We very much enjoyed our first ever year with our own pool. It’s a pity that the swimming season was rather short - even down here in the Lot. I’ve been reading up on diy installation of solar water heating panels and wondered if anybody had either used them or ruled them out. They do seem to take a lot of space. Our pool contains roughly 75m3 water. I think we need the water temperature to be at least 25degs C for me and probably 27 degs C for my wife. Looks like we need at least 20m2 of panels which could be a problem as we want PV panels too. I could perhaps find space in the garden for the water heater panels.
Have you thought about using mains electricty powered chauffe-piscine. We’re just in the process of getting quotes in and I was surprised at the relatively lower costs. Also, if you look carefully at the running cost, in my case, it works out to be around 4€ per week extra - we also have solar panels for general use. The chauffe-piscine units that we’re being quoted for are very efficient.
Will you be using a heat pump? I imagine you must but it seems a very low cost to me. What volume of water are you heating?
Blimey, good job I don’t share your requirements, with my pond at 7C yesterday morning. 
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not everyone is a hardened to cold water. 7C water I would enter only after a sauna of 120C
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We’re plumbed for a heat pump, but I thought running it would be a lot more expensive than that.
I would find a sauna, good as it sounds, no advantage before or after wild swimming.
Although my instinct is instant immersion I follow the health advice of (relatively) gradual . No jumping, no diving, just a gentle lowering in to chest level and then swish about with the hands, which also clears the leaves away and any beasties who might find me tasty or objectionable.
Then several large breaths, nose and eye mask dropped, and a swift 7 metres to the other end, turn and pause briefly, and return. No breathing while swimming because it is not a good idea to ingest ‘foreign’ stuff.
Emerge to a wonderful feeling of warmth even with the air temp lower than freezing, although I never swim if there is surface ice because of the danger of unnoticed (because of the cold) cuts and bleeding, even more important now that I take blood thinners. Even had to stop them for 4 days before a tooth extraction. 
The good feeling doesn’t stop during the walk back down to the house, rapid drying and re-clothing, and lasts for a long time afterwards.
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Way back I was skiing early one morning with rolled up sleeves on a glacier. Just sailing along slicing nicely through the top layer of ice to the soft snow below. Then I fell. A bloodbath ensued 
Sorry, I should have given more details. Ours is a 7m x 4m pool, with 40 m3. We specified that we wanted to heat the pool from April to end October with target temp of 27-28 C. Heat pump is : Pompe à chaleur ZODIAC Z250IQ Full inverter.
Hope this helps,
Yogesh
Have you got space/funds to install a pool enclosure - maybe something like this?
It will help extend your season. Not to mention help keep the pool clean.
I imagine that’s €€€€€. Looks very nice. We have a roller shutter that stops the pool cooling much overnight.
Switching to a low energy pool setup, variable speed pump and other bits could save you about 1200 watts per hour, putting that previously wasted electrical energy into a pool heat pump could provide about 6kw of heating at no additional cost apart from the capital expense. Pool heat pumps are a bit of a bargain compared to the domestic heating variety and most pool heaters have titanium heat exchangers, not nasty cheap aluminium of domestic versions. They have the same defrost cycles and variable speed pumps and fans. I hope to get two and use one for the underfloor heating when not heating the pool.
I am interested to know about this - we have just received quotes for a 10x4 pool. I would be intestine to know if what is proposed by the installer would be in line with your suggestions.
If it is, lunch on me 
unfortunately over the 24 ISH years in the industry I saw little change on the way things were done. Even attending the last Lyon trade show there were only a couple maybe 3 companies that had made the change, most want you to buy connected online monitoring at a cost because it guarantees a monthly subscription income. Happy to help if you need it. No agenda just want you to get the best you can.
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