Why are NatGas pool heaters low efficiency?

[wayner]

I just replaced by pool heater with a new Raypak unit. This heater had a sticker saying it had an efficiency rating of 82%. This seems typical for pool heaters. My furnace is high efficiency and has a rating of 97. Does this mean that per unit of heat my pool heater uses way more NatGas per unit of heat? And why aren't there high efficiency pool heaters?

 

[xycosse]

Interesting question, watching the thread as I'm curious myself.

 

[JamesW]

There are high efficiency heaters. They are pretty expensive.

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[ajw22]

That neans a 400K BTU heater burns 400K BTU of gas and puts about 320k BTU of heat into the pool.

I don’t think people want to pay more for high efficiency pool heaters.

 

[bdavis466]

Raypak makes one too at 94% efficiency

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Last time I looked all these high efficiency heaters were around $6k

 

[wayner]

That neans a 400K BTU heater burns 400K BTU of gas and puts about 320k BTU of heat into the pool.

I don’t think people want to pay more for high efficiency pool heaters.

Doesn't that depend on how much gas you use and the delta in price on the heaters? If you pay $1000 more for high efficiency but it saves you $200/yr then it is probably a good deal. But it can be tricky to know exactly how much gas you use if you have other gas appliances as well. I have gas water heaters in my house and a gas cooktop. The bulk of the gas that I use in the summer will be in the pool but I don't know exactly how much. In the five months from May-Sep in 2017-18 my total gas charges have averaged about $920 in the past two years. If I assume about 90% is for the pool then I guess I pay about $820/ year for gas. So if I went from 82 to 94 in terms of efficiency I would save about $105/yr. So I guess it isn't worth payingmore than $1000 if I expect it to last about 13 years - which is how long my previous one lasted - and assuming any kind of a discount rate.