Solar Heater Recommendations

Jump to latest Follow Reply
P

PoolDad8683

0
Jun 18, 2016
9
Reading MA
Howdy,

I am a relatively new pool owner. My wife and I bought our first house four years ago which has a 30,000 gallon in ground pool. Not having any pool experience the first few years were rough. Now with four seasons under our belt we have hit a nice groove with maintenance, chemicals, cleaning etc. However the same problem persists each summer of water temperature. It stays below 70 for most of the summer. In late July early August it will spike to 75 but that will only last a few weeks. I can see how awesome it is during this stretch but in general a three week stretch of swimming is a small reward for all the work that is put into it.

I've done a lot of research on how to bring up water temp. We use the solar cover which definitely helps. I've read a lot about solar heaters both DIY and manufactured stand alone units. About a month ago I started my DIY solar heater with 400 feet of 1/2" black irrigation hose. I installed a Y fitting with valves on my Hayward EC65 DE filter. On a sunny day the water does come out 10-12 degrees warmer than what it comes in at. I'm happy about this but the flow rate is down at about 1gallon a minute. With a filter on for 10hrs I get about 2% of total pool volume per day. This is never going to add up to anything real. I could add more irrigation hose but my fear (after going from 200' to 400') is that if I go to 600' that the head loss will be too much and restrict flow even more. I can close the valve on the regular filter outlet pushing all the water through the solar heater irrigation hose but this still only doubles the flow rate to about 2 gallons a minute. It also doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies with the pump low output volume. Another thought is that I could upgrade to 3/4" hose or full inch hose to reduce head loss and increase flow rate. However a quick experiment using all 125' of existing garden hose I have produced similar low flow results.

Am I just nuts for trying to heat such a large pool through solar? Should I look into getting a larger separate pump for increased volume? Should I cut my losses and buy some of the Blue Wave SolarPRO Curve heaters? We have natural gas in the house should I look into a gas unit? I wouldn't say money is no object but my general philosophy is I would rather pay for something that I know will work and do the job.

Sorry for the long post, any ideas and thoughts are welcome.

Thanks
 
Re: Solar Heater Reccomendations

Ok I'm not the expert at this but I'll make some comments.

First are you saying with 400 of irrigation line you are getting a 10 to 12 degree rise in the water in the pool or the water coming out of the heater? I can't imagine its pool temp rise.

Some facts about solar heating:

From a cost and efficiency standpoint you will almost always come out better purchasing commercial panels. Solar heat works best by moving volumes of water quickly through small orifices, Your irrigation tubing is too large and you are not moving sufficient water,

Again I'm not the expert here but for your pool to get a meaningful rise you are going to need commercial panels equal to more than half the sq footage of your pool and a probably 3 hp pump capable of moving a large volume of water. A DYI will never make a meaningful difference.

I suggest you search DYI solar on here and look at all the u tube videos with a critical eye.

As you can see by my signature I have solar and my family loves it. And after battling with the solar installer it wasn't that expensive.

Call a solar co or two, having them come out and give you an estimate id free and you can learn something. There are several brands of panels you can buy and install yourself and there is plenty of help on here to do that.
 
Jason beat me to it, in general terms you need commercial plastic unglazed solar panels with an area equal to or greater than 50% of your pool surface area mounted at a southern facing angle, ideal tilt for your region will be around 37 degrees from horizontal, however there is a wide acceptable ballpark for angle of tilt and is really the optimal spring / fall equinox tilt, which assumes you are attempting a swim season from late April to late September. Which is likely possible where you live with enough solar panels (something on the order of 100-125% of your pool surface area in panels with a solar cover also), for summer peak heating only your optimal tilt is facing south only 12.5 degrees from horizontal, or in other words nearly flat. I wanted to get this out of the way up front because there is a LOT of bad information out there about optimal solar tilt angles as a lot of people use the tilt angles for solar electric panels which operate year round, and compromise a bit of there summer capacity in favor of winter capacity, which is pointless for typical unglazed solar pool heaters which only effectively operate when the daytime air temperature is within about 20 degrees of the desired pool temperature. For my climate with an indoor pool plus a solar pool cover to minimize heat loss this means an effective swim season with 66% effective solar panel coverage (limited by SW facing roof area) of roughly from the last frost in the spring until the first frost in the fall.

Having said all that, any amount of solar panels beats having no solar panels, there are many DIY and semi-DIY panel install threads on here, for a look at mine see this link Solar Panel Replacement / Update
 
+1 to any solar panels being better than none. I could only fit 240 sf of panels on the roof near my pool which is @700sf. The panels still make a big difference in pool temp. There are pics in my build thread, link in sig.
 
Thanks for all the good suggestions. The 10-12 degree difference is mostly because there is such a slow flow 1gallon/min coming through the solar irrigation hose.

