Heating a pool - anybody familiar with this ?

[Poodle Head Mikey]

How can I calculate the heat loss of a NJ residential swimming pool? About 40,000 gallons.

Ignoring heat losses; to raise the temperature one degree per hour will require about 320,000 BTU's. And I can't see any less of a temperature rise being worth much in practical terms - just raising the pool temperature from 60 to 80 would take almost an entire day - and that's without factoring in any losses.

The builder is pushing for a heat pump but seems to know little about them. And doing the equivalent amount of heating would require the heat pump to be over 20HP/tons. Right? The one being proposed is 175,000 BTU's - which just off the skeptical top of my head seems like it might not even be able to maintain the pool temperature (against losses) let alone actually increase the pool temperature. Especially in any use-able amount of time.

I am a big fan of simplicity. Speaking of which; an alternative proposal is to use a natural gas fired boiler made by a company called: Pentair. The advertising does speak very highly of the product. <g> Titanium HX and 96% efficient and so forth. Anybody know anything about them?

I gotta tell ya; Justin General: a 96% efficiency rated, located-outdoors, product really makes my inner-service-guy cringe. <g>

[dan sw fl]

How can I calculate the heat loss of a NJ residential swimming pool? About 40,000 gallons.

Ignoring heat losses; to raise the temperature one degree per hour will require about 320,000 BTU's.

And I can't see any less of a temperature rise being worth much in practical terms -
just raising the pool temperature from 60 to 80 would take almost an entire day -
and that's without factoring in any losses.

The builder is pushing for a heat pump but seems to know little about them.
And doing the equivalent amount of heating would require the heat pump to be over 20HP/tons. Right?

The one being proposed is 175,000 BTU's -
which just off the skeptical top of my head seems like it might not even be able to
maintain the pool temperature (against losses) let alone actually increase the pool temperature.
Especially in any use-able amount of time.

I am a big fan of simplicity. Speaking of which; an alternative proposal is to use a natural gas fired boiler made by a company called: Pentair. The advertising does speak very highly of the product. <g> Titanium HX and 96% efficient and so forth. Anybody know anything about them?

I gotta tell ya; Justin General: a 96% efficiency rated, located-outdoors, product really makes my inner-service-guy cringe. <g>

LOSSES are highly dependent on evaporation losses.

Three 135,000 BTU/HR heat pumps
HOWEVER, THOROUGHLY review the RATING CONDITIONS.

ELECTRICAL REQUIREMENTS MAY
provide some people with A STICKER SHOCK EVENT.!

________ __ MCA 44 X 3
________________ ... ... ______

https://www.aquacal.com/product/tropical-t135/

TWO units MAYBE, IF there is a pool cover

_ Heat up time might be more than a day for 20'F DT

[dan sw fl]

LOSSES are highly dependent on evaporation losses.

Three 135,000 BTU/HR heat pumps
HOWEVER, THOROUGHLY review the RATING CONDITIONS.

ELECTRICAL REQUIREMENTS MAY
provide some people with A STICKER SHOCK EVENT.!

________ __ MCA 44 X 3
________________ ... ... ______

https://www.aquacal.com/product/tropical-t135/

TWO units MAYBE, IF there is a pool cover

_ Heat up time might be more than a day for 20'F DT

C.O.P. AT 50'F ODT = 4 ___ SQ 225

https://www.aquacal.com/product/heat...erquiet-sq225/

---\
_____

[dan sw fl]

$$$$$$$$$$

https://www.poolheatpumps.com/pool-h...ing-costs.html

[mgenius33]

I have a 26000 gal pool, and have a Pentair NG 400,000btuh heater with cupronickel coil because it's salt water.

When talking pool heaters, the bigger the better, you just need to make sure the flow is high enough to keep within your temperature rise. When using a pool heater you don't want to wait to get it up to temp, because the longer you wait, the more heat you lose.

I would not use a heat pump in NJ. That thing will run all day and barely get up to a tolerable temp by the evening if you're lucky. My neighbors bought one with their new pool, and they thought it was great until they got their first utility bill!

I am very happy with my gas heater. It raises the temp about 2.5° per hour. If I know it's going to be a nice day, I crank it up to 87° in the morning. I think it costs me about $20 each day I run it.

At 40,000 gal you may want to look at a commercial heater.

[ksefan]

Ten 5 ton heat pumps should do it.

[dan sw fl]

Ten 5 ton heat pumps should do it.

__ 2 or 3 SIX Ton Heat Pumps IF Season is April/May - September/October

C.O.P. would be in the range of 4 to 5.
____________________

[ga-hvac-tech]

Here are a couple of pool sites to go to and read up:

Inyopools.com
Supply house for pool owners

Troublefreepools.com
Forum for pool owners, probably the most technical and well staffed forum on pools in the USA...

The former is the largest and most competitive mail order pool parts supply house I have found...
The latter is by far the best site for pool owners... including lots of tech articles and folks that know what they are talking about.

Sadly... neither site has a good search engine... so one has to surf around (pun intended) the site to find what they are looking for.

My pool is 30K gal... I have solar heaters on the roof of the house (pipe water up there).
Sadly... the previous owner put them on the N roof... so when the sun angle goes seriously south... they do not work well.
Swim season generally is over by October... and this year is no exception.
I am kinda thinking about a Ngas heater... would LOVE to find one that was high efficiency condensing.

BTW: my pool is salt water also, and is gunite, so I have to run about 250-275 PPM's of calcium for the plaster finish.

[ga-hvac-tech]

One more thing...

I have an AC and heating customer who has a 11K gallon pool, with a 75K Rheem HP heater...
He says it extends his swim season until around THXgiving, then it has a hard time keeping up.
Says if he had known it was gonna be a dud... he would have stayed with Ngas.

[beenthere]

Usually, the heat pump or gas fired boiler is turned on the week before use starts.

[DeltaT]

I do a bunch of pool dehumidification heat pump mainly enclosed pool rooms but I also do outside pool heat pumps. The heat pumps are much more efficient than most any other source of heat...depending on the local energy costs. Heat is heat...made by a gas boiler or a heat pump. All pools take a longer them than we desire to heat and the only way around having a long heating period is to oversize the heat source, which most pools are not piped for. The bigger the heated the more GPM is required which requires larger pipes to and from the pool which does not happen with pool manufacturers.

The secrete to any pool owner to maintain the best economical is a properly installed cover...and that that cover is used all the time when the pool is not in use on outdoor or indoor pools.

One of the reasons a heat pump is so efficient in heating pool water is that the compressor will run most of the time which makes the compressor much more efficient simply because there is very little start/stop. I have some systems with 3 to 5 ton compressors that are sill running after 20 plus years.

For sizing, any pool pump company or any pool heater company or any pool dehumidification company will have a ton of info on sizing. And whatever numbers come up with a normal gas fired boiler are the same number of BTU's for are necessary for a pool heat pump.

The big difference is the delta T between the inlet and outlet of the pool heat pump and the gas boiler. And those range of numbers are the most important to set when setting up the systems. And it's not unusual for days to go by to heat up a pool once it has cooled as all of the earth worms below the surface must get heated up first before the pool water has a normal heating increase per hour.