Quote:
Originally Posted by PoolBrews
As an engineer, if you do the research and see how effective these systems are, you quickly realize they are a waste of money. They work great when you don't need them (summer), a little in early fall/late spring, and can't heat adequately when you really need them (about 4 months at end of year/beginning of year).
If you install a solar heater, you still need a supplemental heat source (electric is most cost effective here in FL due to the price of gas vs electric). Calculating the costs, you'll never recover the $5k for the solar over the life of the system. You're better off just going with an electric or gas heater. I keep my pool at 88 all winter. No issues.
In addition, when you need any work done on your roof, you'll need to pay someone to remove the solar system, do the repair, then pay again to have it installed again. And each time you open more holes in the roof, and hope your system doesn't leak or cause a leak.
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You are right. A solar heater doesn’t heat a pool enough in the two months when the Original Poster is here to swim in comfort (92° is my preferred temp). A bubble wrap pool cover helps a huge amount in keeping in heat that would be lost to the cooler air all winter and costs only a few hundred. Combined with solar heat, that adds a couple months of comfortable pool use, but still not when the Original Poster is here. When I bought my house, I had a heat pump for the pool added to the solar and also added a pool cover. Combined, I can have the pool at 92°, and the heat pump isn’t too expensive to run. It would be much more expensive without a pool cover, though. However, that heat pump cost me $6,000 installed.