Swimming Pool Heat Pumps - A Great Way To Heat Your Pool

Without question, there are few pools you're likely to find to be at a good swimming temperature year-round. While a chilly dip can be fun once in a while, its still preferable to be able to warm up your pool at will. Kids love a warm pool - most of them will never want to leave. You'll find that, with the addition of a swimming pool heat pump to your pool, you will not only be increasing the value of your home, but making space for a lot of family fun and memories.

First off, though, lets be clear that the proposition of heating an entire pool needn't be as drastically power-consuming as it sounds. Heat pumps for swimming pools aren't equipped with heating elements to make their own heat. Instead, as the swimming pools water gets dragged through the pump, the heat pumps fan draws in surrounding air into a chamber with an evaporator coil, which is hollowed out to contain some kind of liquid refrigerant. When this refrigerant substance absorbs the warm air it becomes a much warmer gas, which is then channeled to pass through a compressor chamber. When the gas get compressed, the particles in it get closer together (remember high school physics?) and so the gas gets even hotter.

It then passes through a condenser, where the gass heat is transmitted from its pipe housing into the water. Being cooled by the surrounding water, the gas returns to liquid form, and runs back to the evaporator coil so that the process can repeat itself. The heated water goes back into the pool, disperses through it and so, logically, increases the net temperature of the pool.

Now what all this science winds up meaning to you is that while a swimming pool heat pump might cost a bit more to install when you initially buy it, its less likely to be affected by shifts in the weather or the absence of sunlight than solar-paneling solutions, and will be more energy efficient than the majority of heating pump systems out there - the simple fact is that, since they've been around for so much longer than other forms of inground pool heater technology, they've matured in their design and are now better thought out and put together.

Of course, the way that Ive described heat pumps for swimming pools above is a gross oversimplification designed to illustrate the details of the process for the layperson. The real-life complexity of a swimming pool heat pump means that you really don't want anyone but a fully qualified pool professional (yes, believe me, there are such things) working with them. Think about it - any device reliant on hot gas is simply not going to be safely adjusted by amateur hands. Ask your family and friends if they've needed to hire such a person in the past, and if there's anyone that they can recommend. Proper installation will optimize the functionality of the heat pump, and ultimately save you a good sum of money on your electric bills.

After this concern, you need to consider whether, regardless of the initial price of installation, you can afford to have a swimming pool heat pump running and eating up electricity. As efficiently as it may operate, if your kids are left unchecked running the heater they could well rack up phenomenal bills unless you establish some way to regiment the amount of power the device uses. Consider buying a pool pump timer to cut off power use at a particular number of kilowatt hours.