Pool heater calculation program

Go here: http://www.northwestwholesale.com/calculator_heater.asp

Am unable to find any calculator on that website. Could you be more specific. I am not looking to buy solar panels. I am selling them. I need a calculator to determine how many panels for any given size pool. thanks

If you follow the link & scroll down the page, you get a calculator giving (gas heater) required capacity, BTU/hr, for different pool sizes etc. Why they have different results for gas & propane heaters beats me.

Not exactly what you want, but maybe you could use it to cross-check whatever you do come up with. Guess you could even build a look-up table (in a spreadsheet) using results from the calculator.

Thanks! We'll try that.

1000 watts for 1 hour is 3400 BTU for an hour.

If you have a pool heater 3 meters by 4 meters, flat black on the ground it is about

12,000 watts or 40,000 BTU. This will increase the temperature of a 10,000 gallon pool(80,000 pounds) by 1 degree F every 2 hours. On a sunny day you can get about 5 hours or 2.5 degrees. You need to insulate the walls and blanket it at night, but over the summer this should allow you to add a few weeks of comfort at each end of the season. If you want to spend $$, use a similar propane heater. In fact with enough money you can swim all winter in Alaska. I once sawn at the Place Bonaventure in Montreal in their 90 degree rooftop poolin February at 20 below zero F and a 20 miles per hour wind. They had a low portal 8" off the water into the warm inside. After half an hour swimming, the tope of my head felt funny. I felt it and there was solid ice where my head stuck above the warm zone.

An amzing experience. Few people stood up in the shallow end.

Thanks Aurizon! this is really useful data. Teracen is the local natural gas supplier and they have gotten price hikes every six months for several years. Gas is now so costly many people have been cut off because they fell behind in payments. Many more have voluntarily shut down gas appliances. In our previous residence we lived without heat for two years for that reason.

When you get a gas bill of $150 - $300 per month plus your electric utility bill, alternatives start to look attractive. Looks like a solar pool heater will cost around $3000 so at Terasen's current pricing the payback is less than two years.

I have just started to work for an alternative energy company. It looks like we are going to be expanding into pool heaters.

regards

Elnav

elnav,

About fifty years ago a man in Lewiston, Idaho wanted to experiment with solar water heaters. He used plywood to build boxes with one side open but covered by Plexiglas (lexan) ran PVC schedule 40 inside and painted the insides including pipe with jet black primer. This arrangement he placed on his roof and fed into backyard pool in a closed loop configuration. Had he used temperature controlled valving the pools latex skin wouldn't have become so hot and fail as a sealing medium.

Total system cost today without valves about $300 USD

That roof mounted system would need a pump or the hot water would stay in the shed.

Most passive pool heaters use convection and they work quite well as they automatically shut off when the insolation drops and the water in the loop radiates to be cooler than the pool

aurizon,

Yes of course there was a pump, I thought it a given considering the knowledgeable group involved.

The man's experiment was fruitful, though he was a bit too thrifty for his own good (:

I remember that experiment well. That was around the time I first got involved with alternative energy. Back then, people thought we were crazy to bother with saving fuel. My souped up street hot rod (I was a teenager then) got 24 - 26 miles per gallon consistently. 25 years later my computerized, fuel injected with everything Astrovan had trouble maintaining that kind of milage. And they call that progress?

Just to clarify. I'm not trying to build solar collectors myself. I have joined a company that is selling solar heat panels as part of their alternative energy products

Last week-end at a trade show we had more people ask if our solar collector for hot washing water could also heat their pool. Hence my desire to find formula and additional data on pool heat applications. We also get a lot of inquiries from ranchers wanting a watering station with a pump powered by the sun. With five months of frost, this becomes a chanllenge. Some of the higher grazing ranges have frost until June. We might have to look at a solar heater in some applications.

we had more people ask if our solar collector for hot washing water could also heat their pool.

I think there was a thread a few months back in General of the same question. If I recall the Lewiston experiment increased 11,000 gallons from 62° to uncomfortably warm in about 5 or 6 days, so should be able to maintain reasonable temperature.

We also get a lot of inquiries from ranchers wanting a watering station with a pump powered by the sun.

A friend has pump leasing business mid to western USA and has been steadily installing photovoltaic panels for the past three years too.

A friend has pump leasing business mid to western USA and has been steadily installing photovoltaic panels for the past three years too.

REPLY

Does he assemble his own components to make a system or use a packaged system? If so whose? No point re-inventing the wheel unless it needs improving.

I'll ask and get back with info in a few days...I do agree.

if you are smart you can make a pool heater for a lot less than $3000. look here for ideas

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/PoolHeating/pool_heating.htm

I know, I was referring to the complete installed price of all panels, piping, mounting hardware, pumps etc. And the panels must UL/CSA certified for consumer sale. Type appoved panels cost twice as much as home built.

