My Solar Pool Heater

[TheCasualTraveler]

Thought someone might find this interesting. My home brew solar pool heater. The coils are made from 100 foot rolls of 1/2 inch poly tubing from Home Depot Irrigation dept. The frames are 2x2 aluminum extrusion scraps I had. I think it will stack up against any professionally made system of equal size. Cost about $300.

http://s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff74/compoast/?action=view&current=PoolSolar2.jpg

[jmk]

  How big is your pool? Does it keep it warm? I used the same type of tubing on my roof. I didn't put it in a panel though. My roof is a 3 pitch and is about eighty foot from one gutter to the other. I just ran it randomly around the roof. I hooked it to a sump pump motor which hooked up to the filter hose and the shower drain that I put in the bottom of the pool. It was just one of those fourteen foot pools 42" deep. I hooked a timer to the pump to turn on every hour for five minutes of the hot hours of the day. It worked pretty good, but once the nights started to get cold it couldn't keep up. Plus I think it was why we got hit by lightening too. The lightening flipped the breakers for the bedrooms and killed my flood lights. I still have to fix the lights.

[TheCasualTraveler]

Mine works directly off the pool pump. It runs for 6 to 8 hours a day as long as the pool pump runs. I have 2 valves that divert the water. Goes up to the roof in 1 1/2 pipe that tee's off w/ 1/2" nipples,(It is due for a makeover and I will use 2" pipe) then 5 rows of 4 panels for a total of 2000 feet of tubing, then back down. It works very good. Adds 2 months to the season. (Once the water gets below 80 I seldom go in.) In the summer it is shut off or the pool would be 95 to 100 degrees. (I'm in Florida) Once I left it on for a week in the summertime and the pool was up to 100 degrees, like a big ol hot tub. I had to turn it off cause the wife didn't like it.

[Ponderance]

lol find a way to route the water back to the A/C a-coil in the summer and see how the wife likes 50 deg water in the summer

sorry, couldn't resist!

[Kevin L]

When I was a kid my dad, brother and I built a 20000 gal in ground pool at our house in Ohio.  The pool pump tee's to 200' of black 1" ground water poly tubing that was coiled up to about 6' x 6'.  We built a wood box around it and placed 1/4" of Plexiglas over the top and sealed it tight.  At the tee we had a valve that we opened slightly when we wanted heat, or closed to bypass the heater.  The loop tee when back into the line just before the jets.  Worked real well.  We kept a blanket on the pool at night, and had warm water an extra 3 or 4 weeks a year, and had the pool up to 98 F till the algae caught up with us. It was simple, cheap and set in the yard just down hill a little from the pool. Ah the good old days.  Dad dries corn now with a 18000 gal propane tank so he has a big ugly gas heater next to the pool now. :-(