Thanks for the video and the honesty! It seems lots of people try to intentionally deceive. My advice is to go gas or go home! With electrical resistive heating, the math simply is not in your favor. 1500W translates to around 5000 BTU, so you were putting 10,000 BTU into a pool with 112,000 pounds of water in it. It takes 1 BTU to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit, so theoretically you should have seen a 1 degree rise every 11 hours. This just isn't enough to overcome the heat loss, as you demonstrated. My pool is a little smaller at 8000 gallons and I've had a lot of success the past few years with a cheap Chinese tankless water heater ($80). It uses around 60000 BTU of natural gas, which translates to about a 3/4 degree temperature rise every hour. This is very cheap to operate and very effective. If you can run the gas line, it's a no-brainer solution. I have a video of it on my channel if you're interested.
Just like a hot tub. Heat evaporates through the surface. You should put a cover on the pool to keep the heat in. I use one of these with a cheap cover and my pool sits at 84. Without the cover it was basically useless.
Ahhh I've been entertaining this idea for a couple of years now; also have a 24' pool... in New Hampshire... *sad face*. Thanks for sharing this vid! It was awesome and just saved me from another failed attempt at heating this thing!
I've created a heat exchanger/ heat sink type situation for an Intex 15 x 4, approximately 4000+ gallons, using ONE of these bucket heaters. I purchased something called a wort chiller used for home brewing beer. It's basically a big copper coil with fittings already on it that will connect to a garden hose. I bought 2 high temp hoses (they're blue) and a cheap pond/aquarium pump. It's advertised as 550gph but the reviews complained that it wasn't nearly that powerful, which is what I was looking for. If you go shopping for a smaller pump, it's tough to find fittings that are garden hose size. It's 30w. Previously I had one that was 850gph and it moved the water too quickly to pick up sufficient heat. It was 58w. So I placed the wort chiller in a 5 gallon bucket, attached the high temp hoses, filled the bucket with water, dropped in the immersion heater, & let the water get to near boiling before turning the pump on. Once you turn the pump on, the bucket maintains about 140-150°. Oh! Forgot to mention that I insulated the bucket, hillbilly style, with an old queen size t-shirt sheet, and covered it with a piece of rigid pink foam insulation. Without it, I was only getting 133° max temp with the pump running, resulting in the hose exit temp being about 90°. Adding the insulation added 10° easy. Boosted my hose exit temp over 103° at times. Anyway, I forgot & left it running for about 10 hours today, & my pool is now 94°. It had gotten to 75° with the solar cover alone. If you've got a bigger pool, you could probably just bend MORE copper and use a trash can instead of a bucket. Bigger heat exchanger, bigger heat sink. I believe the wort chiller was advertised as 25 feet of half inch copper. I believe 100 feet in a 30 gallon trash can achieve the same result for this guy's size. May have to use both immersion heaters, may not. It works. I'll be swimming in a giant hot tub tomorrow 😂
@@feliciagarcia1000 These results are mathematically infeasible so I too would like to see a video. I think there was a miscommunication because I read it as taking only 10 hours to get to 94 starting from something like 75. 1500 watts over 10 hours should not be enough to heat 4000 gallons by 19 degrees F even if you assume an additional 100% sun conversion and no loses at all so it must have been running for a couple days prior as well and he meant that with only the sun cover it just got to 75. Though I believe a wort chiller is a nicer setup in general versus putting them directly into a pool there's nothing about this design that should technically improve transfer efficiency (unless they have auto shuttoff when the surrounding water reaches a certain temp which I think some do which is why they are weird in pools)
@@feliciagarcia1000 But if you are still wondering it's fairly straightforward. As he laid out your setup just needs a bucket of water, a wort chiller (ie spiraled copper tubing) in the bucket, the heater also in the bucket, and a pump that sends water from the pool through the copper tube then back into the pool. The water in the bucket should never touch the water in the pool (both ends of the copper should be outside the bucket). This part is a slightly tricky because you need to find or my your own fittings for whatever tube sizes your using. Also the copper tube (and bucket) might get quite hot and you need to make sure the water is flowing or overheating can occur. Otherwise that's about it but you can also add some insulation around the bucket like he said. Also even though its not boiling yet if his measurements at least are true you really dont want to be anywhere near 150F + water in your bucket (for reference turn your tap to the highest setting and you might think its already too hot to handle - that's around 125 in most houses.) so make sure there's no chance of a spill. I'd try to keep the heating element away from the sides of the bucket as well.
