Solar Pool Heating In Sc

Q: I am beginning to do some research on solar pool heating techniques and equipment. I have a 16' x 32' in ground pool that is split depth (4' shallow end, 8 ' deep end). It holds somewhere between 18,000 gallons and 24,000 gallons of water. My property is located in the upstate South Carolina region and we have mild winters with long spring/autumn seasons and a hot summer. The lot that my house and pool are located on is on the slope of a hill that goes down as you go north. My house is to the south of the pool. My house, along with my neighbor's house and my neighbor's trees block out direct sunlight from hitting the pool until well after 11:00am through the main part of the summer. My other neighbor's trees block the sun from directly hitting the pool after about 4:00pm through the main part of the summer. During the early spring and late autumn seasons the hours in which the pool receives direct sunlight are even fewer. It takes the pool until early May to get up above 77 degrees F. It will remain at or above this temperature until late September. Although the air stays comfortably warm during the days during early spring and late autumn, the pool does not get enough sunlight to stay comfortably warm and I end up having to close it down. I would like to install some sort of solar heating equipment to help extend the swimming season by keeping the pool suitably warm, preferrably aboout 84 degrees F (per my wife). If I could get my pool open in early March (we're hitting 70+ degrees F most days now) and keep it open until late November I would be very satisfied. The roof of my house runs from east to west and has a significant amount of southward facing surface area that could provide an exceptional amount of heat if I could harness it and get that heat transferred into my pool water. The pool pump & filter sits about 4' away from the back wall of the house and it would be very easy to install some plumbing to run up the side of the house to the roof. I'm looking for recommendations on the pros & cons of working with directly pumping the pool water through a solar heat collector on the roof vs. recirculating a high-heat capacity substance through a solar heat collector and then running this fluid through a heat exchanger of some sort to heat the pool water. I am somewhat disinterested in using solar collection dishes because of the lack of direct sunlight at the ground level in my back yard. I am also not interested in installing anything on the roof that is made of metal and stands up high because we have some severe thunderstorms throughout the year and the high winds have already caused some roof damage w/respect to torn-off shingles and chimney rain covers. I think that a roof mounted dish would probably present a liability problem since it would most likely get ripped off the roof during a high wind. The slope of the property results in having the roof level with the tops of a lot of trees and there is very little to break up or deflect a strong wind when it contacts the roof. Any sort of roof mounted solar heat collector would need to be very low in profile so that it would lay down against the roof surface. I am very handy with hand & power tools and I have enough experience with carpentry, plumbing and electronics to build just about about any kind of rig from a set of plans and basic components. I am willing to invest my time into building something efficient and functional if the cost of the materials comes out much cheaper than a dish or a natural gas powered heater and results in achieving my heating goals. Please post any recommendations and/or experiences that you might have that pertain to this problem. Any feedback or links to web sites with good solar heating FAQ's and system designs would be greatly appreciated.

A: Too bad that the hill faces North, and it would be hard to put South facing panels at a lower elevation than the pool. The neatest design is one where the water in panels circulates by itself. When the sun warms the water it rises in the panel (which is below the level of the pool) and flows into the pool, pulling cold pool water into the panel. But perhaps in SC this would provide too hot a pool. Another way to keep your pool's warmth from leaving is to use an insulated pool cover every night. With the right set of rollers it should be easy to set up a way of covering the pool that is almost as easy as pulling down a shade. This will retain heat that cannot be replaced on cloudy days, and will allow your number of panels to be smaller, as well as keeping tree debris out of the pool. I pretty much cannot get any thermosyphoning to work in my situation. To get the best solar exposure for my panels I need to put them on the roof. There might be room further down the hill to get unubstructed solar exposure for south-facing panels, but I don't own that property. The property is part of a utility right-of-way where a series of high voltage power lines and towers are placed. My solution will probably involve some p.v. panels that would power a DC pump to circulate the heating fluid. After visiting the Thermomax web site and reviewing their design recommendations I've come to the conclusion that if there is enough solar energy to heat the water then there should be enough to drive a pump to circulate some antifreeze in a closed loop system. Another alternative might be to use the water pressure produced by the pump motor to drive a secondary circulation system to circulate the heating fluid in the closed loop system. My pool pump motor is a 220V monster that is oversized for the amount of water that needs to be circulated and it should be able to handle a slightly heavier work load w/o any detrimental effects on the pump motor. Any recommendations on what I should use for a heat exchanger in a closed loop system? I'm somewhat concerned about the pool water chemicals causing corrosion problems with the collector plumbing and I figured that I would need some sort of heat exchanger and closed loop system to get the collected heat from the panels into the pool water. Without knowing the elevations of your pump and the proposed location on your roof, it's impossible to do the head calculations - but I think you will lose a lot of efficiency on your pump. You may also find that your chemical feeder and filter are not operating at peak efficiency because of this. On my pool, water goes through the pump, then the heater (propane), then the filter, then the chem feeder. While solar is certainly the preferable alternative, it may turn out to be significantly more effort and expense than you're currently envisioning. After checking out the solar alternatives, do a projection of operating costs for a propane heater located on your pump skid. You'll find that once you get the pool up to temp, you'll use (particularly in SC) very little propane to maintain the temp where you want it. I don't have any practical experience, but I would try a used radiator. Situated near the bottom of the pool, the pool side circulation would be gravity driven anyway. You could probably do very well with a spiral of copper pipe. Stainless steel would be best to avoid corrosion, but this is pretty expensive. Maybe a thin coat of spar varnish would protect without impacting the heat flow too much.

Solar Pool Heating In Sc

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