solar pool heating

jhansen

I have been contracted to replace two lochinvar pool heaters 1.5 million each for a total load of 3.0 million. My experience with this public pool is that the two boilers are used only at startup and during cooler cloudy days. My thoughts were to install one lochinvar 1.5 million with solar panels to do the majority of the work. There is plenty of southern exposure roofing above the mechanical room. Anybody have any input or suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew Hagen_2

Heat up rate

I really like that idea. Just be careful that you can provide a heat-up rate for the pool after the initial fill that will be acceptable to the owner. I assume this is a 50M pool, so you probably have upwards of 250,000 gallons there. If you have to raise the temp 35°F and you haev a Lochinvar CPN1440, it would take approx 2.5-3 days to heat up the pool. That doesn't seem out of line to me, and the solar collectors can probably carry the bulk of the heat load all summer as long as they keep the pool covered when not in use.

I think it's a great idea. Roth has a nice pool collector design, in my opinion.

Mike Thomas_2

How big is that mechanical room?

A good rule of thumb is that for every square foot of pool surface you need one square foot of solar collector. So if you are going to do half the pool's heating needs with solar, you might need solar collectors that would equal half the pool's surface area. Do you really have that much roof available?