Anyone Have a Winter Pool Dome - Ameridome or Others?

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Snow dome STARLOG update:

Well, it withstood more than 12 SLOW inches of snow but last night's fast snow took her down.

We made some "learning errors" we will not repeat.

1. We brushed snow off ends thinking it might just say up...that was stupid, because then instead of collapsing on an end which is easy to later remedy, it collapsed in the middle.

2. Ultimately, there is a way to kinda bounce/roll a channel of snow out if one really really wants to keep it up for the morning swim. That's what we did, and it was a PITA.

3. If you shut off the blower to let the whole dome sink so that the snow will melt and you can pump it off, there's a chance the snow around it will prevent it from enough deflation to actually hit the water and melt. We abandoned this approach in favor or active management with shop brooms because hubby seemed adamant to get it back up for my morning swim. I told him that sooner or later we were going to have to learn how the collapse goes and how to manage it via melt...but he's a stubborn one ;)

And here is what a pool dome looks like under weight of snow, but with air trapped ;). (Its all better now and I'm going for a swim, bu thought I'd post this for posterity ;)

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Actually, Danny, its a balmy 25 in my back yard right now ;) our below 10 temps aren't supposed to be back til sun and Mon night...but then again I AM causing a mini-greenhouse effect with the dome so my yard sensor has been reading higher than forecast ;)

At 25 with no current snow I'm golden...we've got that temp range down to a science and the inside of the dome right now is 55, which is entirely comfortable with 95 degree water. The teens are working fairly well too...the zipper will freeze but its pretty easy to get it unstuck. Its the single digits where the ice starts forming on the INSIDE that are trickier if they go on for very long.
 
Here in WI we're supposed to be getting some -20 something temps this weekend. Brrrrrrrr
Would love to have the dome and be able to take a dip. Nice to see it's working out so far.
 
Fascinating observation this am. 16 degrees when I got up and done interior temp 40 degrees...lowest its been yet. Opened half the cover to do workout and by the time I finished the air gained 16 degrees! Water temp didnt drop of course because I had the heater on...but exposure to 95 degree water sure heats up the dome air fast ;)
 
Humid air holds more heat than dry air.

Do you have a measure of RH inside Thunderdome? You might try leaving a corner of the pool cover open so that the interior dome air can have higher RH. Careful though, if the temperature in side the dome drops too much or too quickly, you could cause a tropical rain storm inside the dome ;)


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No Rh monitor, but I should see if there's a sensor I can hook up to my ambient weather probes ;)

It does actually "rain" a little now and then right after opening and re zipping the door...assume its from the sudden cold front moving in ;) Mostly just a spatter of drops from the ceiling, then abates.

Danny, no need to be jealous of my swim time...you're in Texas for heaven sake, surely you'll be able to swim, like, tomorrow, right!? ;) Neither one of you actually close, do you?

With that said, there is an element of "Swedish" style hot/cold therapy to all this...I actually enjoy sitting on my deck in the snow in my robe for a spell after my swim to cool down. Same with hot tub. I used to enjoy same after a strenuous snowshoe hike up my trail in the back hill, but I'm forbidden this year -- though starting to feel tempted. I think I'd go crazy this winter if I didn't have the dome to distract me. Found myself admiring a snow mobile my friend is selling today and thinking hmmm...that would e one way to get ack on the trail ;)
 

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No, don't close. It was 12 night before last and we were below freezing for two days! It was terrible, barely survived it. :p But, we're back in the 50s now so it is getting better.

It is nice to get out of the hot tub and just steam for a bit!
 
The only part of my pool that I "close" for winter is the waterfall. And by close I mean I drain the waterfall basins, suction out the supply line and open up the pump basket and wet-end drain valves. This let's all the above ground pipes drain out and then I throw the pump CB to off. I do it to save money as I don't want my 3HP waterfall pump running for hours on end if the freeze protect circuit kicks in. Takes about 45mins and 2 beers to complete the task.


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Wonder-dome STARLOG update: Automation!

SO, some of you will recall that I elected to go with the cheapest possible automation system possible - got a Intermatic PE653 and controller for $300 at Smarthome.

For the money, and notwithstanding no Internet control at this point, it is working well. BUT I now know why I might have chosen a more sophisticated option even though my setup is truly simple.

- Pump scheduling - great, and if I had VS, it works with VS also.
- SWG - for my purposes, perfect, as I wanted straight on-off scheduling since demand is so low in dome. It will talk fully to autopilot, eg let you control percentages etc., but not aquarite, but I knew this in advance and content with scheduling capability.

