[Greenbuilding] pool heating

[RT]

On Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:23:23 -0500, Gi Broucke <gbroucke at gmail.com> wrote:

> I thought of attaching a polyethylene pipe of 100m or so to my pump  
> outlet and allow it to float on top of the pool in a spiral - with a  
> weight attached to the outlet.

If one has a look at an aerial photograph of many of the neighbourhoods in  
Ottawa-Gatineau, it's quite surprising (to me anyway) to see that even in  
the urban area where the houses are cheek by jowl, there's a swimming pool  
in almost every backyard and this being MooseLand, you may be assured that  
every one of them is being heated.

A common strategy for DIYers is to simply put a 30m-or-so coil of iPEX  
pipe on the (usually asphalt)shingled roof of
either the house or garage or shed as a solar heater.

One of my neighbour's wives, appalled by the energy costs for the pool  
heater went to Costco and bought one of their "solar pool heaters" that  
looks sort of like those ribbed vinyl hall runners you used to see, with  
dinkly little water channels in the little ribs.

My neighbour, who isn't really the DIY sort but makes valiant attempts at  
it nonetheless, dutifully hooked hp the Costco "solar heater" to the  
pool's plumbing, and laying the collector on an equator facing slope.

I think that it was about the next day, they returned home to find that  
one of the plastic fittings on the end of the hall runner had burst ...  
and the hall runner having been placed lower than the above-ground pool,  
resulted in all of the water draining out of the pool and into the soil  
adjacent to the house foundation.

D'oh!

Neighbour pulled out the caulking gun and some PL ### construction  
adhesive, gunked-up the re-assembled fitting, bought another tanker  
truck-full of water ... and the next day, after the plumbing fitting burst  
again, repeated the process.

Eventually, with clods of the repeated construction adhesive applications  
and additions of gear clamps, the leaking was slowed to a trickle instead  
of catastrophic bursts.

But then one day during a windy spell, the wind picked up the hall runner,  
flipped it over and the "fixed" fitting burst again.

Fortunately, winter is making signs of coming round so the pool is "closed  
for the season".

Whereas yachts are big vessels into which one pours an endless stream of  
cash, swimming pools are big holes into which one pours an endless stream  
of resources (including cash).


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply"
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