Intex Pool 15' 48" - Heating with Intex Solar Panel and Solar Cover

[maxcalvada]

Just installed the solar panel(bought the cover last year). It doesn't seem to have much, if any effect on the water temperature. It has been a rainy, cool July here. The weather is better this week. It's 87 degrees outside right now. Still a fair amount of cloud cover.(they say some of it is due to the forest fires out west).

Will just one solar panel, in combo with the solar cover, be enough to warm up the pool somewhat. How long should it take? Would more solar panels be worth it?

 

[Woodstock1234]

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Solar is free heat, so I think it's worth it, but it will never be a true heater. I get around 3 to 6 degrees on a sunny day. It's just enough sometimes to make the water comfortable, but if the air temperature is cold or if it's cloudy, you won't get much warmer. If you are talking about the Intex "mat" I see advertised, I don't think that is big enough to do much.

 

[maxcalvada]

Yes, the solar mat. I've read people use 3-4 of these. Can that be helpful?

 

[Woodstock1234]

I think my panels are 2 x 20 ft. I would think that using many solar mats would be inefficient because you have to connect each one and they run sequential? You want the panels to run parallel. I would recommend larger panels rather than the mats. Maybe someone who has experience with the mats can chime in here.

 

[jonahex2099]

I use a single Fafco Solar Bear cover (4x20) and it gets about 1-11 hours of sun a day at peak because my southern exposure is meh. I run the pump for 8 hours. I also keep the solar cover on if the pool isn't in use... Through the course of the day my water temps usually jump about 6-8 degrees and I have a 12x24x52 Ultraframe XTR pool. So solar works, just needs to be the right size....

 

[Dougiefreshhh]

We love our solar heater. We use it in conjunction with our solar cover. Today, yes, end of Sept, the thermometer read a water temp of 75! Tonight it’s getting down to 49, so we will see how it does. We only run the pump during the day when the sun is out.

 

[jseyfert3]

The rule of thumb for solar heating is you want at least half the surface area of your pool to start making a noticeable difference in temp vs no solar heating, otherwise it’s not really worth the hassle.

An Intex solar heating mat is 4’x4’ or 16 ft^2. A 15’ Intex pool is 180 ft^2. You would need 6 of the Intex mats to reach the 50% rule of thumb for this size Intex pool.

Solar cover makes a huge difference by itself, and is the biggest bang for your buck in heating any pool, though it can be a hassle to use. This should generally always be step one before any sort of solar heating panels are added.