Does anyone make an instant pool warmer? (If not...million dollar idea...)

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I bought 2 -100 ft black hose. I leave the hose on all day on sprinkle. It comes out 104 degrees all day. In the spring time after I vacuum the pool and it’s 8 inches low I connect the hose to the hot water from out side shower. It has to be a lot cheaper to get that hot water from my house hot water tank. The black hose is like a solar panel. It works great.
 
ddas said:
Just fantasizing here because we've had an unusually cold spring and early summer, which has delayed the temperature being comfortably swimmable. (We're in SoCal.) Does anyone make a "pool bomb" kind of thing -- like a gas lantern (but on steroids) that you could light and float in a pool which could safely but quickly raise the temperature of a pool?

Obviously, I'm not asking for any dangerous DIY solutions...I'm actually thinking about a product that would emit enough heat, quickly, under the surface, to be able to warm water by an appreciable amount.

Is it even technically feasible?
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Now that you have captured the attention of our resident amateur comedians and mad scientists, who are feverently thinking of the most extreme ways to heat a pool, the short answer to your question is no, unfortunately. You can make a difference with a solar blanket and solar heating panels, but it won’t be fast.
I waiting for one of these guys to come up with a brilliant plan to dig out all around the pool shell and wrap it with radiant heat coils!
 
So when you say instant.. do you really mean instant? or do I get some time to let things warm up, 5 min, one minute, 30 sec? I'm just trying to define the boundaries and contraints of the design.

This would actually be a really interesting problem in thermodynamics.. a subject that was not my favorite class. But from a theoretical standpoint it would be a fun problem to solve. I'm having Carnot cycle flashbacks already.. The way I see it is we have to figure out a process that will heat the water fast enough but not so fast that you boil off your pool water.. So the heat capacity and conductivity of water will come into play. We don't want to pop the gunite shell out of the ground and nobody likes swimming in steam. Perhaps we can contain the reaction by just keeping your solar cover on.. hmm.

One possible way of rapidly heating water would be a chemical process, for example throwing some metal sodium in the pool creates a wonderfully exothermic reaction, but the resulting chemistry means you would likely have to SLAM to get your pool levels right again.. oh, and that reaction creates lots of hydrogen gas, so you probably shouldn't smoke while heating your pool in this manner.

If I were to propose a physical process, heat transfer from something that is already heated might work. So imagine a large retractable gantry with an array of pre warmed gold plated heat sinks that we could plunge into the pool. For that matter my '78 Toyota pickup truck always ran pretty hot, I could just drive that beast into the deep end for the same effect.

How about I get my pool to get hit by lightning, in a semi-controlled fashion? So what if I build a large Tesla coil next to the waterfall do you think I could get the county inspectors to buy that its an LED water fountain feature? ...
So let me run some numbers and I'll get back to you.
 
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I suspect with enough natural gas, pumps, heaters, electricity and plumbing you could get it warmed up pretty darn quick. I wouldn’t go with any less than 3-5M BTU’s of capacity though, depending on pool size. It’s only money.
 

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Cavitation huh? that would be an adiabatic process I believe.
So I was telling an old college friend about this conversation.. we both majored in physics you see.. and had a chuckle about how this would actually be done. He liked the idea of a chemical process, something that could be dissolved in the water and initiated with a catalyst or optical trigger. The temperature change would be just about instantaneous (as required by the thread), but the challenge would be to regulate the reaction so it hits a comfortable temperature and have chemical by products that you could still swim in. His idea was to use a big giant Klystron and heat the pool up like sticking a cup of water in the microwave. hmm. :p
 
I think you've gotten a very broad view of the creativity and dare I say at times, weird people here. The only thing I have to add is that unfortunately what ever route you take it will be made of a newly discovered heavy metal that has been created with particle accelerators. Its called unaffordium.

Chris
 
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