Hot Tub Forum
General => General info Somewhat hot tub related => Topic started by: benalexe on June 08, 2008, 11:17:32 am
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I have noticed that many of my neighbors that have swimming pools hvae heat pumps. A heat pump takes the warmth out of the air and puts the heat in the pool.
Conversely, centeral A/C take the heat out of the house thus cooling it down.
It seems to me there should be one device that takes the heat out of your home and puts it in your pool. I can't believe they do not have this yet.
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Simple physics would probably prevent such a concept from being viable. I don't believe that the heat in a home is sufficient to allow any reasonable transfer of energy into a pool.
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Simple physics would probably prevent such a concept from being viable. I don't believe that the heat in a home is sufficient to allow any reasonable transfer of energy into a pool.
To further ndabunka's point our pool heater (natural gas) is 250,000 btu. I don't think a heat exchanger would come even close. The average home furnace is in the 50,000 btu range.
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Well, there is such a thing...sort of. There are heat exchangers, in some heat pumps, that transfer this heat to domestic hot water. Though this amount of water is much less than that of a pool. As others have stated, there is simply not enough heat energy from a heat pump to make an impact in the volume of water found in a pool.
The thought was nice, though.
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They make solar collectors for the pool and from what I've been told they work OK. Also, if the pool gets a lot of sunlight a solar blanket makes a great investment and all this after the initial outlay is free warmth. I have a friend who told me he used to swim up to Oct with a solar blanket.
The problem with heat transfer appliances is they use electricity and depending on the temp difference can be ineffective. My central AC does not work very well when the temp is close to the set house temp, it actually gets humid and stuffy in the house where if it's hot out it keeps the house nice even if we turn up the temps.
Geothermal devices require the pipes be buried deep enough till the ground is a stable temp, I think 52º, for them to work as efficiently for summer and winter.
I have another friend that was going to get a heat pump type pool heater and honestly I imagined it to be very electrically hungry. I couldn't see how many BTUs it was going to put out vs a gas fired heater, she opted for the gas fired heater.
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There are solar heaters as well. I can remember from a long time ago when I worked on a pool chemical route, a customer had a solar heater. We'd be in December and the weather really cold, his pool would be in the mid-80's. Other than the initial investment, he had free heat. I loved that pool in the winter.
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There are solar heaters as well. I can remember from a long time ago when I worked on a pool chemical route, a customer had a solar heater. We'd be in December and the weather really cold, his pool would be in the mid-80's. Other than the initial investment, he had free heat. I loved that pool in the winter.
Not bad (I guess for TX) but they cost so much to put in!