Cheap Way To Heat Your Pool

Most people like their swimming pool water to be on the warmer side unless its 100+ degrees outside then you may like a bit cooler water, but usually we want warmer water especially those that cannot not or do not like to swim when the sun is out in midday…

The problem is not everyone can afford thousands and thousands of dollars not only for a heater that will heat your pool but also the cost to maintain the heater and well as to pay for the electricity that it uses!

If you have an above ground pool this would work for you or also those that have an in-ground pool. Now im sure many people can use this idea and make it look really fancy, but I am just going to show you the basics, remember this is the cheap way and it will cost almost nothing to run it!  Now, I am not promising this will make your pool water 95 degrees when its 50 outside in the day, but this can for sure help to make your pool water warmer by a few degrees or much more depending on how much time you have, money available, and how much warmer you would like your swimming pool water… Now of course if you have money to blow, just stop reading now and go buy an actual pool heater and have it professionally installed, but if you do not have a few thousand sitting around to spend this I hope this basic idea can help you out a little..

You just need a few things…

1. The body of water you want to heat (swimming pool)
2. Some kind of table or platform
3. Pond pump
4. Alot of hose

Now our source of heat is actually going to be coming from the sun, so the first thing you want to do is make sure your platform you need to make, or just a table even will be very close to you pool but also where a bunch of sunshine will hit as much as possible.

The image below is a little picture I made showing the basics of how this is going to bet set up…

Now you can see basically we have our pond pump sitting in the pool, connected to it is our very long hose, and then basically the outlet end of the hose puts water back into your swimming pool….

How does this work?  When your hose is wrapped up in a circle or other shape, the more hose your have the longer it will take for water to travel through it, which is the ultimate point! You AT LEAST want 50 foot of hose, and you can go to your local Lowes or other store that sells outdoor waterfall, pond etc accessories.. you want a pond pump like the one shown below.

These little things you attach a hose to, you then can put these pumps in the body of water(under water) and they will pull water from your (pool in this case) through your hose and then in this case we will have that other end of the hose running back into the pool…. So the set up is pretty simple… The point is when water slowly runs through the hose, the hot sun will have a longer chance to heat water in small amounts at a time.

The best color of hose to use is a black hose because black attracts heat! You will want to use a smaller size hose so the water is tight in the hose and gets heated well, and you also do not want to purchase a pump that will push water at a fast rate… the faster the water is pumped through the hose, the less time the water will be in the hot hose under the direct sunlight, therefor it will not get near as warm….

for example a good size pump to get would be one that pushes something like 300 GHP (gallon per hour)   That way it is strong enough to pull water from your pool up a little bit and then all through the hose and back into the pool, you do not want a pump as i mentioned that is going to push water fast, you want a pump that will pump slower so little bits of water can be heated faster…..    A pump that does around 300 gallon per hour should only run around 20-30 dollars, now you can try all different size pumps, different lengths of hose well and you can get different results each time… The ideal way to go would be get a few hundred foot of small, black hose with a pump that could pull water from your pool, all through that hose and then trickle back into your swimming pool!

Over some time, during the day it should help heat the water in your pool more, if the water coming from the hose is not warmer than the water already in the pool, then you have done something wrong, keep tweaking the project until you can get the hottest water possible running back into your pool after it has been in the hose!

The video blow is not my video, but this is the best video I have seen on Youtube where a guy made a pretty fancy one, he spent a little more time and money but has the water running back into his pool at around 200 degrees! It is awesome!  You can see how he has made his, but the heat is all from the sun!