Heater suggestions

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Jive5877

Jive5877

0
May 7, 2018
94
Schaumburg
We live in Illinois which gets a lot of cool weather even in the summer, so my pool water gets really cold. We are thinking about getting a heater however we are not sure if it's worth the cost or not. From what I found we like the Raypak heaters, but they are about 3k plus installation about 1k and that does not include the cost to run it. Is anyone on here in the same state and have any Pro's and Con's to adding a heater? Will heaters survive our horrible winters? Anyone have experience with Raypak? Any suggestions welcomed
 
Raypak's are a great unit. You mention $3k for the unit and another $1k for the install. I am guessing you have to have a gas line installed and that is in the $1k cost. I am also guessing the unit is a 400K at the price you mentioned.

Yes the units will hold up in the winter if properly taken care of. Empty the heat exchanger of water completely before it gets too cold.
 
A 400K unit is overkill for your pool. My pool (NW side of Chicago) is over twice the volume and I do well with a 266 (Raypak). Not sure that we'd enjoy the pool nearly as much without the heater. The Chicago area, as you know, is unpredictable weather-wise. The weekend before last was very hot and pool temp was not much of an issue. This past weekend was almost 20 degrees cooler and my wife wouldn't go in the pool until we kicked the temperature up. Our heater will increase the temp by about 1-1.5 degrees per hour. It extends the effective season and makes cool spells more user-friendly.

As for winterzing, just cover the top with visqueen or a small tarp. I would advise against covering the entire unit because it will trap moisture and lead to corrosion.
 
Geebot said:
A 400K unit is overkill for your pool. My pool (NW side of Chicago) is over twice the volume and I do well with a 266 (Raypak). Not sure that we'd enjoy the pool nearly as much without the heater. The Chicago area, as you know, is unpredictable weather-wise. The weekend before last was very hot and pool temp was not much of an issue. This past weekend was almost 20 degrees cooler and my wife wouldn't go in the pool until we kicked the temperature up. Our heater will increase the temp by about 1-1.5 degrees per hour. It extends the effective season and makes cool spells more user-friendly.
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Last weekend is exactly the weather that got ou s really talking about it. It was beautiful outside but the pool was cold...about 78 and it's not a lot of fun shivering in the water. May I ask how your gas bill is running the heater?
 
I had a heater put in for our attached spa. It’s a Hayward 400k unit and we love it. We are in Southern New Jersey, but are able to open the pool in April and close it in mid to late October. We don’t constantly hear the pool but when it’s going to be a nice weekend, we get it going on Thursday and Friday.

I figure the heater costs is about $4.00 per hour to run so heating it once or twice a month is probably about $100 added to our natural gas bill., which is offset by the fact that during that time of year we aren’t yet running AC and the heat is off in the house.

Our pool is 36,000 gallons. Getting a bigger heater should speed up the time it takes to heat the pool but cost more to run. Not sure if it’s a 6 in one 1/2 dozen on another situation though.
 
Esloser said:
I had a heater put in for our attached spa. It’s a Hayward 400k unit and we love it. We are in Southern New Jersey, but are able to open the pool in April and close it in mid to late October. We don’t constantly hear the pool but when it’s going to be a nice weekend, we get it going on Thursday and Friday.

I figure the heater costs is about $4.00 per hour to run so heating it once or twice a month is probably about $100 added to our natural gas bill., which is offset by the fact that during that time of year we aren’t yet running AC and the heat is off in the house.

Our pool is 36,000 gallons. Getting a bigger heater should speed up the time it takes to heat the pool but cost more to run. Not sure if it’s a 6 in one 1/2 dozen on another situation though.
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You bring up a good point about not running the AC and virtually no other gas use. I hate walking into the house w iui th the AC running when I get out of the pool so I turn mine up to about 88 so it doesn't run. Geebot also brought a good point that a 400BTU heater for a pool that's about 14000 gallons might be an overkill. I'm going to look at the 200BTU heaters
 
Bought a Raypak 156A this spring for about $1000 online. 20,000 gallon pool in NE Wisconsin, so similar weather to Illinois. We were swimming in 85 degree water in mid May. It keeps up without breaking a sweat, heated the pool up surprisingly quickly, and was a breeze to install myself. Granted, I had a gas line there, but it's a great unit.
 