Heater : This is where I didn't think through what I really wanted to do.
What I really wanted to do was to schedule a timed condition whereby A) if its past midnight and b) the water temp is below 89 it would turn on, run max and/o up to 96, then shut off by 8:30 am regardless of temperature.

What it really does: (pick one)
- if programmed as 2 wire with onboard control and temp sensor, it thermostats like a champ. But my heater already does this.

- If you nuke / disable the 2-wire Thermostatting that runs with the supplied temp sensor, THEN you can schedule it to simply turn on at midnight and turn off at 8:30 a.m. But it can't be conditional on temp, except insofar as the heater will thermostat as set because it then relies on Hester's Thermostatting.

Not a big problem...I really just wanted to be able to schedule the eater to come on later if I was in bed, eg in warme weather will just change schedule to on at 3 or 4 am for morning heat run up. In regular season, this will still save me money. But I would have loved to have been able to program if/then conditions ;)

For the price, works great.
 
Sure sounds nice. I'm saying that looking out at my ice rink :(

What are you seeing for operating costs ?? (If you don't mind).
 
Our Dec. 15th gas bill, which included boiler heat for home, stove, gas stove in pool house, dryer and hot water from nov. 15- dec. 15 was $475. Average daily use was 20 CCF...so on average, same useage as May 15 bill with pool running open in spring temps, or comparatively, about 2 - 2.5 times regular Dec. 15 bill/usage if pool wasn't running - depending on degree days.

The CCF usage was identical to May but the May bill was $427...so we might be getting nicked a surcharge, I suspect.

I haven't yet added up my spreadsheet on daily run time and average temp to separate out actual cost of pool heater alone, because I can't entirely isolate it from boiler operation even though it's running at night. I've only read meter in a.m.s from day to day, so all the rest of the gas usage is in there. Based on run time, though, about $336 of the bill should be from the pool heater with an average warm up run time of 8 hrs per day at max rated gas usage.

Haven't yet tried to isolate air blower and pump run time impact on electric.

====================================================

Update: Kinda hard to isolate KW electrical on pump and air blower -- we're also running a heat pump and our studio off this electrical service. But if I ballpark year over year, it looks like consumption rose by 591 KW, which at .14 per kw is $82.

That feels about right, because I've previously calculated my single-speed pump to use about $40, and calculated that at 50% operation time on blower it would use $42 and couldn't use more than $84 ;)

SO - while I expect Jan and Feb to be a bit worse, the total difference in energy (gas plus electric) of a theoretical $418 is certainly cheaper than my 30% of physiotherapy 3x a week would have been ;) (my share on my health plan would have been $720 for the same time period.) In terms of physiotherapy, MORE than worth it, as I'm doing it daily.

In terms of just having fun...we would likely still do it without this specific health benefit but not everyone would necessarily choose that way. It isn't especially hard for me to rack up $100 a week in other forms of entertainment....so...;)
 
I don't know....at $418/month you might want to consider saving up the money and just extending the house to turn your Fall leaf teapot pool (I love that picture of the pool with the fall leaves floating in it!) into an indoor pool :swim:...

Very nice energy analysis, by the way!! It's always nice to have numbers to point to for future reference...
 
I could make that case over time, but the only problem is I love the terrace and yard from May to September and don't want to give up the outdoor/open feel then.

There is a company in Toronto that fabricates custom telescoping pool enclosures/additions at a cost of approx $85 per SF. I talked to them a few years back, but to do it would require ripping out the angled end of the terrace (which is also problematic re drainage.) amortized on a heloc I could get that into the neighborhood of total dome plus energy costs, but I just can't bear to take out the ancient azaleas or Japanese maple to do so, as I won't likely live long enough to get them back ;)
 
Wonder dome STARLOG winter ;)

Its 7 degrees this am outside the dome. Dome air was at 39 when I started workout, went up to 51 by the time I finished. I'm impressed that I can achieve an air differential of 32-44 in these temps, running heater for 11 hours. (It didn't need 11 hours to heat, but it was snowing so hubby suggested I run longer as it seems to make a difference on collapse factor. Normally get back to temp in about 7-8 hours in this tpe of weather.)

One issue is the zipper freezes. Inside, there was actually ice/frost on the walls. It all add the warm water time even more precious ;)

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Actually, even 40 is fine when the water is 95 degrees.

That said, I may be slightly impervious to the cold. Eg. I did not think twice about taking the robe off and getting into the hot tub this am in the 7 degree darkness either ;) Perchance there's a bit of Swede in the gene pool ;)

Before the knee went haywire compliment of the cipro poisoning, I used to snowshoe up my hill even in sub-zero degree days. I'm hopeful by next month I can try the hill again...but don't really want the handful of sub zero days that seem to crop up every Feb...that will really test the dome-works!
 

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