Swimming Pools Made Simple

What You Need To Know About Indoor Swimming Pools

Swimming pools are one of the most popular and enjoyable “extras” you can have in your home. They can provide hours of safe, healthy exercise and fun. Especially if you live in an area prone to cold, long winters, an indoor swimming pool can extend that enjoyment throughout the year. But any in-ground pool, whether indoor or outdoor, represents a significant investment. Not only that, indoor swimming pools carry some important implications for the comfort, safety, and longevity of the rest of the structure. It is very important, if you are considering the installation of an indoor swimming pool or the purchase of a home that already has one, that you have all the facts in order to make the best decision.

Ventilation: It’s Not Just about the Humidity

One of the most important factors for long term use and enjoyment of your indoor swimming pool is proper ventilation and climate control. This is one of the most important indoor pool design decisions, but it’s one that many people never consider because you don’t really see the equipment involved. Also, the consequences of inadequate or poorly installed ventilation often don’t become obvious for many years. But this area is where many indoor swimming pool owners make their most costly mistakes.

Chlorine Plus Humidity: A Troublesome Combination

Some builders, knowing that the increased indoor humidity that comes with indoor pools can cause deterioration in structural materials, advocate installation of high-end, expensive finishes and materials. While that’s not a bad idea in itself, what many people don’t remember is that chlorine, the same chemical in bleach, not only dissolves into the pool water, but also evaporates into the atmosphere. That means that tiny amounts of this highly corrosive element go everywhere the air goes in the indoor pool enclosure. Given enough time and enough buildup, this means trouble for any finish or structural material no matter how much it cost or how durable it’s supposed to be. Not only that, but recent research suggests that long term exposure to atmospheric combinations of chlorine, sweat, and urine (sorry, folks, but kids don’t always get out before they go) can contribute to higher incidence of asthma and other respiratory diseases.

The Answer: Achieving the Right Humidity Balance

A qualified installer of indoor swimming pools can advise you about the optimal humidity level you should maintain in your swimming pool enclosure, and can also advise you about the right dehumidifying equipment to install in order to make sure your indoor swimming pool gives you years of fun – and nothing else!

How A Swimming Pool Heater Can “Save” Your Summer

If you have an above ground swimming pool, you probably love almost every aspect of it. You probably love that it was less expensive than an in ground swimming pool and that you and your family can enjoy it just as much as an in ground pool. You probably also love how easy it is to maintain your above ground swimming pool and how easy it is to cover and store for the winter.

What you may not love, however, is the fact that it is not always the temperature that you want it to be. With less water, it is easier for the above ground swimming pool to lose heat quickly. As soon as the evenings start to get cooler, the water becomes too cold to swim in. Even though the days are still hot enough to warrant swimming in the above ground swimming pool, the cold nights make it nearly impossible to do so.

Even an in ground pool loses much of the daytime heat gain during the cool nights of spring and autumn, rendering your swimming pool unusable except during the warmest months of the year. In some areas, this can be only a few short weeks.

However, there is a solution to your problem. A swimming pool heater is a great solution to the problem of keeping your swimming pool water at a comfortable temperature both before and after the water would normally be warm enough to swim in.

Gas Swimming Pool Heater

One type of swimming pool heater is a gas heater. Many gas pool heaters are available in either natural gas or propane models and many models are easily convertible from natural gas to propane by switching out the gas nozzles. Gas pool heaters can be expensive and require professional installation to be sure that all the connections are made safely. They do not require a lot of maintenance, but when they do it may be expensive to do so.

Depending on where you live, a gas pool heater can be very economical to operate. It’s hard to think about adding to your electric bill if you live in an area where you might need your pool heater and your air conditioner going at the same time of year. And a gas pool heater is the best choice if you need to heat your pool water quickly or if you need to raise the temperature more than a few degrees. In just a few hours a gas heater will heat your pool to the mid 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Jandy’s LXi Low NOx heater is a very popular example of this type of swimming pool heater. You can learn more about its features in our review.

Read our Review of the Jandy LXi Low NOx Natural Gas Pool Heater

Electric Swimming Pool Heater (Heat Pump)

Another type of swimming pool heater is an electric heat pump. These heaters are not as expensive as a gas unit, but they are still quite pricey. They are usually thermostatically controlled so that the pump runs only when the water temperature falls below your desired setting, which saves on your electric bill. On the down side, it will take a couple of days to heat your pool to the mid 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and the pool pump will have to be run twenty four hours a day until it reaches that temperature.

The AquaPro Pro 600 heat pump is an excellent value for an above ground swimming pool . Aqua Pro also makes models for inground pools in a variety of sizes.

Read our Review of the AquaPro Pro 600 Above Ground Heat Pump

Solar Swimming Pool Heater

The third type of swimming pool heater is a solar heater. This is by far the cheapest swimming pool heater to operate long-term. This system is made up of a set of black tubes that the water is run through by your existing pool pump. The tubes are put in an optimal position to receive the most sunlight possible, making the tubes absorb the maximum amount of heat during the day. As long as you have sunlight to work with, you can heat your pool to the mid 80’s relatively quickly (though not as quickly as gas or electric heaters), but at less energy cost and less greenhouse gas emissions than the other heaters.

Because the energy source for solar swimming pool heaters is free sunlight, the cost of the initial installation pays out over a period of two to three years in energy savings.

Enersol, in business since 1979, manufactures an excellent solar pool heater system that comes with an 18 year warranty, one of the longest in the industry.

Read our review of the Enersol Solar Pool Heater systems.