Florida solar cover?

[FlaPoolGuy]

Hi everyone!

My pool water is starting to get cold, and I'm interested in extending the swimming season. I've seen advertisements about heat pumps, which would work. However, I remember growing up my parents had a solar cover that we put on the pool to warm it up, and it seemed to work fine.

That was up north, and it was on in the summer time mostly.

Could I do that in Florida in the Fall to warm up the water, or is there a reason I've not seen solar covers around here? Thank you for your help in advance!

 

[athflying]

I have both, a solar cover helps keep warmth in and really works well with a heat pump, but I am afraid on it's own it's really not going to do much. It helps keep the temps up overnight, but I find if more than a day or so of cold, it just can't keep it at a comfortable temp.

We recently did a heat pump and wish I had done it day we bought the house. Our pool barely hit 80 even in the dead of summer, so it made a huge difference for us.

 

[Newdude]

helps keep the temps up overnight, but I find if more than a day or so of cold, it just can't keep it at a comfortable temp

+1. If the week is warmer and one or two days dips in temp, the cover saving 5-7 degrees worth of evap those nights will be awesome. But after a few days, the fact that you are 5 degrees warmer than you would have been is a moot point if the water is now too cold for you. But it’s 67 and it would have been 62 !!!! Yeah. No.

 

[setsailsoon]

Fla,

The answer to this question is heavily dependent on personal preferences and if you have natural gas available. So what do I mean by this? If you swim every day and have a solar cover the pool is still pretty hot from day before so just run the heat pump in the morning and you can have pool toasty warm in afternoon. But if you swim once per week and not sure when you'll swim you have to run the heat pump a LONG time to get the pool ready to swim since it will have lost a lot of heat. So you really need a quicker way to heat it up. Natural gas heat works much quicker if you have it available because you can get them with much higher output, about 400K BTU vs 125K BTU per hour. If natural gas isn't available your only choice for quicker heat is propane. Florida has the highest propane cost in the country, about 2 times most other states. There's also solar. It works great most of the year here but in winter it can't get the pool most of the winter without some help.

So here's what I'd do. We swim almost every day year round. We're in the early stages of building our new pool and house in Palm City. Our pool will be solar heated with propane back-up and have a solar cover initially. We will have a large propane tank for the stand by generator anyway but this is really only needed for power after hurricanes which are summer events. So we'll have plenty available for short runs on the heater and fill before storm season each year. I'm hoping this will work fine. But in case we find we're using enough propane to justify a heat pump I'm adding the power to the pool pad to do this. It's not that much extra to run the larger size wire to the sub panel. Heat pumps are great for their efficiency but they are expensive up front so I want to make sure it at least pays out as quickly as the solar heater (~4-5years for us).

I hope this helps.

Chris

 

[Newdude]

We will have a large propane tank for the stand by generator anyway but this is really only needed for power after hurricanes which are summer events. So we'll have plenty available for short runs on the heater and fill before storm season each year

I recommend biting the bullet and getting as large of a tank as you can afford, whether it be propane or home heating oil. The way the prices fluctuate during the year, you can fill a 1000k tank for half the cost and make it through the peak season. Not every year if the proces remain high for an extended time, but many years will work on your favor. A 250g propane tank or 275g heating oil tank might only last a month and you’re stuck refilling it at higher costs. In the long run, the upgrade will pay for itself many times over.

 

[setsailsoon]

I recommend biting the bullet and getting as large of a tank as you can afford, whether it be propane or home heating oil. The way the prices fluctuate during the year, you can fill a 1000k tank for half the cost and make it through the peak season. Not every year if the proces remain high for an extended time, but many years will work on your favor. A 250g propane tank or 275g heating oil tank might only last a month and you’re stuck refilling it at higher costs. In the long run, the upgrade will pay for itself many times over.

New,

Yep, we looked into this after your earlier comments and completely agree. We've got a 1000 gal burred tank on the site plan now that is included in the permit application.

Chris

 

[Newdude]

We've got a 1000 gal burred tank on the site plan now that is included in the permit

What were the cost differences of the tanks by you for reference?