Cold pool on a hot day?

[Pete80]

Hi guys, I'm new here to the forum and have a quick question:

We just completed a pool build in September and enjoyed a few weeks of warm pool weather, but then I got shipped overseas for 5 weeks on a business trip.
When we got back the temperature of the pool was a brisk 72 degrees.

The last 3 days have been in the upper 90's with today hitting a high of 105. My wife and I were excited thinking the pool would warm up quickly and that we could swim around, but the temperature has sat solid (actually dipped to 71 degrees one morning) around 72. I can bear that temperature, but my wife refuses to get in. Our pool is an uncovered 16x44 foot hybrid lap pool. 8.5ft deep at one end, 3.5ft deep at the other. We have a darkish StoneScapes Tahoe Blue pebble finish.

I am planning on getting a solar system for the roof (320ft^2 of black solar collectors) to help out, but I am worried it might not be enough. My wife refuses to let me get a solar cover, for aesthetic and functional reasons.

Any thoughts? Where is all the heat going?

 

[mknauss]

To retain the heat you will need a solar cover. Even with the solar panels. The loss at night would overwhelm your solar panel output. Evaporative cooling.

Water temperature in a pool tends to settle pretty close to the low temperature at night. It will warm some during the day but each morning it will be very near the low temperature seen that night.

 

[BasicTek]

I have an over-sized solar system (almost 80%) the sq ft of my pool surface. It works great and on a hot summer day can increase my pool up to maybe 8+ degrees. On a partly cloudy fall or spring day that drops to 4-5 degrees. My pool is southern exposure in central Florida. Still with all that going for me I needed a cover to retain the heat at night. It not only retains heat it will really slow down evaporation as well (our winter-spring can be quite dry in FL). There is currently a 175 page thread of what is your water temp where you can see others term per climate, and heating equipment.

I prefer my pool to be 88 and above. In FL I can have that with no heating from June to the beginning of September. With Solar that extends to May through October. With solar and a cover I'll see 90 or close to it a couple times probably in peak winter January (I did last year)