Time for a new heater?

[millennial_homeowner]

Hi major noob here grateful in advance for any help.

Just purchased a home and seems like the previous owners never used anything. Had a local pool company come out to open up the pool but we found the heater to be rusted out and filled with a lot of leaves in the draft hood. Their advice was get a new one, and quoted $5,223 to furnish and install a new Raypak 266,000 BTU ASME heater with Cupro Nickel exchange with digital read out and dispose of old heater. I tried to research retail for such a heater and it seemed to be $2500-3,000 but the pool people told me that was not correct because their heaters have bronze headers and HD (high density copper heat exchangers).

Any advice on whether abandoning the old heater is correct and whether that sounds like a reasonable quote for the replacement would be greatly appreciated!

Here is an album of pictures of the rusted out heater -

https://imgur.com/a/tKXMNyC

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

Yeah, it does not make sense to put money into your old heater. Start fresh with a new one in your house.

That pricing is typical pool company pricing which is about 2X the drop shipped street price. But for that you get installation, removal of your old heater, a longer warranty, and problem support. Some folks can DIY it and save money.

How many gallons are in your pool?

I would get a 400K BTU heater rather then the 266K heater if your NG gas service can deliver more gas. The cost difference is not that much and it will heat your pool twice as quickly.

 

[millennial_homeowner]

Welcome to TFP.

Yeah, it does not make sense to put money into your old heater. Start fresh with a new one in your house.

That pricing is typical pool company pricing which is about 2X the drop shipped street price. But for that you get installation, removal or your old heater, a longer warranty, and problem support. Some folks can DIY it and save money.

How many gallons are in your pool?

I would get a 400K BTU heater rather then the 266K heater if your NG gas service can deliver more gas. The cost difference is not that much and it will heat your pool twice as quickly.

Thanks for the advice! I am not going to be able to DIY this one so appreciate the perspective on typical pool company pricing. I walked it off at 48'x 21' and goes to 10ft in the deep end (I think?) so I am guessing around 50k gallons.

 

[ajw22]

For that size pool a 400K BTU heater would be better.

 

[markayash]

Call around and get a few prices if you know what you need.

 

[millennial_homeowner]

Thanks all much appreciated. I was able to get one other company to answer the phone and they gave me a quote to furnish and install a 266k btu raypak that was bang on with the one from my existing company, but at least the guy on the phone broke it down for me as $4900 for the heater and likely 1-2 hours at $150 per hour of labor. That makes me feel better about my current company but the other thing that gave me concern about fully trusting the service I am getting is the process of servicing my spa. It took them 4 visits to identify that it has extremely high combined chlorine. My best guess is they only measured total on one of the first 3 visits and shocked it to a certain extent but it wasn't enough to get it down to below 10ppm (it still looked like over 20ppm on my strips and showed up as at least 10 on what I think was the taylor liquid test that the service person had). Finally on the 4th visit I made the guy check the total on his system which showed 10+ and mine which showed 20+ and after that he shocked it again and it seems to be within a normal range. I am not sure how unusual that all is but it didn't seem confidence inspiring. (I did just order myself a taylor test kit and will ditch the strips)