evacuated tubes for swimming pool

[alonso]

Hi, sorry I am new to this so please bear with me! at present we have a 15ft above ground swimming pool we have a 3kw heater but it is to expensive to run long term, I have a black solar mat that is connected between the filter and pool and when the sun is on it works quite well, could I use an evacuated tube system and circulate the pool water through it, would I need a seperate pump as I would mount it on the extension roof  (at present the mat is ground level) is ther anything else I would need to do this? lastly would I need to fit some sort of themostat to the pump to only circulate water when it starts to warm up
Thanks
Allan

[Ian]

I know your solution sounds elegant - but do not do it !

I assume you add chemicals (chlorine compounds) to the pool. These compounds eat copper pipes. The manifold of these evacuated tube heaters are made from copper.

You will see that all your pipework around the pool is made of plastic (or maybe even stainless steel) - this is because of the chemicals in the pool water.

The way to achieve your objective is to use a pool heat exchanger. These are readily available and they are made out of stainless steel. The evacuated tube system would operate in its own sealed system, and yes, you would need a pump to circulate the water.

As you alrady have a heater, investigate how it is plumbed in. If it is on its own circuit, you may be able to plumb the solar panel into the same circuit. If there is not a heat exchanger already in your system, it means your current heater is made of stainless steel (quite common really) and you will have to install a new one.

Navitron have all this stuff on their web site and the shop - although sometimes you have to look for it.

Once you have a pump in your system, you can put the panel (reasonably) wherever you want - but look out for pipe losses (heat) and make sure all the pipe runs are well insulated and protected from abuse.

It is not 100% necessary to install a pump stat but it is more elegant to do so. The panels and pipework should be well insulated and therefore freezing should not be an issue in the winter.

I hope this helps.

regards,
Ian