Heater For A Pool

My friends heat an aquatics club size pool (25 m x 10 m) with a wood burner. If hard wood is plentiful in your area, I'll send more details. Otherwise put "Pool heating with wood" in Google and all forms of this type of phase, and a lot of companies will come.

http://www.dsr.wa.gov.au/publications/focus/focus%20on%20pool%20heating.pdf

http://www.centralboiler.com/faq.html

George

if your pool is a free standing pool, move it and place a floor of 4 inch thick foam on the bottm outside. Same with the walls. Then seal the cracks. Use a pool blanket on top. google the blanlet. It is 4" thick bubble war type of stuff on a roll you lay down at night.

If the pool is in ground and uses a liner that can be replaced. remove it and line the space with 4" foam and seal all crevices so liner does not poke out.

Pool heaters are gas, electric or solar. Google them. solar can be made. Solar is black panels you lay in the sun with a pump that circulates pool water throught them. Most people use the pool pump they have already and add a connection to the heater.

40-50% of the pool surface area is best for a solar heater. They can be standing, laid flat or at 45 degrees. 45 degrees to the south is best in a spot with no trees/fences.

A gas or electric costs $$ to run, bit can keep the pool warmer for longer.

Insulation helpos greatly as the earth is at 45 degrees and sucks heat out

hundreds of plans on google

Try

www.freeheat.com.au/

:)

I don't know the supplier but some years ago I saw a nice solar pool heating system in Austria: The collector was a rubber band with tubes integrated (very simple design)

It was laid over the roof and water pumped through.

As a pool does not need to be heated up to more than 30°C, the efficacy was high with low losses.

In winter you can simply rool it up and store it in your cellar.

Try rubber suppliers like Pirelly and so, they have lots of nice products.

Gwen

http://www.solardirect.com/ph/sph/sph.htm

http://www.powermat.com/ This one has a lot of good information for doing it yourself.

http://www.warmwater.com/

http://www.solarindustries.com/

In my opinion one of the most important things to think about is the anchoring of the solar mats on your roof. I am in the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida and Wilma took my 10 panels off the tile roof. In the process of flopping around they caused about $12K worth of damage that took a year to get repaired. The roof had been replaced by the previous owner about 8 years previously and the tiles were attached with foam adhesive. The good news was that there were no holes to leak, the bad news is that the adhesive is not meant to secure against the lift caused by 120mph winds and I don't believe they reinstalled it correctly. I haven't reinstalled yet but when I do then whatever the recommended number of straps is, I will double it plus develope my own "end" strap anchor to distribute the force across at least two tiles.

One low-tech approach to heating water is to collect as many old bottles as possible, cut the bottoms off, then thread them onto a length of black plastic hose. Lay the hose out in the sunshine uncoiled. Cold water in at one end comes out nicely warmed at the other.

With water, keep the solids out of it and keep the free chlorine level up high, say 2ppm.

Hang on - I don't get it. Do you mean clear plastic bottles? Are they just there to insulate the hose? Sorry if I'm being terribly slow :)

It's quite common in Australia to run a very long black plastic hose loop (in S bends) across the roof - an open-air Olympic sized pool near me does this as a booster to the gas heater - they claim they rarely turn the gas on. I haven't seen the bottle thing though.

The link I gave above (freeheat) is to a company specialising in solar heating as well as chlorine-free water treatment, which would be nice, given the nasty chlorine levels in heated pools.

yes, the clear plastic bottle reduce air cooling of the tube.

To be most effective you need to intercept all the sunlight onto black. A few small S curves will help, but not as much as a full covering. On a sunny day you get about 1000 watts per square meter. Even in Northern areas with correctly sloped areas on clear days you get close to that. Advanced systems insulate the bottom and sides and use double glass on the front pane to reduce cold weather losses. In freezing areas they monitor and drain at night and on overcast cold days. Some even use antifreeze solutions. Drill down those prior links or this one

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22solar+water+heater%22+%2Bpool&btnG=Google+Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22solar+water+heater%22+%2Bhome&btnG=Search

Glass would be better than plastic, as it is infra-red opaque, which is how the term "greenhouse effect" was first coined.

I assume by your question of pools ( plural ), we're NOT implying a "hurdgy-gurdy" fix for yourself but rather a typical smart and professional method of pool heating.

Of course there are the typical gas pool heater boilers. You're looking at typically 300 mbh units. Definitely think ONLY of 90+ boilers though, it'll cost a fortune to heat.

Some boilers are already copper finned boilers made for this application. If they already have a boiler and if it has a little extra capacity, try using it with a heat exchanger and a seperate pumping circuit. Below are some heat exchanger links.

http://www.wholesalehydraulics.com/AFPProducts/Products.asp?c=6

http://www.flatplate.com/

When I design enclosed pool environments, we will generally look at Desert-Aire systems or their equivalent. They heat the water and air-condition the space above with electricity. Often the work energy of cooling/dehumidifying the space above is sufficient to heat the water below. This "work" is returned right back into the pool. This is true energy efficiency. Check out the next link.

http://www.desert-aire.com/

Be wary of "McGwyver" rigs. The wrong materials will either self destruct from the pool water or it can pollute the water with un-intended chemical reactions. You can waste money and time experimenting on your own pool but for others....stick to known entities.

Go to the nearest home depot or farm store and pick up a 50' roll of black 1" plastic pipe. The stuff is flexable enough to weave back and forth and make a collector of it. Size and shape as you want. If you have an above ground pool, connect one end into the filter line at the bottom of the pool and the other end to the top (below the water line) , you won't even need a pump as you will get thermo syphoning ...in ground you will need a pump