Doing a quick calculation your pool holds upward of 200,000 lbs of water (assuming 4' of water depth). With a known efficiency of most pool heaters in the 80% range, your heater, at best, will return about 104,000 BTU's of water to the pool. With that, you will see about 0.5 deg F of temp rise. Not very good if you need to change temp quickly. As was mentioned, you should have a 400,00 BTU heater. This will give you close to 2 Deg F temp rise. A little better for quick warmups. The down side to the bigger heater is the installation costs. You will most likely need a bigger gas service to supply that size heater.
Pool Heater for Salt Water Pool
- Thread starter kathylee
- Start date
- May 23, 2015
- 24,481
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
The thing to remember about NG is that it is a low pressure source (for safety reasons). So when you run new gas line for a heater, make sure you do a minimal volume calculation to know what size gas line to run. My gas heater is over 150' from the gas service meter into the house. Even so, I still have 2" diameter gas line running from the meter to the heater. This ensures that gas heater is not starved of gas during operation and that it won't disturb the flow to other gas appliances in the house. You may also need the gas company to upgrade the meter to a higher flow rate to accommodate all of your gas appliances.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
Some manufacturers do specify lower limits to operating the heater in cooler weather. For example, Jandy states "For outdoor operation in ambient temperatures down to 40 f" for the LXi.
Gas line can be two stage. The first stage can be a smaller diameter pipe at higher pressure with a regulator near the heater. Gas supply should meet all manufacturer's specifications, all local codes and the National Fuel Gas Code. Free access to the code can be found here.
NFPA 54: National Fuel Gas Code
If you're spending a lot of money on gas, the Jandy HI-E2 might be worth considering. It's rated at 95% efficiency. It's expensive but it should pay for the difference in gas bills. I haven't used one, so I can't speak to reliability.
As for flow rates, I would suggest trying to keep the flow towards the lower end of the recommended range to reduce mechanical erosion and provide for adequate temperature rise, which hepls reduce external issues such as condensation related problems.
Gas line can be two stage. The first stage can be a smaller diameter pipe at higher pressure with a regulator near the heater. Gas supply should meet all manufacturer's specifications, all local codes and the National Fuel Gas Code. Free access to the code can be found here.
NFPA 54: National Fuel Gas Code
If you're spending a lot of money on gas, the Jandy HI-E2 might be worth considering. It's rated at 95% efficiency. It's expensive but it should pay for the difference in gas bills. I haven't used one, so I can't speak to reliability.
As for flow rates, I would suggest trying to keep the flow towards the lower end of the recommended range to reduce mechanical erosion and provide for adequate temperature rise, which hepls reduce external issues such as condensation related problems.
Pool Clown
In The Industry
James, If you want to keep the friends you have and perhaps make new ones, i wouldn't steer anyone towards the HI-E. Besides being a bear to perform any involved work on, like replacing an exchanger, which BTW i won't do anymore (it's a money looser), I couldn't tell you of one that i have seen in service long enough to pay for itself, even come close to pay for itself for that matter. Agreed, i have seen maybe 2 dozen units in my years (not that many units considering), But for some reason, they are not as reliable as one would hope for the price. Maybe someone here has had better luck with them, maybe it's a climate thing. But around here, S.F. bay area, They aren't worth the price, considering their mortality rate.
If anyone has any doubt as to which heater they should consider, just do a search here for Raypak.