So, it’s the end of the summer and most of the country is suffocating in a heat wave that makes you pant like a dog whenever you step outside. The last thing in the world you want to think about is a pool heater / heat pump for your pool.
Yeah? I’ll talk to you in a few weeks when a mid-afternoon swim feels like the last 20 minutes of “Titanic.”
Cooler weather is coming, and if you don’t have a heat pump, you’ll need one soon. One of the most common questions homeowners ask is exactly how big a heat pump should be in relation to the pool. If we were tacky and classless, now is the time where we would make a joke about size mattering.
But we’re not. We’re pool professionals. So we’re just going to tell you what we know about choosing the right heat pump for your soon-to-be bone-chillingly cold swimming pool.
BTUs and Thermal Efficiency
Heat pumps are categorized by the number of BTUs (British thermal units) they produce every hour. If you get a pump with too few BTUs, which many people do, you’ll have an inefficient heating system that has to work too hard and run too long to keep your pool from being hospitable to anything except fur seals. This inefficiency leads to dramatically higher operating costs and shortens the life of the pump.
If you go the other way, you’re going to overpay and buy more pump than you need. There are a lot of variables involved in choosing the right pump. Luckily, we have a secret formula — and by secret, we mean it’s all over the Internet — to help you select just the right pump.
Follow these simple, easy steps. Actually, it’s pretty complicated. Try to focus.
- Select your desired water temperature (°F).
- Determine the average air temperature during the coldest month that you plan to use your pool (°F).
- Take the average air temperature and subtract it from your preferred water temperature. This reveals the required temperature rise.
- Now, calculate your swimming pool’s total surface area in square feet.
- If you have a circular pool, use the formula: radius x radius x 3.14.
- For kidney-shaped pool, use the formula: length x width x 0.75
- If you have an oval-shaped pools, use the formula: (0.5 x length) x (0.5 width) x 3.14
- For rectangular pools, use the formula length x width
- Finally, calculate the necessary BTU output per hour, which you get by multiplying surface area x temperature rise x 12.
See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Hello? Are you still awake?
OK, so that’s the formula you need to follow to find your very own Goldilocks heat pump — not too cold, not too hot, but just right.
Parrot Bay Pools Services the Following Areas: Fayetteville, Fuquay-Varina, Apex, Dunn, Clinton, Raeford, Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Raleigh and surrounding areas.