My house is not an ideal setup for commercial solar panels. The ridge runs North South meaning the panels will face either East or West. I have small pool shed 8'X16' with a ridge that runs east west putting one face at a good southern exposure. However with it only being 8' X 16' the usable roof is only 4' X 16'. My gut tells me that this would fall in the too small for commercial solar heaters but ok for the something is better than nothing. Does anyone agree/disagree?
 
We got the "Eco Saver 20-Foot Solar Heating Panel System " from Amazon the first year we had a pool. It worked well enough (the water from the jet was distinctly warmer than the pool water) that I bought a second one to connect to it for the next year. The first full day I had the system hooked up our 10,000 gallon pool started the day at 55 degrees and was up to 64 when I shut it down for the night.

Yes, it was a warm, sunny day and the pool with its "fresh from the well" water would have warmed up anyway, but it was still a huge success. This summer I'm building a box around the panels to kelp them work better and keep them from being a radiator in the mornings.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
My 20k gallon pool with my 400k BTU heater heats 2 degree's per hour at about $2/per hour the last time a calculated a couple of years ago. We have an auto cover so a cover of some sort is key not to lose the heat at night. We only heat the pool in the morning when we expect to use it.
 
My panels face South and North. So I would love a West facing panel. I also have mature redwood trees to the South and East as well as an Oak to the West.

Any panels are better than no panels. Some days like today if the solar controller didn't cut it off the solar would par boil eggs. OK maybe not.
 
What's everyone's thoughts on Blue Wave NS6028 SolarPRO Curve Solar Heater for Above Ground Pools? I feel like the dimensions would work well on top of my pool shed. I don't see why it wouldn't work for IG pools. Less effective for sure but as others have said some solar panels are better than none.

I'm leaning towards gas as our final long term solution. This probably won't happen until I build a garage which is 3ish years away. What if I grab a blue wave or two for a temporary fix to get me through the next 3 years. I can always keep these and supplement the gas heat once we build a garage and go down that road. Anyone have thoughts on this plan?
 
I also like the look of these instead of the solar curve panels. How far north in NH are you? The weather can get really cold up there. Glad you got good results. Even if I take your results and cut them by three for the volume difference I would still be happy.

Did your pool temp continue to grow from mid 60s with this system?
 
We're about level with Laconia. We've had the pool up into the 80s a lot, but we don't worry about heating it at that point- we're going for comfort, not records.

That Blue Wave looks fantastic, but I'm not all that happy with its size. The writeup on Amazon says it's meant for up to a 12,000 gallon pool and can raise the temp 5 degrees in 5 days. Hardly stellar, but every bit helps. Make sure you plumb in a bypass so you aren't forced to use the panel whenever the pump is running.

I'm a fan of solar because it works and it's free. You've already got to run the pump no matter what kind of heating system you have, and some added resistance to the pump is your only cost of using the solar. The downside is that you only get heat on sunny days. See how it goes. You may decide you want more muscle at the ends of the season but can use just the solar in the summer.
 
Solar is all about surface area, those curved panels are gimmicks that fool people into thinking hotter water at lower flow levels equals more heat into their pools, the truth of the matter is the basic black plastic solar panels at adequate water flow and thermal conditions can be over 90% efficient, meaning there is just not that much more available energy in sunlight for a given area. Glazed solar panels, even those with clear plastic covering, can increase peak temperatures, which may be important in domestic hot water applications, but is not the issue with pool heating, instead pool heating is all about maximum BTU transfer, covering the panels just reflects part of the potential heat away while raising peak temperature, it does nothing to increase BTU throughput.
 
Hey Pooldad in Reading MA, I am also in Reading MA on Prescott street and I have thought about solar too and even plumbed for it when I did my patio. We should get together and see what we can come up with. My pool does get into the low 80's but does get lots of morning early afternoon sun and is only 19k

rob
 
I used the FAFCO 24' panel thats on amazon for my 27' pool and it worked great last summer. I didn't even use my bubble top cover and it kept the pool mostly-warm throughout the summer. I am upgrading and adding a 2nd 24' panel this year and I hope that it will keep the pool nice and warm over the summer and I can add my bubble cover to maybe even swim into september. Im in central PA
 
  • Like
Reactions: ACW4444
a4xcrypto said:
I used the FAFCO 24' panel thats on amazon for my 27' pool and it worked great last summer. I didn't even use my bubble top cover and it kept the pool mostly-warm throughout the summer. I am upgrading and adding a 2nd 24' panel this year and I hope that it will keep the pool nice and warm over the summer and I can add my bubble cover to maybe even swim into september. Im in central PA
Click to expand...
Hi, found your post searching solar pool heaters, we are in central PA as well and have a 17,500 fiberglass pool. do you like the solar heater for our area and season? We are looking to extend the pool season beg of May to end of September, are you able to keep the water at 80F +
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply