Anyone have any ingenious ways to heat water in an Above Ground?

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These panels have increased in price quite high this year, I been watching for them so I could buy another one. Best I could find was off EBay for $150 shipped. Thye seem to be running around the $250 mark right now.

jblizzle said:
You can get a 40 sqft panel for well under $100 (have not check prices recently). 100 feet of 0.5" black pipe is about 5 sqft ... So you need 800 feet to have the same heating area which is $104 using your numbers ... That is before fittings to make multiple parallel runs.

Commercial panels are cheaper than diy when you look at cost per area of exposure (or BTUs heat added).
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I hung a $10 swamp cooler pump from the ladder to the inside of the pool and routed $30 worth of black 1/2" hose (150 feet) to do a little solar help. It works great, but then, I have a little 12 footer, and it's AZ, which means solar is never in short supply. Yes, I gotta get in and stir it up to mix, but it does the trick. I keep it covered at night.
 
harrenst said:
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I hung a $10 swamp cooler pump from the ladder to the inside of the pool and routed $30 worth of black 1/2" hose (150 feet) to do a little solar help. It works great, but then, I have a little 12 footer, and it's AZ, which means solar is never in short supply. Yes, I gotta get in and stir it up to mix, but it does the trick. I keep it covered at night.
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That hose is adding very little heat to your pool ... the water may feel hot out of the hose, but it will do little for the entire pool. I would guess most of the heat you are attributing to the hose is really just from ambient temperature increase and the use of a cover to prevent cooling at night.

I had 2500+ feet of similar hose on my house when I moved in. My solar panels do WAY more than it ever did.
 
I installed my own solar system. It's not that hard to do. It was still about three large, but I saved about 70%. That's as ingenious as I got. I have read about using drip tubing. Seems like a cheap enough thing to try. $13 and some fittings. See if you notice a rise in temp. Repeat until you're warm enough. I'm pretty sure you can buy an awful lot of the stuff before you get to three grand! Or seven grand. I just didn't want to deal with the tubing.

I read somewhere about a guy that put a big truck radiator in his attic and exchanges the heat up there into his pool somehow. Probably helps to keep the house a bit cooler, too...
 
jblizzle said:
That hose is adding very little heat to your pool ... the water may feel hot out of the hose, but it will do little for the entire pool. I would guess most of the heat you are attributing to the hose is really just from ambient temperature increase and the use of a cover to prevent cooling at night.

I had 2500+ feet of similar hose on my house when I moved in. My solar panels do WAY more than it ever did.
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Yah...somewhere I read about all the btu's required to heat a pool. Sigh. Even so, my mental state is sufficiently convinced to take the plunge! Once I'm in, it's all good.
 
i have 300ft of the drip pipe. it is mounted inside of a "4x8 box" with a clear plexiglass cover over it. i get at least 150 degrees out of the pipe each day. i have it run to the pool, and enters the pool right by my skimmer. that way it gets sucked right into the skimmer. today i actually had to turn it off when i got home, because my pool water was 94 degrees. the heater usually comes on at 12 each day and runs the whole time the pump is on until it shuts off at 7pm. i can usually get pool temp out a few degrees each day with this system. this is my second year to be using this. i like how it works and cost me less than $50. had the lumber left over from a previous job.
 
The problem I have with figuring out what my solar system is doing for me: there is no control to any test I might run. Did my system raise my temp 10° today? Or was that the sun? What percentage of each contributed? I can't have it on one day, then off the next, to compare, because there are too many variables (air temp, wind, cloud cover, how cool was the night, plus whatever was leftover from the previous day's heat). I can't really afford to build an identical pool, right next to mine, to check on my solar system! My neighbor has a similar pool, similar color. My pool is generally warmer than his. But I have a different array of trees. He's across the street, so his pool is on the opposite side of his house as mine. He has different fencing, different wind patterns, etc.

How does one determine what any given solar heater is actually adding to any given body of water?
 
Dirk, yes lots of variables, add in flow rate, btu calculations, perhaps even mount sensors inlet and outlet track temp differential. I think after a bunch of fooling around a few years ago I came up with around 40k btu per hour out of 90 sq ft of panel, on that particular day, time, wind etc etc.

Now I just use the "enough" method

Is the pool warm enough?

Yes, good you have enough flow through enough panels

No, add more panels, tubing
 

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That's kinda where I ended up. My first summer there were too many days where the pool was just shy of being comfortable. Now the pool can get too warm if I let it. It never got too warm before. So I know my solar is working, and adding enjoyment to the pool experience. I just can't put any numbers to that!

One disappointment: it doesn't seem to help much extending my swim season. The pool is never warm enough to swim in on a cool spring/fall day. I tend to only swim when it's hot out, so that's not that big of a deal. But it would have been nice to have the option... It probably adds a couple of "tolerable" weeks on each end, but I'm not swimming in 85° water in April and November!
 
PoolguyinCT said:
The old school unscientific test, touch the panels when pumping & sun is shining. Cool to the touch, an old timer would say yup she’s cooking & vice versa
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Exactly. If the panels are hot or the water is extremely hot entering the pool, then it is not running very efficiently, you're not moving enough water to capture all the heat.
 
It's certainly possible to make your own solar panel matching a good commercial unit but not with those "1/2 inch black poly tubing" contraptions. Those things are extremely inefficient compared to a well designed panel.

It's worth knowing the sun's output during peak sun hours is roughly 1000 watts per square meter (or 3415 btu per 10.8 sq ft). So a 100% efficient panel cannot do better than that. There are many factors affecting efficiency but commercial panels in mid summer are typically 75-90% efficient.

