pump for DIY heater

[Guest]

I want to install a DIY heater on my dad's inground pool. At some point in the past, before we owned the house, it had one of these on it & it was pumped off the filter. Somewhere, my dad was told that it burned the filter motor out, so now he's afraid if I hook it up the same thing will happen. This is what got me to this forum, looking for advice, I'm on several other forum's & use them quite often. I read a few threads on this forum re: DIY type heaters. What I'm thinking is if I get a seperate pump, run a tube from the pool into the pump then into another tube to the roof of the garage where it will run through a coil of black tubing & back into the pool. What size pump would I need? I'll be running up to the roof about 8' or so. I was at Lowes looking at a few different kinds: at $147.00, 1 HP Portable Transfer Pump(hight per foot @ gph) 10' @ 7.1- 15' @ 5.9 20' @ 4.5, it had a handle & I thought it will work for my needs. Am I on the right track ? Or would a sump pump type pump 1/2 HP 10' @ 3150- 15' @ 2100- 20' @ 600, be better? Don't worry about offending me with comments, I have no idea what I'm doing so help me out. BTW: My dad's pool is very cold all summer long, I've tried to talk him into a real heater, but he's a little on the cheap side, he's got lots of $$$$, just don't want to spend any of it...........

[mas985]

First, what do you mean by a DIY heater. Just installing it yourself or do you plan on building one?

If you can describe what the heater is, maybe there is a way to configure it with the existing pump. A pump should not burn out because of the heater but again, it depends on what it was.

[MAXXFJ]

Well, what I plan on doing is, not sure if it will work or do any good at all, is run a hose from the pool to a pump, send it about 10' up to the roof of the garage where it will go through about 350/400' of black PVC pipe & then back into the pool. I hope the sun will warm the water enough in the black pipe to make even a little difference in the pool temp. Is this idea totally off base? If it will not do anything at all than screw it, we'll just have damn cold water. I thought I read here somewhere about this exact same thing. Could be wrong though. Let me know if I'm nutz. Thanks MAXXFJ

[mas985]

Ah, a DIY "SOLAR" heater. Also, why too different handles: MAXXF == Pool User ?

Anyway, I have read of many home made system and your existing pump should work fine. BTW, what size pump is there now?

I have a 1/2 HP 2 speed pump and run solar on a two story house. Not a problem. However, when designing the solar, make sure you have lots of parallel connections to keep head loss down. So instead of having one long piece of black pipe, use a header and have several smaller sections run in parallel. This will reduce head loss and keep the flow rates up. The problem is that in order to get a reasonable amount of head loss, you need lots of parallel lines which is why a standard solar panel will have many tubes. For example, you need about 25 parallel 1/2" lines to have the same head loss as a single 2" line. This might have been the problem with the previous setup.

Also, have you looked into purchasing some panels? In the end, they will be more efficient and easier to install.

Also, a good source of info:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Po ... eating.htm

[MAXXFJ]

Don't know why it came up as "pooluser" the first time. I think it was because I did not get the actavation email right away & I just posted anyway. I'm getting a lot of information from that other thread on here. I printed out the entire thread so I would have the information to make my "shopping" list. I'm going to post up a new request right now asking some members here to post up a few pictures of the set up's they have on their pools. Thanks for the reply, I'll check out that link you put up. I'll be sure to go step by step here so I don't screw it up. I just want to be able to enter the water in this pool, can't stand Cold water, even in the heat of summer.....