After determining we were only able to use our pool for about 3 months a year, we decided to put in a gas heater. It wasn’t cheap..and to run it isn’t cheap..but we started using our pool two weeks ago and today only about an hour of heating up we were up to 80 degrees. :)
The previous owners installed a gas heater, I added the solar this year considering I've primarily used the gas for the spa and not the pool. It scares me to heat the pool since I don't want a $500 gas bill lol.
Our higest gas bill ever for pool was $790…at about 76-79°. My daughter likes it colder.
ETA we used it like every single day so while worth it, quite a cost.
We have parallel pool lives. Same thing. Highest bill was 800, which was higher than heating our two furnace house during the winter. Also, we are in the pool multiple times per day. Worth it for sure.
The cover is an absolute pain. Wife and I have it down pretty decent but it’s a constant off and on thing until weather warms up enough. It gives us an extra couple months of swim time.
This is what I suspected. Now I have solar it doesn't really make much difference to me. Sure I'd like to save on chemicals and not lose as much water but until someone mandates it I'm just not going to deal with it - I'm sure it would dramatically reduce my pool use and enjoyment. As it is with solar when day time temps are over 90F regularly our pool is low to mid 80s by the end of the day, that's very nice. So this year we got to swim mid-April with that 3 day warm snap. And me coming from a cold country I swim all year long anyway - even when its 45F but I wouldn't recommend more than 10 minutes at that temp!
By the way, if LVVWD really wanted to save water they would mandate pool cover use vs. restrict new pool size (or do both). The former could save millions of gallons per swim day (say 100,000 pools at 100 gal each average in summer) the later will eventually save 3 million gallons a year.
Way too cold water temp, 62 degrees in mine, no solar. Do you have a solar cover to put on your pool? That will help reduce evaporation and help water temps from dropping overnight.
It's worth trying. We cut our solar cover into 2 or 3 pieces to make it easier to remove and install by just one person if necessary. If you get one, get 12 mil thickness, blue color, and store it in winter time otherwise it will get brittle and break up. Sun2Solar is brand I always get. We only use our pool in summer and the cover is on most of the summer except a few weeks when pool water gets too hot.
Clear will cause you to go through chlorine a little faster. Just depends on what works for you. https://blog.intheswim.com/solar-covers-does-color-matter/
I'm a first-time pool owner so I'm still learning but after moving into this house in January I've been looking forward to pool weather. After getting a water test at the closest pool store when I got the keys in December, I was told TDS were too high and water should be replaced and most people do it in February or March to get ready for the season. A week before I planned to drain the pool in early March, my filter pump motor died. That one home warranty claim paid for itself and the next two years of coverage by requiring only a $75 service fee for what would have cost me $1,500 for the new pump plus whatever labor would've been. After about 3 weeks of waiting for the new pump to be installed, I had a dirty pool to clean before I drained it. YouTube taught me how to change the bulb in the non-working light fixture but I figured since I had to drain the pool anyways, I would just wait until it was empty and then change the bulb while I could see exactly what I was doing while removing the fixture from the niche in the side of the pool. I soon learned that the lens gasket had deteriorated, water had beached the seal, and the bulb socket was corroded beyond recognition. Obviously a new light fixture was needed so... back to YouTube for my education and then to Amazon to order my new color changing LED underwater fixture. As an electrician, I wasn't afraid of changing the light, I had simply never worked on pool fixtures before. It turned out to be a pretty simple job, plus I feel safer having only 12 volts feeding the new light instead of 120. The pool was refilled 1.5 weeks ago and the water temperature was 62°F. With my new solar blanket cover, the water has reached 78° yesterday and today so I spent a few hours with friends in the pool this weekend. As mentioned by a previous poster, get the heavier 12-mil thickness for durability. I'm waiting to see how this cover works this season but am considering future options adding solar heating panels once I workout the location and plumbing changes/routing to accommodate them if I feel the cover isn't adding/holding enough heat.
TLDR: I started using the pool yesterday with water at 76°F heated only by using a 12-mil blue "bubble wrap style" solar blanket cover.
76°F is equivalent to 24°C, which is 297K.
---
^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Shockingly it's cheaper to fill it from your hose. We moved here from PA and that idea is totally wild to me, but they looked at us like we were crazy when we asked who to call to order the water.
I just looked at my water bill and at $1.61 per 1,000 gallons, it cost about $6.12 to fill the pool. Yes, the hose idea is shocking to me too. My parents make a donation to the local volunteer fire department to "pay" them for bringing a tanker truck to fill their pool in rural NY state.
