Why You Should Use Solar Heating for Your Swimming Pool

Every month you invest a significant amount of money in your swimming pool with chemicals, maintenance, and electricity to operate your filter pump.

When you heat your swimming pool, you can actually extend your swimming season and allow you to spend more time enjoying your pool. To heat your swimming pool you can use propane, or natural gas heaters. These have a low installation cost, but have a high operational cost. In addition, gas heaters usually have a life span of only5-8 years. Another way to heat your swimming pool is with a heat pump, which cost more to install than that of a gas heater, however, has a less expensive operational cost than that of a gas heater. Solar energy is another option for heating a swimming pool.

Solar heaters use the suns energy; therefore, they do not have an operating cost. They work with your existing pool pump, which circulates water from your pool through the heater that is usually located on top of your roof, the now, warm water is pumped back into your pool, warming it. For maximum heating, you should have a pump timer set to operate during daylight hours. To regulate temperatures an automatic control and valve
can be used sometimes, which is common in northern climates or where you want to maintain absolute temperature control. A booster pump may be needed for large commercial pools, community pools, and some larger residential pools.

Another reason why you should use solar energy to heat your swimming pool is that other energy sources such as gas heaters add pollutants into the air. Solar energy is a clean renewable energy source, which doesn’t contribute to pollution.

When installing the solar heating systems, the solar collectors should be installed where they will receive the maximum amount of direct sunlight for a good portion of the day. Therefore, depending on the mounting surface’s angle as east, west and even flat facing systems should function satisfactory as long as it is sized properly for the pool.

Proper sizing of the solar heating system is vital for achieving maximum heating. The typical swimming pool requires a solar panel surface area, which equals approximately 50-100% of the pool’s surface area. The size of the heater however, will depend on several factors, which are the size and shape of the pool, how much of the pool is shaded, the geographic location, the swimming season, and desired pool temperature. In
addition, you also have to take into consideration windy conditions as well as the direction of the roof such as does it face south, east, west or is it flat. Your solar swimming pool heating specialist will be able to assist you in selecting the proper size system you will need.

Even with a solar heating system, you should also consider using a pool cover. Pools loose large amounts of heat. This occurs in many various ways including surface evaporation, which accounts for approximately 75% of the total heat loss.

Bubble type pool covers are the least expensive way to maintain your pool’s warmth and reduce surface evaporation. The pool cover is in the shape of the pool and lays on the pool’s surface. In addition, pool covers also reduce chemical loss associated with evaporation. Pool covers also help to keep the pool cleaner by reducing the amount of dirt and debris that enters the pool.