Do you have any additional information/pictures/video about this setup? I am looking to do this for a 3500 gallon pool where a electric/gas/propane heat pump is not feasible due to location
Thank you for making this video. I was looking online trying to find a small pool heater and looking to see how well they work and came across your video. Your awesome
I used a new radiator that I had bought for my car that didn’t fit. I placed it on top of a 4 burner propane grill and plumbed it into the pool pump. I ran it for about 5 hours on high until the propane ran out. It definitely knocked the chill out. My pool is only 15’ by 42” deep. Might not be the most feasible way to do it but it worked for me for a one time start up in the spring.
Folks, this really does work for bathtubs or five gallon buckets, I use one when I wish to wash my white towels and other large items in my Lehman’s manual washer and I do this possibly once a week. You never plug it in and then remove it from the water unless you wish to ruin them, I do no know if this nice fellow unplugged them first but if he didn’t, no wonder they did not work? My water literally comes to a rolling boil with my heater and I have broken them when I forgot to unplug it first!
With a pool cover to help with evaporation losses you might pick up 2-3 degrees...probably costs about .30 per hour to operate if you pay .10 per kWh for electric, so 24 hours cost you around $7 give it take. It's costly to run for any extended time. Still a cool idea and glad someone tried it and shared!
Great try ,lol i like your video ,as HASTER Portable immersion water heater manufacturer ,i would say 13.953gallons is really too big ,normally for one single piece we would not recommand for over 200gallon.A lot customer they r asking this question ,now your video helped me so much .For mini pool and kiddie pool with 2 pieces together it works but for too big pool this may not help then .
Thanks for doing that even though it didn't work out. Information is information, this was useful and gave me an idea. I'm hopping it might work for a 55 gallon barrels for green house thermal mass.
THANK YOU for doing this and posting. I have developed a 2 step DIY system. It uses coiled pex on the rooftop that feeds a used household electric water heater that feeds the pool.
I have a 250 gallon inflatable pool. The only good way I have found ot heat it is to pump hot water directly in the pool from a hot water spicket. It works great, but I am pretty sure my water, sewage and electric bill will sky rocket if im doing this 3- 4 times a week, but it does heat the water fast!!
So, you have 3000 watts of heat, (3.41 BTU per watt), means you have 9420 BTUs. A single BTU can raise 1 pound of water, 1 degree per hour. Your pool is 14000 gallons, times 8 pounds per gallon, means to raise your 24-round pool by 1 degree, per hour, you would need to input 112,000 BTU to raise the total volume of water by 1 degree, per hour. 9420 BTU would take approximately 11 hours to raise 1 degree for 14000 gallons. This is typically why you will see gas heaters around 100k-250k BTU. Truth is heating using heat pumps with a COP of 3-5 will take that same 3000 watts on energy and multiply it by 3-5 COP can mean you can get 9000-15000 watts of heat energy from a heat pump (using only 3000 watts) or (30K BTU - 51k BTU) I hope this helps!
Without watching this video, I can give you some advice on this because I myself have tried some swimming pool stuff like this. First, you'll have to find a way to mount the heaters so that they hang suspended in the water at least a foot away from the side wall of the pool. The cords will hang out over the pool edge so that, with two extension cords plugged in to operate the heaters, you're all set to go. HOWEVER, while this setup sounds good in theory, two 1,500-watt heaters simply won't work because they won't heat an entire pool fast enough. You would need an army of these heaters in order to do any good water heating, and even then you would need to remove the heaters when you actually swim in the pool.
Solar collectors can be made pretty easy. Get some old double pane sliding glass doors, usually free, put black pipes in a black insulated box and boom hot water and lots of it.
I got one of those 10 foot round 3 feet deep budget pools last summer right as the lockdown happened(and before the scumbags started gouging the prices of these) I didn’t buy a solar cover as I thought 58 bucks was a bit much for something that really only warms up water an inch below it. I thought about buying one of these heaters and just running it all day to see what might happen for a small pool but I knew the electric cost as well as the water bill was gonna skyrocket. Thx for showing what would happen I’m just gonna bite the bullet and get a plastic solar cover
That's a huge pool. If would have made a big difference if you had a solar cover, but overall pools have huge heat loss. Same principle as heating your house. If your house was made of vinyl, your furnace would be running all the time and would probably not be able to keep your house very warm.
The biggest difference maker is the cold overnight temperatures, and no cover, that will kill any gains from most heaters. That said, yeah, those are not going to do jack, regardless
But how much did you lose overnight without a solar cover insulating the pool? My guess is about 4-5 degree lose over night. So you may have actually gained 5-6 degrees in 24hrs . Which is not bad for a couple bucket heaters as long as it only cost about $3. In electricity.
