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Solar Pool Heaters-Right for today

You’ve probably noticed that you’re paying more for energy these days. Between filling the car and paying for heat and air conditioning the cash goes faster with every passing month. If you own a swimming pool with a propane or natural gas heater the cost of comfortable pool water is getting out of hand.

Heating an outdoor swimming pool is probably the least efficient use of fuel there is. Think about it for a minute. Gas is being burned to heat water that goes into a big tank or hole in the ground. This water is completely un-insulated and has several hundred square feet of surface area exposed to whatever the weather happens to be. It’s almost like shoveling money into a bottomless pit.

Consider free solar heat! Over the entire United States the sun is at it’s highest and hottest during swimming season. No one has figured out how to charge for sunshine. It’s still free. Doesn’t it make sense for the 3-6 months of the year most pools are open to heat the water with a free resource?

Solar pool heaters today are a well-proven, effective and efficient way to heat a swimming pool. A properly sized solar heater will raise the temperature of a pool from 8 to 15 degrees. Solar heaters even work when it’s overcast and cloudy. The only outlay of funds is the purchase of a system. Depending on the size of the pool, over the typical 10 year life of a solar system the cost per month to heat a pool can be as little as $13.00. With entry level systems costing as little s $125.00, pool owners who thought a heated pool was a budget buster can get into warm water too.

There is only one catch to this rosy picture. To be effective, solar pool heaters have to be properly sited. The pool area needs a minimum of 6-8 hours of direct sun during the day for the solar array to produce useful heat. However, one of the benefits of solar heaters is that they can be mounted in so many ways and still be effective. A roof, a portable rack or even laid out on the ground a solar system will do the job. It doesn’t have to be close to the pool either.

With energy prices rising nearly every day a solar pool heater could be a great investment.

Rob “Dr. Duck" Coxworth