You're a man cut from the same cloth as myself. I love the dedication and execution of your vision. Someday all my other HoneyDo projects will be complete and I'll have time to work on exactly this type of setup, as I haven't been working on solar much since messing around with the Electrodacus and MPP 5048 equipment a few years ago. Really nice setup you have there, I'm very impressed!
Thank you so much. It is a larger system that can handle everything around the house I can connect to. I am so glad I started off grid solar 4 years ago. Now I share what is possible with off grid solar and the information I found out with practical use. I was a little if fun learning own my own. Hope you have a truly wonderful and extremely blessed 2024.
Nice video filled with good tips & trix. I'm setting up a much easier solar powered pool heater right now and my goal is 30°C / 86°F in the pool. I'm starting with 250 meters / 820 feet of 20 mm / ¾ inch PEM hose in a flat rooftop setup. A 20V rainwater barrel pump (2,000 liters - 528 gallons / hour) will be connected directly to a single solar panel, so it's a completely automatic system controlled and powered by the sun. No sun = no pump = no heating. Since I'm located at 60° latitude in the northern hemisphere, I'll guess it'll be some problems and math to solve along the way, but it'll be fun. Keep up your good work
I did that with the 1/2 inch black drip line. 200 feet in a circle mounted in a black painted box.i had 3 sets connected to a Ryobi 18 volt sump pump. The biggest problem to overcome is having the water go through the tubing slow enough to pumice up the heat. It basically almost has to trickle out in order to pick up the heat. I have a 15,900 gallon pool and honestly using a thermal pool cover heated the water better than the tub I g heater. It was a lot of fun building but lack luster results. The 127,000 but pool heater is able to heat with the pool pump running at 2200-2700 rpm’s and heat water 1-3 degrees per hour while going through a 2 inch diameter pvc plumbing. . The more tubing you can use and the smaller the inside diameter, the better the results for the solar pool heater. Thank you so much for your excellent feedback on making a solar pool heater with one solar panel. I hope it will give you better results than I got. Hope you have a truly wonderful and extremely blessed 2024
@@diy-solar-guy I forgot to tell you that my pool only contains 3,300 gallons. I've seen some videos with these black boxes with circle mounted hose, but it seems to be alot of troubles with them, so I choosed this setup instead. Sure the wind will lower the surface temp on the hose, but as long as I'll get around 110°F in the return from around 70°F pool water, then I'm happy. In Sweden there is still freezing temp at night time, so I haven't been able to test my theory in reality so far, but I'm eager to start.
Whats your total amount of solar panels? I have 15kw (48 Panels) and am about to add 8kw (16 Panels) of bifacials so I will be over 23kw. Lets prepare for the Arizona summer! :D
I have 48-250 watt mono used solar panels connected with another 10-400 watt bifocal solar panels on EG4 charge controller to supplement my load for 127,000 btu pool heater. Can not parallel Growatt low frequency inverters so I use the charge controller connected to bus bar if Growatt inverter. I also have the second Growatt inverter with 26-250 watt solar panels. The EG4 inverters have 16-250 watt solar panels connected. Total 26,500 watts of solar available usually only need around 5000 watts for ac and pool. Better to be over paneled than under paneled. Especially when the used solar panels were $20-$40 each. Nice to have the power available if I need it. Can run my pool heater, upstairs and downstairs ac and garage ac as well as pool pump, 3 chest freezers and 24.5 cf fridge/freezer at the same time. Was nice and cool in house and garage yesterday with 94 degrees outside. Did not use any grid power to cool house or garage. Hope you stay cool this summer in AZ. Thanks for you input and hope you have a truly wonderful and extremely blessed 2024.
Thank you for all of this! I have several questions if you have time: How long was your pool season? Do you have to bypass your pool heat pump when night temps get down to create a frost? What reel do you use for your pool cover? How long does it take to remove and to cover (1 person)? I have a 20,000 gallon pool in SF East Bay. I would love to get a heat pump with dedicated PV to swim daily all year before work. I have roof top solar water to heat my pool, but I get some frosty days in the winter so I have to bypass it in winter. With my solar water, I can swim April 15 to Oct 15 without owning a pool cover. I can swim down to 70 or even colder, but if it takes time to uncover and cover the pool each day - I probably won't do it.
