Solar pool heater question?

[Mesamav]

I live in Mesa Arizona. My pool is an in ground pool and is about 22,000 gallons and of course it's sunny and warm pretty much all year long. Even the winter daytime temps are in the high 60's during the day in December and January with lows typically in the high 40's to low 50's or so. Obviously it gets much warmer as the year goes on.
Here is a link to our yearly average temps each month.

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/Histor ... n=USAZ0005

I have several questions regarding solar pool heaters.

What is the best solar heater?

What is the installation like? Does a solar heater get plumbed into the plumbing at the pump or does it just hook up to one of the inlets and outlets in the pool?

What is your experience with a solar heater?

Thanks.

 

[JohnT]

I have solar and I love it. It could only be better where you live, although pool solar doesn't work nearly as well with temperatures below the desired water temperature since the panels lose a lot of heat to the air.

The panels are plumbed so that some of the water leaving the filter goes through the panels and then rejoins the water going to the returns. There is usually a valve to let you select how much goes to the panels to adjust for cloudy weather and flow requirements for your panels.

The Florida Solar Energy Institute has ratings for all brands.

 

[hayabusa3]

From my limited e.xperience I would advise getting more than you think you need

 

[amiedoll]

Definitely get more then you think you need lol. I'm setting up my solar heating at the moment using 1 inch black polly pipe coiled into a flat spiral mat and I started with 100 metres. It would produce hot water for a few minutes until the cold pool water would cool the pipping. I'm adding 200 more metres today in the hopes that it will sustain the heat better.

 

[chiefwej]

I'm a hundred miles down the road in Marana. Similar temps but about 5 degrees cooler year round.
I have a Heliocol solar system installed by Green Energy Inc (they are based in Tempe). It uses the main pool pump and diverts water to panels on the roof before it returns to the pool. It can also be run at night to cool water during extreme heat.

I'm pretty happy with the system. It has a dial to set the desired temp and opens and closes the valve to send water through the panels to maintain temp set. The panels I have on the roof are about the same area as the pool surface area. It makes the pool usable from sometime in April until thanksgiving, although as the evenings get cooler you need a cover to keep from losing all the heat at night.

The only thing I would do different is to upgrade the temp control box to a better (digital) controller. This one seems to have about 10 degree variance, which is way too much.