A heated pool can triple your comfortable swim season.
There are three major types of swimming pool heaters: solar, electric, and gas. While we believe the vast majority of pool owners are best served by a solar pool heater, your unique circumstances and needs may dictate a different choice. This page briefly describes the three major types of pool heating and the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Solar pool heating is by far the most cost-effective way to heat your pool. The sun’s energy is clean, free, inexhaustible, and plentiful in Florida on a year-round basis. While solar does not have the ability to deliver any temperature on demand in any weather, you will never have to turn your solar pool heater off because you can no longer afford its operating cost.
Depending upon what temperature you find comfortable, a solar pool heater may even triple your season. Keep in mind, even during the summer months your pool can be much warmer if you prefer.
Solar pool heating is a very mature technology; thousands of solar pool heaters have delivered trouble-free operation in Florida since the late 1970s. Unlike a propane or natural gas pool heater with metal parts, a quality solar pool heater will keep you swimming in a warm, comfortable pool for the next 15 to 20 years.
All solar heating systems work on the same principle as a garden hose sitting out in the sun. The sun strikes the hose and the water inside is heated. Because the water temperatures required for swimming pool heating are relatively low, inexpensive but durable polypropelene plastic solar panels can be used for pool heating. However, because a swimming pool holds several thousand gallons of water, small temperature changes require large amounts of energy. So solar pool heating usually requires a large solar collector area: typically 75–100 percent of the swimming pool surface area
Electric Heat Pump
Swimming pool heat pumps work just like central air conditioning, only in reverse. Instead of removing heat from the inside of your home and expelling it to the outside air, a pool heat pump takes heat out of the outside air and transfers it into your pool. Swimming pool heat pumps can extract useful heat energy in air temperatures as low as 55°F, so they are very effective in Florida’s mild climate.
A swimming pool heat pump has two major advantages:
•It’s substantially cheaper to operate than a gas heater (see below). The electricity required to run a swimming pool heat pump typically costs only one third as much as propane to deliver the same heat, and only half the cost of natural gas.
•Heat pumps deliver heat at night and during cloudy and rainy weather, so they offer more consistent and reliable performance than a solar pool heater, although this performance comes at a cost.
Heat pumps do use electricity and electric rates will continue to rise. So if you have a suitable unshaded area to install a solar pool heating system, we strongly recommend that you consider the first of our three pool heating options
Gas Heaters
Gas pool heaters, which burn either propane or natural gas, can maintain your pool at pretty much any temperature you desire. Want 90°F pool water over the holidays? No problem.
Well, actually there is a problem. The cost of both propane and natural gas has roughly tripled during the last 10 years.
With propane now costing $3.00 per gallon or more, it can easily cost as much as $4,000 to keep a 14' x 28' Suncoast pool at 80°F on a year-round basis.
That said, the great advantage of gas is the ability to maintain any temperature in pretty much any weather. As long as you are willing and able to pay. This might be important if you must use your pool for therapeutic exercise. Even so, with today’s high and rising fuel costs, we recommend that a gas heater be installed only as a backup system to a primary solar pool heater when 85–90°F pool water temperatures are medically required. Most gas heaters are primarily used to heat spas with required very little gas.