Extend Your Pool Season
Extend Your Pool Season
The easiest way to extend your swimming pool season is to use a pool cover or blanket. An inexpensive pool cover can easily add a month at the beginning and end of the swimming season. For every 12 hours the pool cover is left on, the temperature of the water will rise about 5 degrees F. Additional reasons for adding a pool cover include:
- prevents heat from escaping – retain that heat in your pool
- limits evaporation – each gallon of water evaporated removes about 8,000 BTU’s of heat
- reduces chemical depletion – reduces your costs for chemicals
Pool Cover Considerations:
- don’t leave your cover in the sun when removed from the pool as this degrades the plastic
- covers can be dangerous – if you fall onto a cover it can be very difficult to get out. Don’t swim in a pool with a cover on or partially on – if you come up under the cover, you will NOT find any air!
DIY Solar Pool Heater
Another very simple way to extend you pool season is to build your own solar pool heater. We have a very simple, DIY solar pool heater design which uses a photovoltaic (PV) module to provide free power when the sun shines, which is when you want the pump to run. It also uses a small, DC submersible pump and some black landscaping tubing.
You can use the existing pump to run your DIY system, but be aware of the extra cost for electricity to run the pump. If you place your tubing on a roof, you can add a lot of strain to the existing pump. This could shorten the life of the pump and could also make for a rather large increase in the amount of electricity used by the pump. As well, you want the solar pool heater to run during the daylight hours. This is often when electricity cost the most and may not coincide with your optimal pump running hours. A PV panel and small submersible pump could pay for itself in just one season.
For a list of materials and step-by-step assembly instructions, visit our link: DIY Solar Pool Heater
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Filed under: Go Green
