How to Monitor the Temperature of Solar Pool Heaters
A pool heating system is costly. According to a new study, heating swimming pools costs customers billions yearly. Because of the high energy costs, many households are turning to solar power to help heat their pools to lower their energy bills.
You may have wondered, “How hot can my solar pool heater get?” It is, without a doubt, a good question. The amount of heat that a solar pool heater can produce is determined by various things. After all, it is a weather-dependent technology.
How Does Solar Pool Heater Work?
Before we discuss how warm your pool may become, knowing how any solar pool heater works is critical. Solar pool heaters, in a nutshell, are devices that turn sunlight into electrical energy to heat your pool.
They are frequently installed on the roofs of buildings to catch sunlight and turn it into solar electricity. This is accomplished using a network of solar cells acting as tiny semiconductors.
The majority of people only use their pool heating equipment throughout the day. As a result, many pools, regardless of heating method, are only maintained during the day. A 2015 Residential Energy Consumption survey found that an average household in the U.S. used approximately 77 million Btu in 2015.
Your swimming pool will be colder in the morning than at noon, regardless of the heating element you install. The amount of cooling that happens is determined by the ambient temperature, airflow, and other variables.
How Hot Can My Solar Pool Heater Get?
To respond clearly, let’s first consider how much energy is required to heat your pool. Solar pool heaters use a lot of energy to heat a large amount of water.
For most of the year, a standard 12,000-gallon swimming pool has to be heated by around 10 degrees. This is 120,000 gallon-degrees, roughly 85,000 percent higher than the energy required to boil a pot of water.
We don’t use gallon degrees as a measurement unit, but BTUs, which are the accepted industry performance metric. But, in any case, all that matters is how hot your solar pool heater can get, right?
Unheated swimming pools in the spring and fall generally have temperatures in the mid-70s. Solar-heated pools, however, may reach temperatures in the high 80s. In the summer, solar heaters are scarcely used because pools may naturally attain temperatures in the high 80s.
The simple point is that unheated swimming pools only spend approximately six months of the year over 80 degrees. Solar-heated pools can easily maintain this temperature for roughly ten months of the year. This significantly extends your swimming opportunity for several months every year.
Factors Affecting Solar Pool Heaters’ Performance
The heat energy relies on a variety of parameters, the most significant being your pool’s size, direction, and shading. This is why people are sometimes startled by how chilly their pools are.
The north is the best orientation for your solar pool heater since it receives more sunshine. However, even if your collector is slightly offset from true north, you will not see any substantial loss in performance.
After all, solar pool heaters are weather-sensitive in the sense that they operate more quickly and efficiently when the temperature is favorable. Such heating systems do not function as much when temperatures drop below a certain threshold.
Final Thoughts
A solar pool heater is a great investment. While many people believe that solar pool heating is expensive, you may be able to acquire a solar pool heater for far less than you expect. Solar system prices have dropped substantially in recent years as the technology has become popular. We hope that this article was useful and you now know how to track the temperature data of your solar pool heater.
