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Alternative heating sources for your pool

260 194 Nisha Muire
Nothing beats a swimming pool in the summertime! If you are fortunate enough to have a swimming pool at your Toronto home, then you likely have had to consider the options when it came to heating sources. Although a warm summer can sufficiently heat a pool for maximum enjoyment, our weather rarely leaves room for more than a few weeks of summer heating. Instead, it is necessary to rely on alternate sources of heat to ensure a constant, pleasurable temperature for your pool.
 
There are a number of options when it comes to heating your pool. Although most people will install install an electric or gas-powered heater, those options will likely add hundreds of dollars to your energy costs and will also run you a few hundred dollars to install. There are several alternative heating options that some ingenious people have concocted to avoid those extra costs while still maintaining a comfortable water temperature even during the colder parts of the summer months.
 
Solar
Solar blankets for your pool are a great idea. Conventional solar blankets can be costly, but why-not build your own solar blanket for a fraction of what you would pay for a manufactured one? While there are a number of great ideas on Pinterest, one of the easiest and least expensive is using hula-hoops and polyurethane. All you need to do is buy a few hula-hoops, cover them in polyurethane and toss them into your pool and let the sun do the rest. Easy to build, easy to remove and easy to replace, they can raise your pool’s water temperature sufficiently to make it comfortable.
 
Another inexpensive solar option is to use black tubing, coiled in a snake formation that you place on your lawn or on you roof for maximum solar exposure. A pump pumps the water from your pool through this coil that is heated by the sun. While it won’t heat up your pool they way a conventional heater can, it will definitely take the chill away.
 
Wood
Another terrific and inexpensive option for heating the water in your pool is to harness the heat from your firepit or outdoor fireplace. Using a pump to pump the water from your pool into a coil of copper wire suspended in a barrel over or next to your fire pit can heat the water up beautifully – full instructions on how to build this very practical device can be found at any number of handy websites online.
 
Although we’ve only covered two options here for heating your pool, a quick search online will reveal a number of very useful links to great ideas for heating your pool while keeping your costs down.

Author

Nisha Muire

All stories by: Nisha Muire