Looking For Info On Pool Solar Heating In Nj

Q: Care to explain why plastic sheets on the roof are impractical? There are about 15,000 acres of greenhouses in the United States, and about 65% of them have polyethylene film roofs, 15 square miles of such roofs with no solid material underneath, sprinkled all over the country. Professor Bill Roberts at Rutgers works with one New Jersey greenhouse that measures 1320 x 250', ie 7.5 acres. The one next door measures 1000 x 290', 6.7 acres. Many growers use inexpensive aluminum extrusion clamps to hold the film, making it easy to change and recycle it every 3 years or so. And why is efficiency is so important, vs cost-effectiveness? And why do you seem to be in love with "hi-tech" systems? Swimming in Styrofoam balls may not be everyone's cup of tea, nor was it my suggestion. Perhaps a layer of tiny foam bubbles would work better, with some way to kill them quickly, C02 or dust, or some sort of non-toxic solvent? Make bubbles inside a floating pool cover sandwich? Roll it all up automatically, in a minute? Tiny cold bubbles have about the same R-value as fiberglass... One might deflate 'em to let the sun shine in during the day. So, speaking for the established greedy ignorant unimaginative shortsighted solar pool industry collection of criminals slavering after government subsidies, Andrew, where are _your_ R10 pool covers? A friend of mine invented one, also not everyone's cup of tea: a tracked tennis court over a pool, with motors that slid the court back at the touch of a button. He enjoyed inventing that horse. Now where can I buy that foam blanket system? UV-poly comes in big pieces, eg rolls 32' wide by 100' long that cost $160 and weigh 75 pounds, eg from Geiger at (800) 4GEIGER or ecgsa...@hortnet.com or http://www.hortnet.com. It's easy to heat seal. Do you own an iron?

A: I didn't say it wouldn't work! It is very impractical for the average pool / home owner! The maintenance on such a system would be horrendous compared to a conventional solar pool heater. What about the roof itself? Fastening clamps to a standard asphalt shingle roof and then two layers of poly and then supply piping. What about water under the plastic rotting the roof ..... there are just so many drawbacks to this concept for 99% of the potential sites that the concept is impratical. How pro-active. You know where to buy the UV poly. Start with a hot tub, and an $80 200 in^3/min 7 psi peak, 2 psi continuous duty Danner dynamaster (800) 893-4220 piston air pump, 110VAC at 0.66 Amps, or their 120 in^3/min 12VAC version, or the $169 1.8 cfm 4-10 psi WP120 12VDC 7 Amp diaphram air pump from Jade Mountain at (800) 442-1972, jade-...@indra.com, feeding a large airstone or screened well point filter? A 7x7' pool cover filled with 6" of bubbles has a volume of about 25 ft^3, and 1 cfm will fill that in less than a half-hour. If the bubbles last 2 hours, the pump would have to run about 20% of the time. Tiny bubbles have an expansion ratio of 200:1, which means the soapy water container needs to hold about 0.125 ft^3 or 1 gallon of a 2% Green Dawn solution (?) There's a hot tub air blower in the Grainger catalog, $193 for their 2P681 35 cfm at 115 VAC, 6.6 Amps. Yes, this is a bad habit, but maybe that blower can also be used to inflate the bubble foam cover, somehow... A 24x32' pool cover filled with 6" of bubbles would have a volume of 384 ft^3, requiring a 16 gallon soapy water container and a larger air pump, eg the $58 Grainger 4C442 140 cfm 0.95" blower, which uses 1 Amp at 110VAC. (This blower is used to inflate 2 layers of plastic film on commercial greenhouses, 24 hours a day, to prevent wind fatigue. CT Film's rule of thumb is that 1/30 blower horsepower protects 10,000 ft^2 of poly pillow area, so this blower should work for a greenhouse up to about 1 acre. Would it protect a rooftop film pool heater, with a wind switch? Probably so.) A bubble foam pool cover might be inflated by bubbles that come out of a 30 gallon plastic drum full of soapy water buried in the ground, with a 2" hose from the blower, mounted on top of the drum, disappearing down into the center of a 14" diameter floating platform in the drum, supported by a floating ring, with a piece of plastic window screen around the hose. The foam needs recycling somehow, perhaps through a filter to separate it into water and air.

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