Home Heat Exchangers for Pool

[Rob]

Has anyone ever seen one of these?

Thinking about this tonight, it seemed to make sense. We have a house with no AC and a pool with no heater. Instead of running a big AC keeping your house cool, and a heater heating your pool, why not use a heat pump that cools your house and heats your pool at the same time?

Anyone attempted this or heard of something like this?

 

[matt4x4]

I've heard of it, they also have attic heaters that take the heat in your attic and transfers it to your pool....

http://www.poolheatpumps.com/

http://www.solarattic.com/

 

[nocaster]

I've often wondered if an A/C condenser unit could circulate pool water around the coils to transfer the heat from the house into the pool. This would turn the pool into a large heat sink for the house.

 

[matt4x4]

Ditto, I can't try it though, my AC is about 350 feet from my pool....My neighbour's pool would be a lot closer.....

 

[haze]

I can think of a major problem with this idea.

A house has a finite amount of heat to remove.

Once you have cooled it down, no more heat !

It is one fo those, "looks great on paper" ideas.

 

[lovingHDTV]

I can think of a major problem with this idea.

A house has a finite amount of heat to remove.

Once you have cooled it down, no more heat !

It is one fo those, "looks great on paper" ideas.

Then why does my AC keep coming on every 45min or so? The sun keeps putting heat into it. I too have wondered about using the ac coil to heat the pool. Unfortionately for me, the pool gets into the 90's as is, so I want to cool it

 

[nocaster]

Another problem is that the A/C is likely to be running during the hot part of the summer when the pool won't need heating anyway.

 

[kirbinster]

I think you hit the nail on the head there! The peak demands are exactly opposite. You could do it, but after factoring the cost don't think it would be great.

 

[Rob]

Well, I don't think this would work everywhere, but I'm up in Canada, where our "hot" season doesn't last quite as long, and our pool presumably won't get to a temperature where it is too hot.

Ideally you could have a dual system, pumping heat into the pool, or just operating as a standard A/C. Alternatively, you could "cool" your heat reservoir (pool) at night by circulating it through a diffuser (some people use solar panels).

I looked at the site links, and most of the products listed don't seem to tye into the house, they are just stand alone, and pull heat from the air.

I guess the big time this would be helpful is on those days early/late in the season when you end up running both your A/C and your pool heater at the same time, which just seems like a waste.

A low tech solution I guess would simply be to mount solar panels on the roof of the house, and absorb some of the heat from the sun instead of the house absorbing it.

 

[MarkC]

I'm sure with enough money and a very good HVAC contractor you could do what you propose but it would not be cheap and the installation to tie in all the components would be pricey.

 

[fredness]

I had a similar idea. The pool pump uses an electric motor that is hot while it runs. Capturing that heat could warm the pool water for several hours every day. Diffusing the heat would also allow the motor to run cooler and last longer. The trick would be to design an in line coil system to go around the motor or through a heat sink. The volume of water needs to be taken into account. Copper or aluminum transfer heat well but might corrode if exposed to pool chemicals for an extended period of time. Does anyone think this could be made cost effective? 1" copper tubing is approx $5/ft.

 

[JasonLion]

fredness, welcome to TFP!

The amount of heat put out by the pump is so low, that it would be difficult to justify adding any complexity to the system to get that heat somewhere more useful.

Even the amount of heat available from cooling an entire house, far more than the pump puts out, is low relative to the amount of heat you need for a pool.