Can anyone give me some advice about the pros and cons of heating a swimming pool with either oil or a pompe a chaleur? We are considering whether or not it is worth installing a pompe a chaleur at a cost of approximately 3000 euros as we already have a heating system connected to our oil fired boiler. We are not expecting to stay at this property for more than a couple of years so do we just carry on using oil? It is expensive but 3000 euros worth of oil will surely last a couple of seasons at least. Our pool is 120 cubic metres and we would want to heat it from May to October. We have no idea how many hours a day we would have to heat the pool to keep it at temp. of 28 degrees. Does anyone have experience of installing a pompe a choleur? Any advice would be gratefully received.
Many thanks
Hi Chris,
You should pop over to the pool group to carry on your discussion, I am intrigued. Your 1hp pump is 4m above your pool? have you a picture/s you could post or send to us/me
Something isn't right there - can you send me the chart you have? use rynd2it at gmail dot com
It is a 1 hp rated pump.
That's very low flow rate - what hp rating is the pump? Even with a 1hp you should be getting about 25 - 30 m3/hr on 2" pipes and a head of 5 metres.
According to my dodgy calculations using the chart the flow rate is 6 1/2 m3 per hour so it would take 17 hours to filter the whole 120 m3 pool?!
On that chart I'd allow for a head of 5 metres - 50mm diameter seems a bit small for such a big pool, all of mine was either 75 or 100 (I also had a jacuzzi and a swim jet).
The pump is 4 metres above and 7 metres away from the pool and the pipe diameter is 50mm.
Thanks
I'm guessing but it looks as if the H refers to the "head" of water - basically how high the pump has to raise the water. The inlet is usually at the deepest part of the pool so figure the height from there to the pump (horizontally). There may also be some allowance for pipe diameter and distance.
Have found what I think is the flow rate chart for our pump but I don't understand it.
It has a graph with a column with H (m.H2O.) with figures fron 0 to 50 and then along the bottom it has Q (m3/h) with figures of 0 to 7, it has a curve which starts at 45 on the column side and ends at nearly the 7 at the bottom line. I presume the bottom line Q relates to quantity with an hour per metre cubed rate, but what does the H column mean?
Many thanks
Let us know the results - it's all good information
Good luck
I will look into the flow rate of the pump. It is a chlorinated pool using a sand filter.
By the sounds of it the boiler will have to be on constantly for 6 hours a day which will a lot of oil.
We are about to open and clean the pool this week and I am thinking of trying the oil heater just for a week to see what the consumption will be like. Also to measure the temp. rise.
Thanks again for the information, very helpful.
You need the figures for the circulation pump - how many cu meters per hour does it move? How is the pool chlorinated? If it is a salt pool then it needs to be on a bit longer and during daylight, if you just add chlorine/acid manually then you can run it at night (possible electricity saving).
No-one I know ever used oil to heat a pool, gas was normal, but you should be able to get a consumption figure from the manufacturer and figure that it won't reach maximum tempertaure until about 75% of the pump hours. So if you are running for 6 hours, figure 4 hours heating per day and calculate the oil consumption. Oil is around .95c a litre.
Just as a guide a friend in CA decided to heat their pool off-season for a party, it took two days to get up to 30 degrees and the gas bill was $500 - and oil is MUCH more expensive.
Alternatives are good :)
Our swimming pool supply shop recommended we put the filter on for 5 hours a day.
Do you think we should have it on for longer?
I think we would use a ton of oil during the season.
Thanks for the reply
That's a big pool and five hours a day probably isn't enough to filter that water. We ran eight hours in summer, you should aim to change the water completely every two hours, our pool was 80 cu meters.
I suspect your oil bill is going to be massive so I'd really be looking at alternate sources.
We have a hard cover we use at night to keep the heat in. My question is really if anyone has experience of heating a pool using an oil fired boiler and how much oil we would need in a season. The heating systen already installed works when the swimming pool filter is on so if the the filter is on for 5 hours a day would the boiler be on at the same time constantly? If so then I think we would use a lot of oil.
Thanks for the replies so far
I kept my pool at 30 from March to November - just perfect, part of the secret is to have a solar blanket on at night to prevent heat loss. We used Solar Rings (like inflatable floating lily pads) as it was an odd-shaped pool but I haven't seen them in France yet.
At 28 it will be more like having a bath. In the height of summer you will not probably not have to heat it at all.
We have a pompe a chaleur and geothermal heating, but it can be very expensive to heat the pool if it is very cold at night, as the pool will lose its heat and you have to raise the temperature considerably.
We are having our poolopened at the end of this month, just in case it is warm enough to swim with a bit of heating, but more in hope than anything else.
We live in 71.
Have you considered using solar? Especially if you use the glazed panels more commonly used for domestic hot water. I spent two years in the solar business and heated my own pool entirely with solar - admittedly this was in California but the European glazed panels were used to great effect to save fuel costs in the less sunny areas (close to the coast).
It is also possible (but complicated) to use the same panels to assist the house heating as well, they don't actually circulate the pool water but use glycol and a heat exchanger.
Worth a look