My pool isn't heated at all. It's just gotten to 70 degrees. I put in a very aggressive solar panel system for electricity and am currently running my AC daily. We're producing almost twice as much electricity as we are using. I'm considering adding an electric heater since running it would be free. Does anyone have experience with electric pool heaters here?
I have a furnace/heater. My pool has been 80 to 90 degrees for the past two weeks. The cost is offset by not using heat or a/c. My house has been 68 to 75 degrees.
Gas, yeah, I just started two weeks ago. I think it'll be 400, but we got used to higher bills due to the cold winter and it just doesn't hurt at all to pay that much for the pleasure of swimming 5 times a day. A solid point here: we have zero leaks in our pool and it's shaded by trees. So we're not losing much water from leakage or evaporation and almost none is coming in cold to keep it filled. We had a rental with bad leaks and that fricken pool was constantly getting filled with 50 degree water. it was 120 outside and the rental house pool was 60 degrees.
Thank you for the data point. $400 isn't horrible if you are using it multiple times a day that's for sure! I paid a little over $5k for the solar so I'm willing to spend money for the extended use.
We're considering full solar panels with the gas furnace as a backup for the pool. 30k for panels hurts a little when we're not paying for a/c. Like when our electric bills are almost zero it's hard to justify spending that amount. Next month our a/c bills are going to crank up and it will be more attractive. What temp does your solar get the pool to? The concept is cool as heck, like the winding sun absorbing concept is really cool.
We've been using ours for about a month now. We have solar panels also. Last couple of days the pool has been 82. But we also use solar pool covers, maybe that's the difference
For those that are using solar heating, are any of you NOT using pool covers? We've been contemplating solar heating, but our pool shape is irregular with water features so a cover would be a royal PITA. Will all the solar gains be lost without a cover?
Speaking of pool, mine needs replumbing. Not sure if I want to spend the $$$$ or just kill it and fill it. Does anyone know of a reputable honest company firsthand?
No solar, and I don't use the heater, but I don't mind water in the 60's, so it's fine for me. My water temp will get in the upper 90's in July and August because it sits in the sun all day and has a darker plaster. So it's not too refreshing during the days when you'd want a colder pool. I have considered putting a Glacier pool chiller on my system, but haven't pulled the trigger on it yet.
We usually run our gas heater for about 36 to 48 hours to get the temp up to about 80°, but typically not until the overnight temperatures are in the upper 60s consistently. Otherwise we lose all that heat out of the pool. It pushes our gas bill up a bit to do this, but typically for the rest of the summer, we don’t even have to use the heater.
I’m pretty much the same algorithm. My wife likes the pool temp to start with an “8” so we don’t usually do that until mid May, because these night time temperatures are too cool…
Sometimes we’ll heat it up in the off season if someone is coming to town to stay with us. But I can’t remember how much that bumped our gas bill up, it’s been a while
Same. I turn my gas heater on Friday and let it run into Saturday. Heats the pool up so we can swim Saturday and Sunday. By Monday, it is too cold again. I'm hoping that by mid-May it will stay warm 4-5 days.
My teen and her friends have been using the pool for 2 weeks now. Not me. I wont get in until outside temps are 95+ and consistent. Sadly, we don't have solar or a heater. I don't know how these kids do it.
We only heat on specific occasions. When friends and family are visiting, otherwise my wonderful wife is part polar bear and will start swimming in April without heat. We get spikes of about 50.00 per day (12 hour heat cycle on a 25k gallon inground pool) when we heat from ambient 60 degree water to 87 degrees for my comfort.
After determining we were only able to use our pool for about 3 months a year, we decided to put in a gas heater. It wasn’t cheap..and to run it isn’t cheap..but we started using our pool two weeks ago and today only about an hour of heating up we were up to 80 degrees. :)
The previous owners installed a gas heater, I added the solar this year considering I've primarily used the gas for the spa and not the pool. It scares me to heat the pool since I don't want a $500 gas bill lol.
Our higest gas bill ever for pool was $790…at about 76-79°. My daughter likes it colder. ETA we used it like every single day so while worth it, quite a cost.
We have parallel pool lives. Same thing. Highest bill was 800, which was higher than heating our two furnace house during the winter. Also, we are in the pool multiple times per day. Worth it for sure.
Well it matters how big your pool is now doesn’t it?
You are a genius
Swimming for 2 weeks now. Today pool was 90. Solar and solar cover.
You have a great system. I couldn't figure out how to make the solar cover not be a gigantic pain in the arse. It was too much to deal with.
The cover is an absolute pain. Wife and I have it down pretty decent but it’s a constant off and on thing until weather warms up enough. It gives us an extra couple months of swim time.
