Quality Pool heating, covers and roller systems.
We are asked countless times about heating a swimming pool with solar energy. The problem with solar heating is that it needs sunshine and the time when a pool needs heating the most is in the winter, when the days are shorter and the sun is not at it's hottest. Even in the winter, solar heating for domestic water is very efficient. A typical installation on the roof will be pointing 2 or 3 square metres of solar panel at the sun's average position in the sky and have a 100 or 150 litre, well insulated tank. In 3 or 4 hours there will be a tank full of very hot water. Now consider the average swimming pool which has not 150 litres but 60 or 70 THOUSAND litres and the problem is self explanatory. Even on a nice sunny winter day, there would need to be tens of square metres of solar panel to increase the water temperature by 10 or 15 degrees before it went dark and cold again in winter the evenings.
The answer really is an electric heatpump, like the one you see above, installed at a pool in Conil, where the weather isn't always the kindest on the island. The beauty of the installation is that when you want the pool warm, you just flick a switch and watch the temperature increase, by day, by night, or both. This machine will heat the water from 16 degrees to 28 degrees in about 48 hours. The cost is about 3 euro, or £2 per night during the worst of the weather, decreasing to almost nothing as the summer months approach. The installation costs vary, depending on where the heater can be placed. Here it is inside the pool room itself, so that it uses all the heat generated by the pool circulation pump. This installation cost 5,708 euro, or about £3,680 including the essential roller system and thermal cover to keep the heat in during the night or when the pool is not being used.
This roller system is of the very highest quality, made from stainless steel and ABS plastic. It is fixed to the floor for one person operation. Once retrieved, the cover and roller can be quickly un-docked from the ground and wheeled away completely. It is not to be confused with cheaper loose, un-wheeled or non-tranportable units made from inferior material. The cover is custom made for each pool, from 5mm thick closed cell foam for durability and is hemmed all around to avoid chafing when being retrieved. This reduces heat loss to between 5 and ten per cent only.
The principal upon which a heatpump works is quite simple. There is a compressor and an expansion tank, exactly like in a refridgerator. Instead of retaining the cold air and venting the extracted hot air, like a fridge, the heatpump works in reverse. It extracts the warmth from the air around it, uses it to warm the pool water which passes through and discards the cold air out from the back. They will work in temperatures down to 3 or 4 degrees, extracting just that small amount of warmth, so in Lanzarote where the temperatures rarely fall below 8 or 10 degrees even at night, they are extremely efficient.
