Considering a heater

[JoyfulNoise]

The "ton" of cooling capacity comes from the old days (early 1900's) when ice used to be harvested in blocks from the Hudson river and shipped downriver to Manhattan so fancy rich people could cool the food they kept in their new-fangled "re-frig-erators"...people with refrigerators would get ice blocks delivered to their homes and the service guy would haul them up to apartments and place them in the cooling boxes. A pan at the bottom would collect the melt water and had to be emptied daily by the resident. If you watch the old "Honeymooners" TV sitcom, I believe there is an episode where the ice guy delivers an ice block to Alice's refrigerator.

 

[Scout101]

Thanks for all the info. House is run by Natural Gas, and has an indirect hot water heater (uses the boiler to run through a pipe in a tank, essentially, instead of heating anything in the tank directly). located on the opposite side of my house from the pool equipment, so doubt there's any sense in trying to pipe hot water 100' and say it's efficient Toyed with the idea about using the AC heat exchangers as the heat source, there's an article about an add-on for that, and that's at least next to the other equipment, but not sure I want to hack into my AC to save my gas bill, and when I want the heat in the pool, the AC isn't running as much.

Think i agree that if I'm doing this, gas heater is the answer. Would have to do something with the pipe to the house, or meter, or something; would have to get the gas company to come in and tell me. That and the heater itself MAY run, but is definitely older and likely end of service life, so suspect that would have to go to. Cheaper than the heat pump to buy, but doesn't appear to last as long, plus more expensive to run. For random nights and weekends, though, may make more sense to boil on the weekends and cover/let fall a bit during the week when it's used less/not at all for the shoulder seasons.

Still need to chew on this, but may address this in the spring. Pool was 65 today, so already at the point where i'm just keeping it clean and waiting for temps to drop enough to winterize...

 

[Catanzaro]

You can even close your pool mid September, just remember to open up real early next year. Amazing what night temps of 59 degree's to 65 degree's can do to pool water. My cover is now on, as I can not let the pool water come down. The heater kicks on at 11 a.m. each day. This Sunday, I allowed the pool to go without the cover overnight. The temperature was at 95, and dropped to 87, the next morning. Even with the cover, we are still looking at a 4 degree drop, instead of 8 degrees.

If you get a heater, allow the sun to bake on the pool until around 11 a.m., then turn on the pump and run through skimmers only as it picks up the surface water and heats the pool faster, but not by that much. Good luck and keep us posted.