Homemade Pool Heater

[meanmerc]

Well i have an electric pool heater, it heats it very well, the water is between 86 and 90 degrees.......but yes it's electric........so the bill is a little higher but then again without it, no swim, too cold of a summer, at least we can swim when we want! But I do want to add the roof top pvc coil pipe with a pump to see if it makes a difference..

 

[Starman354]

I can't take all the credit for this, my wife saw this design being used for heating a hot tub.

In Alberta our pool is only up for a couple of months. Last year the pool did not warm up at all. The 19000 Liters stayed cold until we drained it.

This coil is made up of 100 feet of 1/2" copper tubing with hose ends attached. Hook it up to the pool with a utility pump, place the coil over a fire, the fire heats up the water in the coil and passes it back to the pool.

The water coming into the pool was about hot enough not to put your hand under it for very long.

It heated the pool in about 8 hours and it is staying warm.

Ivan

Wow ,
I think I may add a iron pipe system in the fire box to my BBQ smoker
I made last year out of a 500 gal tank when we smoke meat it should heat the pool
how many times a week or month did you run the heater to keep the pool warm ?. I smoke BBQ about two times a month using wood I cut from
down trees .

 

[Ivan1547]

Wow ,
I think I may add a iron pipe system in the fire box to my BBQ smoker
I made last year out of a 500 gal tank when we smoke meat it should heat the pool
how many times a week or month did you run the heater to keep the pool warm ?. I smoke BBQ about two times a month using wood I cut from
down trees .

So far to warm it up it took about 8 hours of burning wood. I did modify it a little by placing it on a fit pit so it is closer to the flames.

It looses a couple of degrees per day, so every 3-4 days I turn it on.

As a side note, watch the hoses...my older kids were playing in the pool and accidently knocked the hose out of the pool. 3 hours later we found the hose watering the grass...we lost about 6" of water in the pool. We did not have a fire going, just using it to circulate the water (it still pumps in luke warm water just running through the hoses that are out in the sun).

Ivan

 

[Taylortractornut]

About 2 years ago my hot water heater went out and I was still single. and my hot water heater burner went out in the middle of winter. I heat with a big ashley wood heater an had seen a stainless steel hicoil tube that installs into a heater for heating a remote room or domestic water. While parts were comming for my water heater i tired the cold shower one time and couldnt take it. I remembered this conversion so I went out to my piles of junk around the shop and came up with a nice 3/8ths copper tube from a water cooler unit. It had a steel pipe support through it. and I adapted it up to fit a garden hose. I made a handle to hold it into the heater and would turn the hose on and fill my bath up. id lay the coil in the heater and throw in a half load of kildried cabinet shop scraps and let it fire up good. Im working on a way to heat my green house beds this way to.

 

[Rushvill]

No personal experience here, but a cousin in Minnesota built one for his pool.
He used a barrel stove kit installed on a 30 gallon drum. He installed this inside of a 55 gallon drum. He then took some corrugated stainless steel gas line and removed the jacket. He installed the coil in the gap between the drums, he also put sand in the space as he installed the pipe.
He said it works well. I would think it may work better if you used half of a 30gallon drum split lengthwise for the floor. Assemble it the same way but your pipe would be exposed to the flame on the top half of the stove.

Mark

 

[Knight]

I wanted to make one of these. I could burn car tires, plastic McDonalds spoons, and Dunkin Donuts Napkins.

 

[RonMar]

It takes 400,000 BTU to raise the temperature of 5000 gallons of water 10F. In a perfect world, you would be getting all the heat out of the wood burnt(about 8000 BTU per LB). So for a 10F rise over 8 hours, that is about 50,000 BTU/HR or at 100% efficiency 6.25 pounds of wood per hour. this of course is not accounting for the losses in heat thru the pool walls and especially thru evaporation(probably the largest heat loss).

I don't think that heater shown is very efficient. It needs fins on the pipe to increase the surface area. It needs something to trap and slow the heat as it passes the tubes. It could also probably use something inside the pipe to cause turbulence and break up the laminar flow that occurs inside the pipe. This flow acts like water in a wetsuit and insulates the inner cool water in the flow from the heated surface. this slows heat transfer. The corrigated stainless gas pipe might work better for this as it has more surface area and a rough iner surface.. As already mentioned clorinated pool water and copper don't play well together.

 

[mbrule]

hi Ivan1547, Great Idea!

Well, my use for the coiled copper tubing is reversed. I have 50' of 1/2" copper tubing plumed into a refrigerator that is used as my compressed air dryer. Very humid here, and dry compressed air is important for many jobs.

Good Luck, Stay Warm
Rhett

Not to Hi-Jack this thread..... But, could you elaborate on your air dryer set-up. Is it as simple as a coil of tubing in a refrigerator? There must be some sort of drain right? I like the idea and want to understand how you did it.

Thanks!!

 

[Diamondpilot]

A neighbor of mine put up a above ground pool a few weeks ago and when I was preparing the site for him with my tractor I came up with the idea of putting 3/4" pex in a continuous loop on top of the soil prior to putting the sand down. He runs it off his wood burning outside boiler. When the pool was filled the water was 68 deg and he brought the temp up to 86 deg in 2 days. We were both really impressed. Works alot like radiant floor heat and the sand really holds the heat well and transfers it well. Anyone who has ever walked on the beach in Florida.

Chris

 

[rhett]

Not to Hi-Jack this thread..... But, could you elaborate on your air dryer set-up. Is it as simple as a coil of tubing in a refrigerator? There must be some sort of drain right? I like the idea and want to understand how you did it.

Thanks!!

yes, it is that simple, even a length of air hose will work. There is an Air Filter/Moisture Separator (with auto drain) after the air cooling. Commercial Air Dryers use the same principle, they are specifically designed for the application though. My setup allows for Cold Beer too !!!, even Ice for mixed drinks. Mentioning Ice, my first setup was using an Ice Chest, kinda a pain refreshing the Ice supply every 30 minutes, so I graduated to the refridge. Thinking of adding a pre-surge section of pipe in the freezer part to help cooling for bigger jobs, like sand blasting. Cooling dramatically improves the moisture separation process, Auto drain moisture separators are highly recommended, but at least One In-Line moisture separator is required. A good filter near the work is still recommended too. Good clean dry air is achieved through a system of several components.

Sorry, for the Thread Hi-Jack, but many ideas do help with projects even if the subject strays a little. Hot vs Cold / Water vs Air