Jhsparky82 said:
Bought a Raypak 156A this spring for about $1000 online. 20,000 gallon pool in NE Wisconsin, so similar weather to Illinois. We were swimming in 85 degree water in mid May. It keeps up without breaking a sweat, heated the pool up surprisingly quickly, and was a breeze to install myself. Granted, I had a gas line there, but it's a great unit.
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How long does it take to heat the pool about 10 degrees? How us your gas bill this year as compared to last year?
 

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Jive5877 said:
Last weekend is exactly the weather that got ou s really talking about it. It was beautiful outside but the pool was cold...about 78 and it's not a lot of fun shivering in the water. May I ask how your gas bill is running the heater?
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It's about $5 an hour to run but we really only fire it up on weekends that we're using the pool and need the extra warmth, so maybe 20-30 hours per month. More in May.

You should easily get 10 years of service out of a heater as long as you maintain the pool's chemistry well (especially pH). The Jandy that we had was over 20 years old when we replaced it with the Raypak last year. It still worked but was inefficient and needed periodic repairs that made it a pain to use.
 
Geebot said:
It's about $5 an hour to run but we really only fire it up on weekends that we're using the pool and need the extra warmth, so maybe 20-30 hours per month. More in May.

You should easily get 10 years of service out of a heater as long as you maintain the pool's chemistry well (especially pH). The Jandy that we had was over 20 years old when we replaced it with the Raypak last year. It still worked but was inefficient and needed periodic repairs that made it a pain to use.
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That's not too bad. Do you cover your pool when it's not being used?
 
We have a heat pump pool heater and really like it. It is a smaller unit and takes 1 to 2 hours to raise the pool temp 1 degree.
But our biggest pool heater is our solar cover- when it is 90 plus out our pool temp gets to 90 plus without the heater running, and leaving the solar cover on at night helps hold the heat in.
When day time air temp stays above 95 for several days, we usually need to leave our solar cover off because the water gets too hot! But our pool does get sun all day long.
 
Just got it a couple months ago, so I don't have any bills to compare and see a good pattern. I can tell you it heats up fast. Faster than I expected, but I can't give an exact timeframe. For 150k BTUs, it's a powerful little unit
 
I also live in the NW suburbs and definitely recommend a heater. You will use your pool a lot more (especially with weird summers like this one). The forum likes Raypak, and my neighbor's is ~15 years old and still running strong (although I don't really know it's service history). Because of space restrictions, budget and time, I went with a Jandy JXi 260. I believe it's transformer just blew at ~2 years old (in the process of fixing it). At least it seems pretty easy to work on. Oh well...

Back when gas was very expensive, and I had an inefficient heater (~10 years ago), I used a solar cover. It was great with keeping the heat in, but was a pain to put on/take off and wore out in a few years (if you don't have a shady location to store it, the sun takes its toll - I ended up buying a cover, but that made the put on/take off experience even worse). After ~3 years, gas was cheap so I pitched it.
 
lshonda310 said:
We have a heat pump pool heater and really like it. It is a smaller unit and takes 1 to 2 hours to raise the pool temp 1 degree.
But our biggest pool heater is our solar cover- when it is 90 plus out our pool temp gets to 90 plus without the heater running, and leaving the solar cover on at night helps hold the heat in.
When day time air temp stays above 95 for several days, we usually need to leave our solar cover off because the water gets too hot! But our pool does get sun all day long.
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The solar cover is such a pain to put on and off. My pool gets full sun but when it get into the 90's we are in the pool so the cover is off.
 
Also keep in mind that natural gas pricing is different per region.

When I use my Raypak 266k btu heater, it only adds about $ 40-50 per month more to my gas bill when
I use it a lot during may and june months. I don't need to use it much in July or August as at that point
the bubble cover and warm days sustain the water to around 84 degrees.

And you should get a bubble cover if you don't have one to prevent heat loss overnight and evaporation.

I get a heat raise of 2.5 degrees F per hour on my 13,000 gallon pool.
 
Jive5877 said:
The solar cover is such a pain to put on and off. My pool gets full sun but when it get into the 90's we are in the pool so the cover is off.
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we have a solar cover reel that makes it real easy to remove and put back on, a pool loses alot of heat at night without a cover on it
to me it would defeat the purpose of a heater to heat it up and lose that heat at night only to spend more $ to heat back up
 

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