Awesome. Nothing wrong with 86 degree water! Now, we can wait and see how the electric bill does.
New Pool Owner Just Bought a Heat Pump
- Thread starter TCpoolnoob
- Start date
We made 85 the day of my last post on this thread. Had a good swim in our warm pool for the first time and it was definitely worth the effort. My wife was concerned we would have a drop in temp over night so we put the solar blanket on at night with the heat pump reading 84 degrees. Temps dropped in the mid 40's but water was still 84 in the morning. We left for some of my son's sports for the better part of the day. Arrived back home at approx 3:30 to find the heat pump off and reading 88 degrees!
Put the pool to the test last night with 6 5th grade boys in the pool for 5 solid hours, fun was had by all.
I didn't bother to put the cover on last night and the heat pump was reading 83 at 8am this morning.
As long as the electric bills don't kill us, I think we are going to skip the solar cover for the rest of the year or at least until we buy a newer roller. The one that came with the house is old and tough to manage.
Put the pool to the test last night with 6 5th grade boys in the pool for 5 solid hours, fun was had by all.
I didn't bother to put the cover on last night and the heat pump was reading 83 at 8am this morning.
As long as the electric bills don't kill us, I think we are going to skip the solar cover for the rest of the year or at least until we buy a newer roller. The one that came with the house is old and tough to manage.
Heat Pump Install Wrap Up for now:
I posted this thread because I had a couple questions but another motive was to provide a blow by blow for other new pool owners on the self install of a heat pump. Spending $3,000.00+ on a heat pump when you don't know much about them, the install process or the performance is a bit daunting. Even with a lot of Internet research, I just never found an honest, real account of what to expect regarding install and performance. The local pool shops weren't much help either.
Here's what I bought: http://www.hayward-pool.com/shop/en...ro-in-ground-heat-pump--140-000-btus-hp21404t
I personally purchased mine from Amazon even though they were a little more expensive than other online retailers I found. I made this decision based mainly out of concern that the heat pump may not work for me and I trusted Amazon to take care of any issues more than I trusted another online retailer that I had no experience with.
Why I chose to install it myself:
I like projects and I wanted to save myself some money. Purchasing the same heat pump from a local shop was nearly $2,000.00 more and came only with the plumbing install. I would have had to hire an electrician on my own dime or done it myself had I bought from them.
I would describe myself as handy but truthfully, the bulk of my electrical knowledge (and it isn't much) was learned on youtube recently. Having said that, the installation looked very easy to me and in fact it was. I had 4 hours into it including the trip to the hardware store to purchase pvc fittings. My actual time installing the heat pump was probably a little over 2 hours but I followed all the steps. I installed a correct sized breaker, ran correct sized wire inside conduit, bonded the heat pump and pool pumps to a grounding rod and corrected some wiring and plumbing issues the previous owner left me etc. I did this all with my wife looking over my shoulder ready to do cpr on me as she was sure I was going to shock myself to death. LOL
Someone that is more skilled than me could probably whip it out in half the time.
Expectations:
If you read through this post, you can see my expectations were too high for the heat pump for this time of year. It was below 50 degrees every night which slowed down it's progress. Reading the manual for this heat pump, it is designed to work at temps above 50 degrees. While I did read a few reviews that reported a gain of 1 degree per hour, I found that I got 1 degree every 1 and a half hours without a solar cover. With the solar cover installed, I was probably pretty close to that 1 degree per hour mark when it was warm enough outside for the heat pump to actually work.
It took 4 days to go from 68 degrees to 85 degrees for me. It's important to note this time may be different for you. At this time of year, we were only above 50 degrees air temp for 11-12 hrs a day. If you have warmer outside air temps, you will do better.
Cost:
Without looking at every receipt, I was in to the heat pump for around $3,300.00 and spent around $200.00 on the install. This included the breaker, wiring, conduit and pvc. All of which I bought too much of by the way.
Was it worth it?
Absolutely! So far, I think it was a great purchase for our family! A heated pool is so much more enjoyable than a pool you have to "get used to" because it's too cold.
I'll come back and update this thread once I've had more experience with the heat pump and have received a few electric bills.
I posted this thread because I had a couple questions but another motive was to provide a blow by blow for other new pool owners on the self install of a heat pump. Spending $3,000.00+ on a heat pump when you don't know much about them, the install process or the performance is a bit daunting. Even with a lot of Internet research, I just never found an honest, real account of what to expect regarding install and performance. The local pool shops weren't much help either.
Here's what I bought: http://www.hayward-pool.com/shop/en...ro-in-ground-heat-pump--140-000-btus-hp21404t
I personally purchased mine from Amazon even though they were a little more expensive than other online retailers I found. I made this decision based mainly out of concern that the heat pump may not work for me and I trusted Amazon to take care of any issues more than I trusted another online retailer that I had no experience with.
Why I chose to install it myself:
I like projects and I wanted to save myself some money. Purchasing the same heat pump from a local shop was nearly $2,000.00 more and came only with the plumbing install. I would have had to hire an electrician on my own dime or done it myself had I bought from them.
I would describe myself as handy but truthfully, the bulk of my electrical knowledge (and it isn't much) was learned on youtube recently. Having said that, the installation looked very easy to me and in fact it was. I had 4 hours into it including the trip to the hardware store to purchase pvc fittings. My actual time installing the heat pump was probably a little over 2 hours but I followed all the steps. I installed a correct sized breaker, ran correct sized wire inside conduit, bonded the heat pump and pool pumps to a grounding rod and corrected some wiring and plumbing issues the previous owner left me etc. I did this all with my wife looking over my shoulder ready to do cpr on me as she was sure I was going to shock myself to death. LOL
Someone that is more skilled than me could probably whip it out in half the time.
Expectations:
If you read through this post, you can see my expectations were too high for the heat pump for this time of year. It was below 50 degrees every night which slowed down it's progress. Reading the manual for this heat pump, it is designed to work at temps above 50 degrees. While I did read a few reviews that reported a gain of 1 degree per hour, I found that I got 1 degree every 1 and a half hours without a solar cover. With the solar cover installed, I was probably pretty close to that 1 degree per hour mark when it was warm enough outside for the heat pump to actually work.
It took 4 days to go from 68 degrees to 85 degrees for me. It's important to note this time may be different for you. At this time of year, we were only above 50 degrees air temp for 11-12 hrs a day. If you have warmer outside air temps, you will do better.
Cost:
Without looking at every receipt, I was in to the heat pump for around $3,300.00 and spent around $200.00 on the install. This included the breaker, wiring, conduit and pvc. All of which I bought too much of by the way.
Was it worth it?
Absolutely! So far, I think it was a great purchase for our family! A heated pool is so much more enjoyable than a pool you have to "get used to" because it's too cold.
I'll come back and update this thread once I've had more experience with the heat pump and have received a few electric bills.
thanks for posting that summary. That is good news that it held 84 overnight with temps in the 40s.