johnny Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 Iam building a solar water heater for my pool. I've painted a board black and coiled about 150 m of black pipe on it. Will it make a lot of difference if I put a sheet of glass over the pipe, and what's the best glass to use or is twin wall polycarbonate any good? Hope someone can help Cheers john Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lloyd90 Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 My family had one of those solar pool covers on our pool. Warmed up the top 6" of water, just enough so when you dip a toe you think its boiling warm, until you jump in n freeze yer nut off lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mossy835 Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 i bought a pool heater off the bay.leave it on for 6 hours and it lovley and warm from top to bottom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIGHTCHOKE Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 I've always wondered why swimming pools are not painted black to make best use of the suns radiation! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny Posted June 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 i bought a pool heater off the bay.leave it on for 6 hours and it lovley and warm from top to bottom. What sort of heater? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garygreengrass Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 Iam building a solar water heater for my pool. I've painted a board black and coiled about 150 m of black pipe on it. Will it make a lot of difference if I put a sheet of glass over the pipe, and what's the best glass to use or is twin wall polycarbonate any good? Hope someone can help Cheers john Made one myself for my fish pond some years back just used a normal pain of glass but used the wrong pipe I used 40 mm waste pipe believe or not the pipe melted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timmytree Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 I haven't tried it with pipe John but I made one at the last house with a load of radiators enclosed in ply boxes and took a feed between the pump and return tube. It worked ok as long as we had long days of bright sun but radiators aren't good at getting a quantity of water through so short spells of sun made little difference and it was useless when cloudy. What really made a difference was enclosing the pool in a frame covered with white tarpaulin, that helps keep heat in overnight and stops windchill cooling the water. Moving on from that, a friend of mine put a polytunnel over a rectangular frame pool, combined with a set of radiators like mine he had a pool that was useable from April to October without any other form of heating. Hope that helps! Tim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loriusgarrulus Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 My family had one of those solar pool covers on our pool. Warmed up the top 6" of water, just enough so when you dip a toe you think its boiling warm, until you jump in n freeze yer nut off lol Circulating pump to mix the water around would help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpringDon Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 Boxing it in with clear plastic will definitely be worth while as the ambient heat in the box will be in addition to radiant absorption. Twin wall would be better but only marginal compared to the gain of boxing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLuke Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 I've always wondered why swimming pools are not painted black to make best use of the suns radiation! Too scary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike737 Posted June 17, 2015 Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 Did we have a thread running on this last year, or was I on a different forum? I built a 'Heath Robinson' affair, basically a large 'bread-tray', 8ft x 4ft wbp ply with a 4 inch-high side all round. This was mounted on the sloping roof of my pump-house (8 x 6 B&Q shed!), facing south. 300 ft of flexible black electrian's conduit, split into four lengths. Two 4 into 1 central heating manifolds, 15mm in, 10mm out. Small pond pump next to my sand-filter and chlorine generator. 15mm pipe from the drain outlet of the pool, through the pump, through 15mm hosepipe up to the manifold (inside the tray). The four lots of 75 ft long pipe (conduit) then alternate, sweeping left to right, then right to left up, through the tray, until they reach the top, then return to the bottom, back through the other manifold, into a 15mm pipe and return to pool. The whole thing is controllled by a thermostat for a vivarium, set to 25 degrees C. There is a probe in the tray, if the temp inside the tray gets above 25 it switches the pump on, if it drops below 25 it switches off. The tray is painted matt black inside and has a 4mm twin-wall polycarbonate cover. Last summer, on sunny days pool temp was 29 degrees C. Water came out of the heater 4 degrees warmer than the pool. Temp inside the panel reached 40 degrees at times, so I could probably recover more heat... A second panel would make a huge difference, or one twice as big! It was easier to set up than it was to try and explain!!! If you want, I will take some photos this weekend and post them, if I can remember how... Hope this helps, Mike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny Posted June 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2015 Thanks for all the replies, some pics would be good mike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike737 Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 I will try and get them on this weekend for you. Though it's forecast to rain all day Saturday... Mike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wascal Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 (edited) I've always wondered why swimming pools are not painted black to make best use of the suns radiation! Black would lose the heat quickly as well. Thats why heatsinks are painted black Edited June 18, 2015 by wascal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ditchman Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 keep a "bubble wrap cover on it all the time when not using it............... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mossy835 Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 What sort of heater? item number 141469374847 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
figgy Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 (edited) Use plenty of pipe insulation on the flow and return pipes from the heater to the pool to minimise heat loss. Check out the best conductor material. Copper pipe is better than plastic and if in full contact with a metal back panel will conduct more heat into your transfer fluid. Water with lots of antifreeze work well as your fluid If using a heat exchanger to continually recirculate the heating water/fluid. Use a big enough solar collector on a sunny day and you could bath in your pool. Edited June 18, 2015 by figgy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mungler Posted June 18, 2015 Report Share Posted June 18, 2015 Anyone got a portable one that would fit into a suitcase? Every villa holiday I go on the pool is freezing cold no matter how warm and sunny outside is Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike737 Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Use plenty of pipe insulation on the flow and return pipes from the heater to the pool to minimise heat loss. Check out the best conductor material. Copper pipe is better than plastic and if in full contact with a metal back panel will conduct more heat into your transfer fluid. Water with lots of antifreeze work well as your fluid If using a heat exchanger to continually recirculate the heating water/fluid. Use a big enough solar collector on a sunny day and you could bath in your pool. That was complicating things too much for me... I wanted a 'cheap and cheerful' solution; so it uses the pool water and very cheap, flexible, convoluted electrical conduit (has a large surface area because of the convolutions!), was already black, and easy to bend. Copper, especially bonded to a back plate, would have been prohibitively expensive. I also wouldn't have wanted to use anti-freeze with a heat exchanger, as I wouldn't want to risk poisoning my grandchildren should it have developed a leak. I rejected an electrical heater, due to the running costs. My pool is 16ft diameter, and 4ft deep. I think the heat loss on the pipe-work will be absolutely negligible, due to the very short run, and that the heater only works when the weather is hot anyway. Hope this helps, Mike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
figgy Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Mike all you can do is try what you propose and see how well it works, got to be better than nothing. Let us all know how it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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