We could build the panels locally for $150 but they are not consumer certified as required by law. However CSA wants something like $10,000 to do the certification process for a new product by an unknown manufacturer. City bylaws require us to prove all our products meet CSA/UL certification, or the inspector will not accept the installation.

That looks oppressive to the idea. I had no idea that the reules had gotten so out of hand...

Well you know how bureaucrats will always invent ways to justify their own existence. A sensible engineering approach would be to look at existing designs that are already approved. Then deternmine what parts constitute new design or new technology for which no standards exist at present, and then focus on evaluating that part.

One guy came up to me and asked if we knew when type approval would be forth coming. He was on city council and said they would love to be able to approve installation permits for such new and clean techniology. But until a standard existed, they could not determine if it met the standard. Here is a case of one politician wanting to go ahead but is held back by bureaucracy over which he has no control.

AS to why such a standard has not yet been formulated; your guess is as good as mine. I think it's half politics and half human inertia. No one is going to stick their neck out because the da** insutrance companies are threatening everybody with dire ocnsequences if anything goes wrong; . . . goes wrong; . . . goes w......

I know there are standards used by the State of Oregon in the Willamette Valley; pick a city; Salem will do.

Would your city councilman consider adopting the Oregon studies as a beneficial health and safety analysis appropriate to the issue.

www.arb.ca.gov/DRDB/DR/CURHTML/R3-17.HTM

www.bcd.oregon.gov/programs/mechanical/interps/93-72.pdf

www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/conference/ei15/session12/swab_pres.pdf

www.deq.state.or.us/ag/factsheets/06-AQ-017wood.pdf

www.epa.gov/woodstoves/basic.html

I would consider if I was a city council person and yes I am a city councilman so I shall consider it yes.

bwire wrote:

Would your city councilman consider adopting the Oregon studies as a beneficial health and safety analysis appropriate to the issue.

REPLY: if only it was that simple. Nope! In order to be accepted these outdoor wood pellet burning boilers must meet CSA standards. (insurance company rules) We already have INDOOR wood pellet burning stove that are approved but not OUTDOOR BOILERS. Never mind that emissions have been tested and found to be comparable or better than natural gas furnaces. It's the fact that it is a BOILER (not a stove) for hydronic heating systems and the fact it is installed outdoors that makes it a totally different animal - as far as they are concerned. To listen to the reasons why the standards body won't just pass it makes you think this is some strange new technology just imported from Mars.

I was also speaking to the local business association people. It wil be costly and time consuming to mount any sort of effective lobby action to move the authorities. They are busy recruiting for new membes. Right now they do not have enough resources to do much. Many people have already bene working on this problem for quite some time.

The media seems the best icing for the redundancy cake here (:

You could change the classification from boiler to heater with optional heat exchanger attachment.

Suggest put that outdoor boiler fully or partially underground and call it a sub-basement or such to put some spin on it, play the game.

elnav

I am including a web site for you to go to. go into Training and copy off "TechStuff" You will find a weath of info about alot of different subjects. The area for heating tanks is the place to run your numbers. Let me know if you have trouble getting it and if you do email me directly and I will send it to you straight away.

http://www.federalcorp.com/

miketheboilerguy@aol.com

Depending on snowfall use 500,000 btu per square foot of surface area. This is a good figure for solid "maintaining" load, not for fast warm up.

??? Mike, using Aurisons formula and your rule of thumb gives me a ridiculous number. A solar collector can apparently provide only 4444 BTU per square foot. That means I need 112 square feet of solar panel for every square foot of pool. Doesn't make sense.

Other website from pool heater suppliers said anywhere from half as much to 100% of pool surface area would be sufficient.

WOW how numb of me it's 500 btu's/ft2 of surface sorry.

Much better. Shift the decimal point three places and now I get .112 square foot of solar panel per foot of pool surface. That sounds more like a decent maintenance value. An asssumption is made the pool originally has some kind of heater system. Starting from cold water this system wil bring the water up quickly then the solar heater simply maintains it for comfort level at 10 - 30 F above ambient depending on season.

Did you get into the Tech Stuff file?

Is your pool above ground or below ground?

I ask as they need to be built with 4" foam in the ground or above to save heat and you also need a thermal blanket at night. Nuisance, but worth the extra time.

You can also look up hydrogen peroxide as a pool disinfectant to replace chlorine, stop those stinging eyes and it degrades to water.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22hydrogen+peroxide%22+%2B%22pool+sanitation%22&btnG=Search

Aurizon, I am speaking on behalf of a product retailer, not as a DIY one time owner. I do not know what size/type/style pool a prospective customer might have. Hence the need by our cost estimator to have some kind of calculator program.

Every query from a potential customer needs a fresh calculation. We are not advertising ourselves as a pool heater company. We deal in alternative energy products. But people keep asking us if out hot water tank heater could heat their pool. Oh sure! How long is a piece of string?

We know exactly how big a solar panel is needed for a hot water tank in a house. We do not know how many panels must be connected to heat a pool.

I design inverter systems. This hot water stuff is new to me as well.