The black poly tube contraptions are much lower as is the Amazon solar dome linked to above.

Actually the amazon solar dome is a good example of unrealistic marketing. At 31in square it is only 6.7 square feet of collector. This means a maximum of 620 watts which barely heats a cup of coffee yet they recommend it for pools up to 16000 gallons claiming it raises pool temp by 10 degrees.

People forget the pool itself is a big solar collector. Even at 70% efficiency it captures a prodigious amount of heat. A 18'×33' pool is 594 square feet of solar collector absorbing roughly 38kW per hour. Clearly adding a few hundred watts from that solar dome is a silly proposition as is laying out some black tubing on a half sheet of plywood. The energy addition is negligible compared to what the pool is already capturing.

Since the pool collects so much heat the best thing to do is stop the evaporative heat loss and let the sun do its thing. That's why a bubble cover is so effective. Next best is actually to insulate the pool including the top. And finally add proper solar panels.
 
Why does my pool feel warmer in the early morning?
Also, I believe my chemistry is finally decent. Now I want to go after the "feel." Granted this is a little itty bitty pool compared to you big boys out there, but SO nice to have after work (or before)(or on my lunchbreak), and I want it as right as possible. Crystal clear. BUT, when I get out and drip dry, it feels like I've got a layer of chalk all over. Awhile back I added some Borax to soften it, and hung CYA crystals for I don't remember why, but it was after reading through a bunch of conversations. Is this just too small of a unit to fuss with and I just gotta start designing an outdoor spit shower (heated with ahem, black tubing). There's probably a lot of conversation regarding this as well. So fun!
Chemistry: 2.5 CL 3.5 FC .5 CC TC 4 65 CYA 100 Alk 300 hardness 7.8 PH Some wizard want to give me a clue?
 
mrodgers said:
Why do people continue to state this when you can get 100 feet of black irrigation tubing for $13? Every thread out on the internet asking about heating a pool states this. When it's $150 for a single commercial solar panel, how is half a sheet of plywood and 100 feet of black tubing for $13 more expensive?

Google for DIY pool solar panel heater. Take a 4x4 sheet of plywood, coil the black polyethylene irrigation tubing available in half inch or 3/4 inch at Lowes, and add a couple of fittings to connect it to the pump. Want more heat? You have half a sheet of plywood left over, another $13 of tubing and connect the 2 panels together.

There's countless people on the net whom have just tossed tubing up on their garage or house roof and have warmed up their pool, yet also countless people whom have never done it state it doesn't work.
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Exactly... Last year i just took a 50 ft roll of black piping and tossed it on the ground and used one of my old pumps to run it.. It worked for what i needed and made it more comfortable to use the pool. If i would have taken the time and made a proper one im sure it would have worked much better.
 
The "feel" of the pool is a subjective thing and is greatly dependent on the outside temp and how warm or cold your body is.

A lot of times the pool "feels" warmer in the morning because the ambient air is colder. It "feels" cooler in the afternoon because the ambient air is warmer.

There is also the mind over matter effect to contend with. If you think your black tube is making your pool warmer than it must be warmer and you tell yourself that it "feels" more comfortable.

I have an app that tracks my pool temp every 10 minutes 24hrs a day and logs the records for a year (its part of my personal weather station). Even though I know exactly how warm my pool is and can track the heat rise from both my solar panels and heat pump, some days when the pool is at 85 degrees it "feels" warmer and other days it "feels" colder. The water itself is exactly the same temperature but all the conditions that change how you feel about the water have changed.

On a bright sunny day my (3) 2'x20' solar panels can add 2 degrees an hour to my 13k gallons of water. If I have the heat pump going as well its 3 degrees an hour on an ideal day. Including the lumber to build my ground mount rack for my solar panels, and the solar controller and valve, I spent about 1k on my solar setup. The panels themselves were only 300 from amazon.
 
harrenst said:
Why does my pool feel warmer in the early morning?
Also, I believe my chemistry is finally decent. Now I want to go after the "feel." Granted this is a little itty bitty pool compared to you big boys out there, but SO nice to have after work (or before)(or on my lunchbreak), and I want it as right as possible. Crystal clear. BUT, when I get out and drip dry, it feels like I've got a layer of chalk all over. Awhile back I added some Borax to soften it, and hung CYA crystals for I don't remember why, but it was after reading through a bunch of conversations. Is this just too small of a unit to fuss with and I just gotta start designing an outdoor spit shower (heated with ahem, black tubing). There's probably a lot of conversation regarding this as well. So fun!
Chemistry: 2.5 CL 3.5 FC .5 CC TC 4 65 CYA 100 Alk 300 hardness 7.8 PH Some wizard want to give me a clue?
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Water at 82 when the air is 60 feels wonderful, that same water at 82 when the air is 90 feels chilly. When you are wet a dry breeze will feel way colder than a still humid day.

Also your CYA is pretty high, chlorine too low - it is there to help protect your chlorine from burning off too fast, but it also needs to be in a particular relationship with the amounts.

Pool School - Chlorine / CYA Chart
Pool School - ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry
Pool School - Pool School
 
Nope between the pool being in the full sun along with the panels the water temp increases by 2 degrees an hour. There is a solar cover on the pool as well. That's the temperature is measured 2 ft below the surface behind the stairs so the temp probe in the water is out of the sun.

That is also at it's peak it won't do that rate for more than a couple hours. The best day I've had with both the solar panels and heater going is a 13 degree rise where it started at 77 @ 930 am when the pump kicked on and ended at 90 when the pump shut off at 700. That was in august of last year when it got cold overnight and I hadn't put the cover back on. My heat pump is 75kBTU at its peak rated output.
 

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