will end up needing to manually switch between them.
You can have both a Pentair MasterTemp gas heater and a UltraTemp Heat Pump controlled by an IntelliCenter. They are plumbed in line and hooked up to the IntelliCenter via RS-485 cable. In the programming you have a choice of heaters for your spa and/or pool.
The automation is supposed to regulate temperature via the heat pump 1st - if it can not maintain temp it reverts to the gas heater. But after that it does not go back to the heat pump to maintain. You have to switch it manually.
You can have both a Pentair MasterTemp gas heater and a UltraTemp Heat Pump controlled by an IntelliCenter. They are plumbed in line and hooked up to the IntelliCenter via RS-485 cable. In the programming you have a choice of heaters for your spa and/or pool.
The automation is supposed to regulate temperature via the heat pump 1st - if it can not maintain temp it reverts to the gas heater. But after that it does not go back to the heat pump to maintain. You have to switch it manually.