Heya,
I'm a new AG owner and total pool newbie. I got a 10' AG to splash around with this summer and wanted to be able to heat it up a bit, since sun alone was leaving it quite chilly. Not wanting to invest upwards of 1K on a heater, I started experimenting with various DIY solutions from the interwebz.
I started with 100' of black pex tubing and a submersible pump, trying to use solar energy to slowly raise the temp by leaving the coil of hose in the sun and pumping through it. It gave me about 0.5F every day... which was lost at night. Totally ineffective. My rig was way smaller than the hundreds of feet (and in greenhouse boxes) setups I'd seen. Don't have enough yard space for giant coils of hose.
Then I saw an "endless" tankless hot water camping shower that ran on propane. Used my submersible pump to feed it (no one in the pool when it's on don't worry haha) and it gave me back really hot water, but at about 1.5GPM. Still wasn't very effective and tore through propane. Too expensive for the resulting heat.
Hmm.. ok well I have a BBQ 2 ft. from the pool and it's Natural Gas. NG is super cheap where I live. Gotta be able to do something!
I started with 50' of copper refrigeration tubing in the BBQ. It got about a 12F rise in temp from pool water input to BBQ output, but still at about 1.5GPM because the tubing was restricting things at 1/2".
Then I thought, "I need a heat exchanger!" My friend runs the mechanics program at a local high school and had some spare used car radiators around. I found one that was almost perfect dimensions to fit over the grill area of my BBQ but leave the plastic tanks on the outside. Just needed to put a "wall" of fire brick around the perimeter of the grill to make sure all the heat went directly up through the rad.
Low and behold, I get about a 20F rise in temp from in to out, but at 5GPM now. Takes about 4 hours to get from 72F to 80F. Best part is, I watched the gas flow on my meter and made some calculations based on the energy costs. I pay roughly 20 CENTS PER HOUR to run the heater. So for $0.80 to $1.20 per day I can keep things nice and warm.
Pretty proud of the contraption and figured someone here might find the idea interesting. I have seen various contraptions with burning barrels and such, but no BBQ solution with the car radiator as the exchanger.
The pic is not 100% the final setup as I was running the copper coil below the rad for a bit to see what was better. The higher flow rate and lower temp rise was far more efficient, so now my pump just goes in/out of the rad and the copper tubing went back to the big box store.
I'm a new AG owner and total pool newbie. I got a 10' AG to splash around with this summer and wanted to be able to heat it up a bit, since sun alone was leaving it quite chilly. Not wanting to invest upwards of 1K on a heater, I started experimenting with various DIY solutions from the interwebz.
I started with 100' of black pex tubing and a submersible pump, trying to use solar energy to slowly raise the temp by leaving the coil of hose in the sun and pumping through it. It gave me about 0.5F every day... which was lost at night. Totally ineffective. My rig was way smaller than the hundreds of feet (and in greenhouse boxes) setups I'd seen. Don't have enough yard space for giant coils of hose.
Then I saw an "endless" tankless hot water camping shower that ran on propane. Used my submersible pump to feed it (no one in the pool when it's on don't worry haha) and it gave me back really hot water, but at about 1.5GPM. Still wasn't very effective and tore through propane. Too expensive for the resulting heat.
Hmm.. ok well I have a BBQ 2 ft. from the pool and it's Natural Gas. NG is super cheap where I live. Gotta be able to do something!
I started with 50' of copper refrigeration tubing in the BBQ. It got about a 12F rise in temp from pool water input to BBQ output, but still at about 1.5GPM because the tubing was restricting things at 1/2".
Then I thought, "I need a heat exchanger!" My friend runs the mechanics program at a local high school and had some spare used car radiators around. I found one that was almost perfect dimensions to fit over the grill area of my BBQ but leave the plastic tanks on the outside. Just needed to put a "wall" of fire brick around the perimeter of the grill to make sure all the heat went directly up through the rad.
Low and behold, I get about a 20F rise in temp from in to out, but at 5GPM now. Takes about 4 hours to get from 72F to 80F. Best part is, I watched the gas flow on my meter and made some calculations based on the energy costs. I pay roughly 20 CENTS PER HOUR to run the heater. So for $0.80 to $1.20 per day I can keep things nice and warm.
Pretty proud of the contraption and figured someone here might find the idea interesting. I have seen various contraptions with burning barrels and such, but no BBQ solution with the car radiator as the exchanger.
The pic is not 100% the final setup as I was running the copper coil below the rad for a bit to see what was better. The higher flow rate and lower temp rise was far more efficient, so now my pump just goes in/out of the rad and the copper tubing went back to the big box store.
