We have an old (15-18 year old) Hayward pool heater that has stopped working and we need to buy a new heater. What factors should I consider when buying a heater? My husband would like to replace it as soon as possible (my daughter's birthday party is in 3 weeks) and has ruled out solar because he thinks it will be very expensive and take a long time to install. We are very inexperienced with pool equipment (but thanks to this forum, I'm good at water chemistry) and would appreciate any advice. Thanks.
How to choose a pool heater
- Thread starter mamacrumbcake
- Start date
What type heater was it?
What size heater did you have?
Were you happy with it's performance?
If you answered yes to the last one I'd go back with one that size or a little larger.
What size heater did you have?
Were you happy with it's performance?
If you answered yes to the last one I'd go back with one that size or a little larger.
+1Bama Rambler said:
That's what I did! After much research, I learned that Teledyne/Laars suggested a much bigger unit, like 400K BTU. Trouble is, I have a limited amount of space available for the heater. The 175K BTU unit (same size as the old heater) was the largest that would fit in the same footprint. So, I shopped for it online, found the best price, & had my pool guy do the install.
I'm comfortable with this unit. I understand how it works and that I need to plan for raising the heat much. Might not be as happy if I had to use it a lot more, since I understand it's not as efficient (that is, it costs more to raise the pool temp) as a "properly" sized unit.
Just my experience. Good luck!
Idealy, with an 18,500 gallon pool (160,000 LBS of water) I would suggest a min of 300,000 BTU. This will give about a 1.5* temp rise per hour. Understand that large temp variations in air temp can affect this such as cool nights can cause a larger heat loss and realy warm days can increase heat gain
You didn't mention what type of pool heater you have (eg. natural gas, heat pump, electric) but I believe a heat pump heater is the most economical. I have an older heat siphon heat pump it's easy to use and seems reliable. http://www.heatsiphon.com/index.html
