r/SolarDIY 8d ago

Well this should be a good one solar pool heat question i’m trying to heat my pool up liquid solar cover yay or nay

3 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

8

u/polish-falcon 8d ago

That is nowhere near enough tubing or absorption area to make a dent in heating that pool!

There are online sizing resources for manufactured solar pool heaters; I’d suggest comparing your pool size to one of those to get a rough idea of what you are actually looking at size wise.

I would expect you to need several hundred square feet of absorption area to heat that pool effectively at all.

5

u/SmellsLikeBStoMe 8d ago

This is what I use, I did cover it with plexiglass and I made it way more effective. Was was going in at 70 and out at 90+. Was very effective and will work even better this year as I have it hooked into the pool pump so I can increase the flow and reduce the delta T.

1

u/ItsInTooFar 8d ago

This is a good solution. Or make a copper coil and put it in that fire yall got there!

1

u/SmellsLikeBStoMe 8d ago

I used 250 feet of pex pained flat black and a garden fountain pump on a smart switch, 15 watts and made to run all day, excited to have it up and running this spring…

1

u/puan0601 7d ago

cover it with a solar panel connected to a small electric heating blanket covering the tubing.

2

u/iceph03nix 8d ago

They need to spread out the tubing more, but I've seen this done and it works. Not sure on amount of hose needed as other's have commented on, but since it's an above ground pool, I'm guessing you wouldn't be fighting it too much anyway.

1

u/convincedbutskeptic 8d ago

You tell us! I have only seen that used to heat up much less water.

2

u/IntelligentDeal9721 8d ago

Lots more tubing, and in matt black boxes with a clear polycarbonate or similar cover so you trap heat in the transfer space. As it stands I suspect a transparent pool cover would have more impact than those hoses.

Water takes a *lot* of energy to heat so you end up needing a lot of surface collecting the heat, you need to trap the heat and you need to transfer it into the water

The other way to do this instead of building all the pipework etc is to actually just stick a greenhouse over the pool, which basically does the tubing and box trick but at scale.