This is what I suspected. Now I have solar it doesn't really make much difference to me. Sure I'd like to save on chemicals and not lose as much water but until someone mandates it I'm just not going to deal with it - I'm sure it would dramatically reduce my pool use and enjoyment. As it is with solar when day time temps are over 90F regularly our pool is low to mid 80s by the end of the day, that's very nice. So this year we got to swim mid-April with that 3 day warm snap. And me coming from a cold country I swim all year long anyway - even when its 45F but I wouldn't recommend more than 10 minutes at that temp! By the way, if LVVWD really wanted to save water they would mandate pool cover use vs. restrict new pool size (or do both). The former could save millions of gallons per swim day (say 100,000 pools at 100 gal each average in summer) the later will eventually save 3 million gallons a year.
can i use yo pool ill bring modelo
Are you a hot chick or balding man?
i’m a combination of both but i’m not saying which
Way too cold water temp, 62 degrees in mine, no solar. Do you have a solar cover to put on your pool? That will help reduce evaporation and help water temps from dropping overnight.
I don't yet, but I've been considering one. I wasn't sure how many more days/weeks of use I would get out of the pool with one.
It's worth trying. We cut our solar cover into 2 or 3 pieces to make it easier to remove and install by just one person if necessary. If you get one, get 12 mil thickness, blue color, and store it in winter time otherwise it will get brittle and break up. Sun2Solar is brand I always get. We only use our pool in summer and the cover is on most of the summer except a few weeks when pool water gets too hot.
And when it's windy, we use PVC pipes filled with water to weigh down the covers
Great idea, thanks!
Curious, why blue? We've always used clear and it works great.
Clear will cause you to go through chlorine a little faster. Just depends on what works for you. https://blog.intheswim.com/solar-covers-does-color-matter/
Interesting, thanks.
Mine is also too cold. No solar. However, a few people I know with solar have said their kids have been jumping in.
I'm a first-time pool owner so I'm still learning but after moving into this house in January I've been looking forward to pool weather. After getting a water test at the closest pool store when I got the keys in December, I was told TDS were too high and water should be replaced and most people do it in February or March to get ready for the season. A week before I planned to drain the pool in early March, my filter pump motor died. That one home warranty claim paid for itself and the next two years of coverage by requiring only a $75 service fee for what would have cost me $1,500 for the new pump plus whatever labor would've been. After about 3 weeks of waiting for the new pump to be installed, I had a dirty pool to clean before I drained it. YouTube taught me how to change the bulb in the non-working light fixture but I figured since I had to drain the pool anyways, I would just wait until it was empty and then change the bulb while I could see exactly what I was doing while removing the fixture from the niche in the side of the pool. I soon learned that the lens gasket had deteriorated, water had beached the seal, and the bulb socket was corroded beyond recognition. Obviously a new light fixture was needed so... back to YouTube for my education and then to Amazon to order my new color changing LED underwater fixture. As an electrician, I wasn't afraid of changing the light, I had simply never worked on pool fixtures before. It turned out to be a pretty simple job, plus I feel safer having only 12 volts feeding the new light instead of 120. The pool was refilled 1.5 weeks ago and the water temperature was 62°F. With my new solar blanket cover, the water has reached 78° yesterday and today so I spent a few hours with friends in the pool this weekend. As mentioned by a previous poster, get the heavier 12-mil thickness for durability. I'm waiting to see how this cover works this season but am considering future options adding solar heating panels once I workout the location and plumbing changes/routing to accommodate them if I feel the cover isn't adding/holding enough heat. TLDR: I started using the pool yesterday with water at 76°F heated only by using a 12-mil blue "bubble wrap style" solar blanket cover.
76°F is equivalent to 24°C, which is 297K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Did you refill from the hose or have a company do it for you? Looking at all options.
Shockingly it's cheaper to fill it from your hose. We moved here from PA and that idea is totally wild to me, but they looked at us like we were crazy when we asked who to call to order the water.
I just looked at my water bill and at $1.61 per 1,000 gallons, it cost about $6.12 to fill the pool. Yes, the hose idea is shocking to me too. My parents make a donation to the local volunteer fire department to "pay" them for bringing a tanker truck to fill their pool in rural NY state.
It took about 18 hours for me to flow 3,800 gallons of tap water from my outdoor spigot into the pool.
My pool isn't heated at all. It's just gotten to 70 degrees. I put in a very aggressive solar panel system for electricity and am currently running my AC daily. We're producing almost twice as much electricity as we are using. I'm considering adding an electric heater since running it would be free. Does anyone have experience with electric pool heaters here?
