Swimming Pool Heaters: Solar Heat vs Other Methods of Heating

Many people are now choosing to heat their swimming pools so that they can use them for more months of the year. Here are some of the things to consider if you are thinking about doing this yourself:

A pool heater allows you to set the water in your pool at whatever temperature you like; for most people this is around 80 degrees (which is 2 degrees above the recommended temperature); either of these temperatures is fine.

The sun is only a suitably efficient heater of the water in your pool for a short part of the year, in the summer months when there is plenty of sunshine; so a pool heater means that you can swim for longer, possibly even doubling you're the length of time you can swim for if you live in a cooler area, and tripling it in the warmer states such as California and Arizona.

It is also a great idea to use a good quality pool cover, which as well as keeping the water clean insulates it and helps to minimize the its heat loss, thus also extending the length of the swimming season as well as cutting the cost of water heating.

There are several different types of pool heaters available, the most commonly used one being those run on LP gas, since these heaters are both the cheapest to run and to buy and set up in the first place. Another option is oil fired heating, which is useful in areas where gas fired heaters are not available, and electric heaters are a third option. These can be the most costly option to run, and they also have relatively high maintenance costs.

Fourthly, of course, is solar heat with a the solar powered heater, which may seem to be an ideal method of heating your pool in some ways, because it uses a free source of energy and therefore is cheap to run. There are however some disadvantages to solar pool heaters, the main one being the extremely high purchase price.

This high purchase price means that solar heaters are not really the best option for pool heating. The cost is high because as well as the heating system itself you need an electric pump, to move the water to the solar panels where it is heated, so that you can get the best performance from your heater, and these pumps are very expensive. The whole set up cost of a solar pool heater can cost thousands of dollars, in fact often around half the cost of the pool itself.

Therefore gas fired pool heaters are still the most cost effective option, being inexpensive to buy and easy to use, even for the new user.

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