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My family and I live on Long Island in New York. Although summer temperatures
in the region can get fairly warm, our backyard gets almost full shade from a neighbor's trees. As a result, our swimming
pool doesn't get very much sun and tends to stay cool even on the hottest of days.
2007 was the first year we had the pool. At the end of the season,
I decided to research a solar solution to raise the temperature so that we could have a warmer pool for the 2008 swim season.
Although there are several solar products on the market that can be purchased, they tend to have solar collectors that are
a minimum of 8 ft. wide. Since my back yard is fairly small and the only place that gets full sun is a section of the
side yard near my kids swingset, I really needed something smaller. Naturally, another solution would have been to mount
a store bought solar panel on the roof, but I really did not want to mount anything up on the roof of the house.
The following is a link to the site where I got the basic design for my
panel:
I found this site to be one of the best on the subject because it explained
how to build a very simple and practical solar panel and how to tie it into the pool's plumbing.
In 2008, I experimented with heating the pool using a solar collector
that I built. During the Spring of 2009, I made improvements to this solar collector and built a second.
The two solar collectors can increase the pool temperature
by anywhere from 1 to 4 degrees in a day depending on strength of the sun and level of humidity. The cooler and dryer
the weather, the more the heat will escape the pool thru evaporation. I have found that the most important factor in
cumulatively increasing the pool temperature is weather conditions during the night. If night temperatures drop down
into the sixties and the air is dry, all the heat gained during the day will be lost. Obviously the best conditions
for maintaining heat in the water and raising pool temperature is to have warm humid conditions at night which will minimize
evaporation and thus keep heat loss in the pool to a minimum. I have found that the best way to slow heat loss is to
use a solar cover on the pool at night. Solar covers help prevent pool water from evaporating and help maintain heat.
In general, during warm summer conditions, I have raised the pool temperature anywhere from 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which
definitely improves swimming conditions.
 
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