Intex Heater

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jseyfert3

jseyfert3

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Oct 20, 2017
1,973
Southern WI
Pool Size
15000
Surface
Vinyl
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
So my wife would like a heater for our Intex pool. 26' diameter, roughly 15,000 gallons. We have natural gas at our house, so I can run a line pretty easily for a heater. Looking for heater suggestions.

I suppose there's not much benefit in getting a small heater, right? May as well just get a 400,000 BTU/hr one? Anything else to look at or be aware of?

I know most heaters are about 80% efficient to prevent condensation. Are there condensing pool heaters like condensing furnaces that are more efficient? The furnace in my house is 96% efficient. Seems silly to have a heater that's way bigger that's only 80% efficient, but that might be the engineer in me...
 
You know the deal....... how do you expect to use it ? Just on cooler days, or does the Mrs want it 94 degrees 24/7 ? Early and late season there's no question you want bigger, but mid season you may want less consumption per hour if you're looking to run it all the time.
 
Cooler days. For example, the water is about 60 °F, and recently daytime temps have started to get up to mid 70's. With light winds and a heater that could be swimming weather.

Not going to keep it at 94 °F 24/7. I'm assuming weekend style usage in early spring/late fall to extend the season. Or if it's not as warm as we'd like once in a while, for example if we have friends and want to do a night pool party where the water is fine in the day with the sun out but not in the cool evening temps without sun.
 
You can get a more efficient heater heater but the payback does not pencil out. The Pentair ETI 400 heater is 96% efficient and costs about twice as much as a MasterTemp 400 that is 82% efficient. You want to pay 2X for 14%?

www.pentair.com

ETi 400 High Efficiency Gas Pool Heater

Pentair ETi 400 High Efficiency Spa and Pool heater has 96% thermal efficiency and is the first gas pool heater with direct-fire titanium heat exchanger.
www.pentair.com www.pentair.com
 
ajw22 said:
You want to pay 2X for 14%?
Click to expand...
Potentially, yes. Total lifecycle cost as one of my teachers drilled into my head. However it sounds like you already know what the total lifecycle cost is, at least roughly, and it doesn't pan out, correct?

What is the average life of a heater anyway?
 
jseyfert3 said:
What is the average life of a heater anyway?
Click to expand...

If kept in good condition I would say 8-10 years, maybe more.

Factor in that you have a short pool season in WI so how much gas will you be using to get a payback?

Most of the time your heater will be sitting idle rusting away while your pool is closed.

And all it takes is a rat to nest in the heater for a winter to kill your heater and payback.

Lots of variables you have no control over in the life cycle of a heater.
 
Yeah I peaked at the prices after I posted and my gut feeling was it wouldn't be worth it. For rough numbers I took that a 15,000 gallon pool at 60 heated to 85 would take 40 therms or ~$25 in gas at current rates (plus some more for heat loss and in-use). But say about worst case on a weekend was twice that or $50. Even doing that 4x a month for 4 months is $800 in gas. In 10 years that's $1120 in savings. So yeah, not worth it.

I'm surprised the price jump is that much. I suppose economies of scale and nobody wants to pay a premium for a more efficient pool heater, so the economies of scale don't come into effect, so nobody wants to buy one...

Anyway is the Pentair Mastertemp 400 the way to go, or is there another heater I should consider? I see you have that one.
 
Following to see what you come up with... we’re likely going to try solar this year (spending too much money building a deck) but I have a hunch my wife will be seeking the same next Summer...

When I looked a few weeks back there was a nice calculator on the Raypak site.


Let’s you compare different scenarios for heater sizes / temps / utility costs / etc.
 
Pentair, Hayward, and Jandy heaters are all forced draft designs that use blowers. That lets them be a smaller form factor then the natural draft design used by Raypak. The downside to a forced draft design is the added complexity and cost of the blower and controls. So they can be more expensive to repair.

So your choice is a Pentair MasterTemp forced draft heater or a Raypak H-Series natural draft heater.

They are both good, but different design. It may depend what fits in your area. The blower can be noisy if the heater is around where people are. It has a roar I can hear with it 50' away from the pool. On the other hand I can hear when the heater is on.
 
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My sister has a small 5k gallon seasonal pool and was asking me about heat so came across this thread.

Did you make a decision? This will be my 7th season with a raypak 400k btu and I really like it. It's a very simple machine and I've even been able to repair it once with help of this forum. My only complaint is it seems to have developed an erratic hi limit fault so it thinks it's overheating when it's not and shuts down periodically for 5 min or so and then will restart. Doesn't materially impact heat times so I've been living with it as I can't get anyone over here to repair it.

You plan to heat the same way I do so I'd go with as big as you can afford. In my 21k g pool I get about 2 degrees/hour in the summer so it is almost like heat on demand so no need to run it round the clock. Turn it on by 8 am Saturday morning and you've +8-10 degrees by noon.
 

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