DIY solar heater with standard Intex fittings

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nate81

nate81

0
May 20, 2013
192
Raleigh, NC
I'd like to do the 'black sprinkler system hose method' of a solar heater for my intex....but i'm not really interested in hard plumbing anything. I don't see any benefits. I thought hard plumbing might actually be a negative due to how much these pools seem to rock, shift, and sway when people are in them. BUT, i do have interest in using the black pipe to create a solar coil...my question(s) is/are...

Has anyone made a homemade solar heater for their intex without hard plumbing? if so, how did you connect the black hose to the intex hose?
 
I haven't made one, yet.

If you have the 1-1/4" hoses with the worm screw clamps you can add a pair of tee's and valves into your return line.

1" PVC pipe has an outer diameter very close to the inside diameter of the Intex hoses. A short piece of bicycle inner tube is all you need to effect a decent seal between the hose and PVC.

Look close in this pic at the pipe. You can see that you don't need the "flat" area on the normal hose end, just put the clamp over the corrugations and tighten.

If you have the larger 1-1/2" hoses, I think you could do the same thing with 1-1/4" PVC, but I haven't tried that yet.
 
You do have the 1-1/2" hoses, so I'm not sure it would work for you. However, there are other ways to accomplish what you want.

Look this thread over and think about doing a little bit of hard plumbing, just between your filter and SWCG. There you can add your valve set to divert and control your DIY solar
 
Charlie_R said:
You do have the 1-1/2" hoses, so I'm not sure it would work for you. However, there are other ways to accomplish what you want.

Look this thread over and think about doing a little bit of hard plumbing, just between your filter and SWCG. There you can add your valve set to divert and control your DIY solar
Click to expand...


That is exactly what I needed, thank you so much...evidently my searching terms are a bit foggy this morning, need coffeeeeee
 
If you want a project or already have the hose this is fine, if your trying to heat your pool, the economics of a home built heater just don't work anymore, it is usually far cheaper to buy a commercial built panel vs the cost of materials to build an equivalent heating capacity home built panel. It is just hard to compete with a kit in a box 2x20ft modular panel system for $140 from Amazon or $150-$160 4x12 ft bare panels. Solar is primarily about surface area, and that alone is hard to beat with anything home made, secondly it is about heat transfer and low back pressure water flow, which are again hard to beat with anything you may build.

Ike
 
Isaac-1 said:
If you want a project or already have the hose this is fine, if your trying to heat your pool, the economics of a home built heater just don't work anymore, it is usually far cheaper to buy a commercial built panel vs the cost of materials to build an equivalent heating capacity home built panel. It is just hard to compete with a kit in a box 2x20ft modular panel system for $140 from Amazon or $150-$160 4x12 ft bare panels. Solar is primarily about surface area, and that alone is hard to beat with anything home made, secondly it is about heat transfer and low back pressure water flow, which are again hard to beat with anything you may build.

Ike
Click to expand...

Youre talking $150.....i wad thinking $11 per 100 feet of black hose....$5 bag of clamps.....and i already have a few 2x4s laying around. What part am i missing?
 
Are you going to use a manifold design?

Meaning one intake and one return, tied to multiple crossfeed lines to increase surface area and flow rate?

Check this link out for what you can use. Look 1/3 down the page especially part numbers 672-7150 and 672-4980. This will increase your surface area and reduce head loss/increase flow rate.
 
A couple of things, first lets talk surface area lets use the$140 2x20 kit in a box for comparison. This has a surface area of about 40 Sq Ft. with nice fairly even parallel flow through dozens of individual flow tubes to get fairly optimal heat transfer. Your probably talking about using 1/2 inch poly tubing so to get equal surface area you would need 960 ft of tubing (.5 inch x24inch wide x 20ft), lets round that to 1,000 ft. or $110, then you still have the problem of no distribution header to get parallel flow, so if that means you are going to have this all in one big loop, your going to add a LOT of back pressure which will limit your flow rate, and your going to take a major performance hit, maybe 50% or more depending on the layout. At this point that $140 panel is looking very attractive.

Ike
 

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Looks good to me, may be a slightly cheaper knock off of the $140 eco saver solar kit, instructions may be a bit lacking, etc., but price is right.


Ike

p.s. the Eco Saver does include "hook up kit" not sure if this one is just a bare panel, still you can probably add hoses and clamps for $40 (I am guessing no hoses, and maybe a thinner panel, shipping weight is 18 pounds on the $99 kit vs 25 pounds on the $140 eco saver)
 
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