Solar reviews: How to install and the benefits of solar heating for swimming pools

There are a few different options for you if you want to heat your pool. The first options is a gas heater. The second options in an electric heater. The third and best option is solar pool heaters. With the way our world is going a solar heater is really the only option because it will be environmentally friendly and will cost you less than gas or electric will in the long run. Plus the solar technology is so much better now than it used to be.

My father and I build a solar heater for an above ground pool one summer and it was great. We were able to go from about a 72 degree pool to close to a 90 degree pool. The funny thing is that a couple years later my dad took the heater down and tried a gas powered heater and could not get the pool up above 80 degrees anymore. He, then, switched to an electric heater, but it was pretty much worthless as well. It is funny to think that the heater we built was better than anything we could find on the market.

The solar heater we built was pretty simple and pretty inexpensive. We had to buy a pump that was powerful enough to pump the water out of the pool and through about 50 feet of black tubing. The tubing was coiled to run back and forth over the top of our shed roof, which was black and got direct sunlight. We also used a piece of pvc pipe where the water entered the pool and where it was brought out. There was a little screen on the end that sucked the water out so that it would not get clogged with a leaf or something.

We installed a two way valve on the end that entered the pool so that it could be shut off at night and we used a switch to turn the pump off at night as well.

Solar reviews: How to install and the benefits of solar heating for swimming pools

The idea was to pump the pool water out and into the black tubing that was baking in the sun. We did not want this to move very fast, though. It was designed to pump the water through the tubing very slowly so that it had plenty of time in the sun to get hot.

This heater worked very well and we only had to replace the pump about once every couple of years, which is not bad. The electric bill was not really effected by running the pump since it was only ran during the hottest hours of the day and shut off throughout the entire night.

We were able to get the results we wanted out of this solar pool heater and now we are starting to see these exact types of heaters out on the market for purchase. If you are looking to heat your pool the best way to do it is with one of many different solar pool heaters.