Thank you for the video and running the test. Looking for something inexpensive but effective to heat our pond when winter comes. I'm in Houston Texas but winters get crazy sometimes. I think this might work. It's only 300 gallon above ground pond.
There is no philosophy here - it is about physics. To heat 13590 gallons of water from 60F to 80F in 24 hours requires a 27kW heater or 18 pieces of 1500W heaters. And only if the pool is insulated and not cooled.
I actually think these things are for small pools or spas and just to add more like 5-6 C (if not less) just before using your pool rather than a 11 C (20 F). I have a 12' above the ground pool. I use a solar blanket, will install a Beluga adapter to connect to a cheap black hose DIY system. That gadget might help me to get a few degrees more, specially in august.
In the manual/directions it shows the bucket heater does not function when fully submersed. The heating element (square box at top) needs to be above water. Maybe they weren’t even “heating.” Maybe worth another shot?
I did keep the black portion out of the water and it was indeed heating because it would sizzle like a hot pan when i put it back in the water after checking it. I also looked down at it under water and could see the heat wave ripples in the water next to the rods.
You got trees behind you look on you tube wood burner fire pit anything coil some tubing up that's metal hook your water up to it and enjoy. Get a burn barrel rap metal tubing around it now the trick is leave the water flowing before starting so it does not steam and build pressure. And let me tell you these get hot I mean hot.
the two heating elements at 3KW electricity consumption multiply by 24 hours thats 72 Kw used , multiply 72 by .15 cents the average price of electricity and the total bill is $10.80
Not enough transfer of heat from those small heating elements. How about modifying and plumbing in the inlet and outlet lines from the sand filter to a small electric 12 or 20 gallon residential water heater? Theoretically, the water heater could heat a lot more water in less time…..
The only thing that you did was accelerate the evaporation process in your pool. In theory you were just boiling the water directly surrounding the heaters which just heated that water closest to them and evaporated as it reached the surface. What you would need to do in order for this to work is to cover the pool with a solar cover while using the heaters but also have the heater directly in front of the pools pump where the water comes back into the pool from the filter so as to be heating the water which is passing over the heater instead of just boiling it to evaporation.
It won't cause immediate boiling and evaporation any more than your kettle or pot on the stove does. The water is constantly moving about, even just slowly. There's still a limited rate at which the heat energy is transferred into the individual water molecules. As they start to get warmer, they become less dense and begin to rise, causing a convection current. That warmer water moving away is then replaced by colder water, which begins to heat. You won't get water to start boiling much at all until the cold water coming in is just about at boiling temperature. That's why a kettle of cold water doesn't immediately start creating water vapor (steam) and rather abruptly starts to boil once it reaches the boiling point.
Thanks for this! Am I wrong that stainless steel would take a bit from chlorine! I use copper on my in-ground pool for stuff. I kind of wondered if it would kick-start the heat on the spa, but looks like that’s a nope.
I wonder, if the heater were ducted, sat within a bucket with slits cut in its rim and base then it would heat the bucket enough for convection to create a circulation and work much better..gonna try it. I have a much smaller pool too.
Thanks for the video it helped a lot I was gonna buy a couple and try it in my pool thats a lot smaller than your but I'm sure I would get the same effect.
Has anyone tried this with a hot tub ? I might try one to help my 500 gallon tub that only heats 2-3 degrees per hour . If you were wondering , that is a brand new tub
Why wouldn't you put the cover on though? I get that they suck, but its even more obvious that it wouldn't have a chance without a cover on. Would have been way better to see it in a "best case" scenario.
I have a 14' round above ground pool. And I just bought 1 of those. Just curious what was the outside air temp overnite? Being I already bought one, when it gets here I'll try it and I'll put the cover on the pool. If it only raised my pool 1° I'll return it....
Just get a rubber hose and lay it in the sun and run one end into the pit of your pool where the water comes out and the other one into the pool with heat the water for free
So u can be in the water with this immersion heater? I see so many conflicting answers about this on Amazon some say you can be in the water or touch the water in the description then further down on the same product it says that you absolutely cannot be in the water while these are on so I really need to know which one it is cause I ain’t trying to die over getting a hot swimming pool lol
I ran a black water hose one end stuck into the opening of the water outlet. Run the rest of the hose on ground in sun with the other end back in pool! I brought my temp up 6 degrees in 5 hours.
