But when solar is available and you have the budget to purchase a solar system with a heat pump pool heater backup you can have the best most economical system available.
Best way to heat a pool without a heater.
Instead of using a heating element or gas pool heat pumps draw in warm air from the atmosphere.
Image via gainesville gas.
But at the same time they also have the highest monthly operating cost of all pool heating options.
Combine a solar cover and pool heat pump.
Sizing a pool heater is less tricky than sizing a pool heat pump or gas heater.
A solar pool heater uses solar collectors to transfer the thermal energy of the sun to the water in the pool.
Solar rays do not impact the effectiveness of a pool heat pump.
They have the disadvantage of working at reduced efficiency on overcast days.
As much sunlight as possible.
The heat source gas.
Use a pool heat pump.
While it may need to be paired with an auxiliary heating source for nights or cloudy days solar is the best way to heat your pool if you don t also need to heat a spa or hot tub.
Then they use a low energy process for magnifying the harvested heat and transferring it to your pool water.
Before you consider the unthinkable attach a hose to that water heater and have your friends over for an early season pool party.
This option uses solar panels to transfer heat from the sun to your swimming pool.
A good quality solar water heater will set you back around 5 000.
Gas pool heaters offer the fastest heating of all the options in this post.
Outputs range from 75 000 btu to 450 000 btu.
Pool heaters are sized using btus which stands for british thermal unit.
And it s all for one reason.
And that makes sense because just like a grill or oven a gas heater creates heat by burning gas.
A btu is the measured amount of heat created by a pool heater.
You ll also want to keep in mind that a pool surrounded by trees and or shadow casting buildings will not receive near as much sunlight as a pool that s out in an open area with direct sun exposure.
Unlike other types of pool heater solar pool heaters use natural energy sources making them the most economical option.
Additionally a pool heat pump relies entirely on temperature and not the sun.
2 if you have a heat pump pool heater hpph system only the time of day that you run your hpph is a system operation parameter you should address.
A solar pool heater is the most planet friendly way to heat your pool.
For the price of a specialty hot water hose you can heat a small above ground pool and more than adequately heat an inflatable pool.
But what s great about this kind of pool heater is that it produces heat for your pool regardless of the sun.
However solar water heaters are not our first recommendation for a pool heating system.
To calculate an approximate heater size for an outdoor swimming pool follow these.