POOL WATER TOO WARM

[Walter]

You could also get a heat pump with a chiller.

[bbmfkp]

I live in north carolina and my pool person said that a lot of people throw ice in their pools in the summertime. I like my pool about 90 so it doesnt bother me.

[atlantafalcon]

Hello All,

New to the board. First post.

I know this is an old thread, but I'd like to contribute the little bit of knowledge I've garnered from research online and some testing. We live in south Georgia and have an above ground pool of around 3,800 gallons. With the heat wave we've been experiencing the past few weeks, the water temperature is around 89-90 degrees.

USING ICE: Sounds like a great idea, huh? Tried it. My first thought was that a 3 gallon frozen bucket of ice (1 gallon of water is around 8 pounds) MUST be better than 24 pounds of bagged ice. It would seem that the small pieces from a bag would melt quicker than a single large block, because there's a greater surface area to ice core ratio. Well, apparently there's a Myth Busters episode out there that disproves this theory. I haven't seen it, but saw it mentioned in an article a week or so ago.
After I put my bucket of water in the deep freezer, I jumped back online and came across a formula in another article about adding ice to a pool to cool it off.
The formula is as follows: Take the number of gallons of water in your pool and divide it by 1,000. Multiply that number by the number of degrees you would like to reduce your water temperature. Then multiply the resulting number by 43.75.
To reduce the temperature of my 3,800 gallon pool just 5 degrees would require 832.25 pounds of ice. Yikes. Here is an extremely technical page that explains the physics of what's going on: http://www.askdrthermo.com/askdrt/sec_53/x4_not_cool/not_cool.html
Seeing the pointlessness of throwing my 3 gallon (24 pounds) block of ice into the pool, I did it anyway just for fun. It was gone in less than 10 minutes and had no measurable impact whatsoever.

USING A FOUNTAIN: Using a fountain hooked-up to the pool return, running it only at night when the air temperature is cooler than the water temp, has worked great. The first night the temp went from 89 degrees to 82 by the morning. The misting effect cools the water in smaller volumes flying through the air and also introduces small bubbles of cooler air into the large body of water (aerating) as it comes crashing down. Pretty simple. This, of course, speeds the evaporation process, but it's better than draining your pool and refilling it, getting the salt-system chemistry all out-of-wack in the process. Also remember that running the fountain during the heat of the day day will have the reverse effect, so get your butt out of bed and unhook the fountain before it gets too hot.

My next step is to research reflective silver panels that float on top of the pool and see if they might help fight-off the effects of the sun when we're not using it during the day. If anyone has any insight, please let me know. It's all an uphill battle of sorts, but a little bit of gain is worth it.

AF

[kdalton]

Hey,

Just put in a inground pool here in Houston and having same problem. The only thing I can find online is some $1500 pool chiller. I was thinking about radiant barrier bubble wrap. Five degrees is huge!

Let me know if you come up with some solution!

Thanks
KD