Natural Gas Heater AND Heat Pump - ?Dumb Idea for Michigan?

[BluePool78]

All...been reading a lot of the posts debating NG vs HP. I was wondering if there is a strong opinion of potentially doing BOTH. My family, l think, is going to strongly prefer the water rather warm...that is how they like the neighbors’ pools. And we live in Michigan and also have a jacuzzi....and we are impatient...we have a friend with a HP and it can take days to heat up to a desirable temperature.

What about installing both....running the HP most of the time for the efficiency and then only running the NG when you want the spa hot or under conditions when the HP is not quick enough, etc.? Any thoughts on this? Maybe the payback is dismal??? Is the better idea just to put a cover over it at night (any recommendations)?

Our pools specs are as follows:

about 1,000 ft2 and about 45K gallons
built in cleaning system
cartridge filtration

Thanks for your comments.

 

[mknauss]

Welcome to the forum!

If you are heating a pool you need to cover it. Otherwise you will lose all the heat you add each day. A simple, cheap, solar cover is all that is needed. With your size pool, it will be heavy.

You can have both types of heaters. It is all about cost. Not sure how automation would handle both though. Would need to research that.

How do you plan to chlorinate that large of a pool? Something to consider early.

Take care.

 

[Esloser]

I have an ~36,000 gallon pool with 400k btu heater. With natural gas it takes a good 24 hours to heat it about 20 degrees (1 degree per hour) so if I start it Thursday afternoon it could be swimmable by Saturday morning (ambient temperature not withstanding). The heat pump would be more efficient at maintaining the temperature when the ambient temperature is above a certain degree. How often do you intend to use the pool - daily or weekends? We use ours predominantly on the weekends until the weather warms up and then it is pretty much daily.

 

[CJadamec]

Two heaters isn't crazy it's just expensive. Often times combining two heaters is a great way to offset the pros and cons of each heater and get the best of both worlds.

Most people combine a utility powered heater with solar panels. Two utility powered heaters is just not as common a route. Once you get a taste of a heated pool its like the thermostat in the house people just keep trying to make it warmer.

 

[BluePool78]

Thanks for information and questions.

The automation system our PB is installing evidently can handle NG and solar in “priority mode.” We are using a salt system to chlorinate the pool supplemented with ozone and UV, although during year one we are using chlorine (without the salt system) due to our PB wanting the plaster to cure for a year before introducing salt water.

We have two young boys, so we plan to use the pool daily.

It seems obvious to use a solar cover, but everyone I know says they are a pain and stop using them...maybe I just need to deal with the cost/benefit. Any recommendations on best ways to implement a solar cover for a ~1000 ft2 pool???

Thanks to the question from CJadamec...the solar route seems to be very interesting. My PB agrees as well. We possibly could use solar for the base energy load and the NG heater for additional speed, temperature and to run the spa. I need to research the solar option some more and specifically in SE Michigan. We do have a large unobstructed roof that faces South....

Thanks again.