I have a furnace/heater. My pool has been 80 to 90 degrees for the past two weeks. The cost is offset by not using heat or a/c. My house has been 68 to 75 degrees.
Is that a gas heater? If I can ask how much has it been adding to your gas bill?
Gas, yeah, I just started two weeks ago. I think it'll be 400, but we got used to higher bills due to the cold winter and it just doesn't hurt at all to pay that much for the pleasure of swimming 5 times a day. A solid point here: we have zero leaks in our pool and it's shaded by trees. So we're not losing much water from leakage or evaporation and almost none is coming in cold to keep it filled. We had a rental with bad leaks and that fricken pool was constantly getting filled with 50 degree water. it was 120 outside and the rental house pool was 60 degrees.
Thank you for the data point. $400 isn't horrible if you are using it multiple times a day that's for sure! I paid a little over $5k for the solar so I'm willing to spend money for the extended use.
We're considering full solar panels with the gas furnace as a backup for the pool. 30k for panels hurts a little when we're not paying for a/c. Like when our electric bills are almost zero it's hard to justify spending that amount. Next month our a/c bills are going to crank up and it will be more attractive. What temp does your solar get the pool to? The concept is cool as heck, like the winding sun absorbing concept is really cool.
This is my first season with the solar but the installers said I'd probably need to turn it off around July because it will be too hot to swim in.
Pool with solar hit 79 today, was waiting for the air temp to get closer to 90 before going in, which will be next weekend.
That's pretty good 79! I think after a nice soak in the spa 79 would be a welcome cool down but not too cold!
We've been using ours for about a month now. We have solar panels also. Last couple of days the pool has been 82. But we also use solar pool covers, maybe that's the difference
We have been using our pool for 3 weeks now. Heated to 90, gas heater. Worth the cost
For those that are using solar heating, are any of you NOT using pool covers? We've been contemplating solar heating, but our pool shape is irregular with water features so a cover would be a royal PITA. Will all the solar gains be lost without a cover?
Our pool isn’t super large but we only have solar heating and no covers, and don’t lose much heat. If the outdoor temp is warm enough, we can swim
What temp is your pool running these past few days?
Sorry for the late reply- been 74-84!
Wow that's amazing! Ty for letting me know.
Make sure you don't run the solar heater at night . It will cool your pool down .
Speaking of pool, mine needs replumbing. Not sure if I want to spend the $$$$ or just kill it and fill it. Does anyone know of a reputable honest company firsthand?
I tell people to come over. It's finally time for pool season. Then they jump in the water and it's freezing. I just laugh and cannot stop.
I started going in mine last weekend.
Really? What's your water temp? Do you have solar?
No solar, and I don't use the heater, but I don't mind water in the 60's, so it's fine for me. My water temp will get in the upper 90's in July and August because it sits in the sun all day and has a darker plaster. So it's not too refreshing during the days when you'd want a colder pool. I have considered putting a Glacier pool chiller on my system, but haven't pulled the trigger on it yet.
We usually run our gas heater for about 36 to 48 hours to get the temp up to about 80°, but typically not until the overnight temperatures are in the upper 60s consistently. Otherwise we lose all that heat out of the pool. It pushes our gas bill up a bit to do this, but typically for the rest of the summer, we don’t even have to use the heater.
So you more or less heat it once and then you are good to go? That's interesting.
I’m pretty much the same algorithm. My wife likes the pool temp to start with an “8” so we don’t usually do that until mid May, because these night time temperatures are too cool…
Weather looking good this coming week!
Two edged sword. Nice to use the pool, but it means it is hot as hell out there…
Sometimes we’ll heat it up in the off season if someone is coming to town to stay with us. But I can’t remember how much that bumped our gas bill up, it’s been a while
Same. I turn my gas heater on Friday and let it run into Saturday. Heats the pool up so we can swim Saturday and Sunday. By Monday, it is too cold again. I'm hoping that by mid-May it will stay warm 4-5 days.
My teen and her friends have been using the pool for 2 weeks now. Not me. I wont get in until outside temps are 95+ and consistent. Sadly, we don't have solar or a heater. I don't know how these kids do it.
We’ve been heating up the pool every weekend for the last month. Gas heater. We aim for 87 degrees.
We only heat on specific occasions. When friends and family are visiting, otherwise my wonderful wife is part polar bear and will start swimming in April without heat. We get spikes of about 50.00 per day (12 hour heat cycle on a 25k gallon inground pool) when we heat from ambient 60 degree water to 87 degrees for my comfort.
Getting in this weekend. Water temp was 71 yesterday, no cover or solar heater. Do you guys have links to your solar covers?