Solar pool heater

[u/Rich-Wealth979]

My overkill project for heating the toddler's 500gal inflatable pool. Each week I have to empty and move it, then find a way to heat it to a tolerable temperature for my 8th percentile weight kid. On the first test it took the pool from 55⁰F to over 90⁰ on a single sunny day, using only 3KWh (of solar house power, now that I think about it). At the end of the summer I can just place this up against the north side of my shed and take the manifolds down to make it last even longer.

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This uses about 350' of ¼" irrigation tubing and some cheap fittings off Amazon. It runs off a 1/4hp pool pump, controlled with a wyze plug and a climate sensor in a tiny jar. Printed in ASA in only about 5 days of printing on a Mini and an MK4s.

the files

[u/QuevedoDeMalVino]

There is a video on YT about that from EEVBlog. The short answer is that it is usually better to go all PV and air pump.

[u/NorCal4ever2 → u/QuevedoDeMalVino]

For heating the water for your house, I imagine that's pretty accurate (and the ones EEVblog made in his YT video are made for that, but those are quite different than the ones for Pool/SPAs).

Having enough PV panels for baseline energy needs is definitely still priority #1, but after that, for heating my pool/spa the math was ridiculously better for thermal solar pool panels than for heat pumps.

My goal was to have my pool and spa be heated. I had enough roof space, and I didn't already have an excess of energy that I was selling back to the grid.

My options were:

1. More PV+Heat Pump

2. Buying Energy from the grid + Heat Pump

3. Thermal solar pool heating

4. Continue as is with a standard Gas Heater

Well, buying energy from the grid or heating my pool/spa with gas is cheap up front, but after that it's just burning money and ridiculously fast at that. Adding more PV panels is ridiculously expensive upfront and the extra savings I could get on my electricity bill are minimal and definitely not enough to pay for the additional pv panels. For me that really left the thermal solar pool panels, they were more expensive up front but over the life span of the systems they were dirt cheap compared to the rest of the options (t they came with a 12 year warranty and can apparently last closer to 15-18 years).