Hi, my pool season last year through December using pool cover and my 17,000 Btu pool heater. I started my pool season in Early February with the help of my 127,000 Btu pool heat pump heater which I use on my solar. I use both pool heaters on my solar. This year I changed my solar arrays and also switched the poly solar panels for mono solar panels. I now use the EG4 3000 watt off grid inverters,4 in parallel and should be able to produce the 6500-7500 watts needed to run pool heater during the day. I run my pool over night at 1200 rpm’s and during the day when sun is on the pool cover, I increase rpm’s on pool pump to 2400. I do not have a bypass for heaters. The water flows through the heaters when on and off so no need for a bypass. I bought my pool cover and reel from Amazon, both under $100 each. I can use the 17,000 Btu pool heater during the day to keep water warm and add 2-5 degrees when very little sun on pool. If you get sun on your pool all day long in winter or most of the day, that will help a lot to heat pool. I usually drop 2-5 degrees overnight when it gets below 50 degrees overnight. That’s where that 17,000 pool heat pump does a good job to recoup the temp during the day. It in January and February I have to use the 127,000 Btu pool heater. It gets down below 50 degrees at night and even down into the 30’s in February. But if I run the big pool heater 4-6 hours a day on solar, I can keep my pool temp between 82-88 degrees. The 127,000 Btu pool heater needs around 12,000 watts of solar from mono panels to run and I can only produce the 6500-7500 watts needed between 10am to 3-4 pm. You could run the pool pump on grid power like I use to, it is 9 cents a kWh out here in the winter so 9 times 6 kWh is 54 cents an hour to run times 6 hours $3.24 a day to keep pool heated using solar pool cover as well. The reel had to be put together and works well but when I just want to clean pool or go for a quick swim, I just pull pool cover off and fold over on ground as I remove it, much easier to put back on when I’m done cleaning or swimming. I do all this by myself and it only takes about 2-4 minutes to remove pool cover and the same to pull cover back over the pool. The pool cover with my shape of pool, like a peanut, tends to be hard to roll up and flattens out the bubbles because there is a lot of drag when reeling up so bubbles get smashed. You want the bubbles to stay full size to get the heat. The sun out here in Phoenix AZ kills the pool covers in just 2 years, I don’t think the sun out there is as intense so you might get 3-4 years out of pool cover. I usually get the 14 mill plastic cover. 200 um. Price has increased to over $100. Last bought October 2023. Try just keeping the pool cover on without a heater. My pool is still 90 degrees even though we got down to 86 degrees last week. If your pool has sun most of the day, your pool will stay warm. If it get a lot of sun, run your pool pump on 2000 rpm’s to distribute the heat in water evenly, pool covers tend to heat the top 12 inches really hot but not below that so you have to run pool pump on at least 2000 rpm’s to evenly distribute heated water. Then just 1000-2000 rpm over night just to keep the chlorine moving through pool so you don’t get algae. I installed a jacuzzi variable speed pump myself. Paid for itself in electric cost savings in just 2 years. When I put pool cover back on after swimming, I just get in pool, grab pool cover and walk it over to the other end, takes maybe 1-2 minutes at most. Then I just get out. Try to keep pool cover flat without any large bubbles when on water. Pool cover will shrink a little over the 2 years. I usually cut the pool cover to the shape of my pool and add 3-4 inches extra all the way around the shape of pool. Wherever water is not covered, it will get cold in that area fast and the pool cover needs to lay as flat as possible to transfer heat. Bubbles need to face down. The smooth surface should be facing up, bubble in water. Like I said, if you get full sun on pool most of the day in winter, a pool cover might keep it warm most of the winter by itself with no heater. My pool is shaded right now thus time of year, only 40 percent of pool is in sun during the day, but it is enough to keep at 90 degrees by just using pool cover so far. Next month through February, the pool will be completely shaded for 4/5 months. That’s why I have to heat it. It a little over $100 to try using pool cover, what do you have to loose. Hope this info helps.
Good afternoon, I just posted a video trying to answer all your questions. Let me know if you have any other questions. Hope you have a truly blessed weekend and find all the answerers in the video you were looking for.
If you are on grid, everything needs to be inspected and permitted because you are connecting to the grid and can feed into the grid. Linemen can get hurt if you feed into the grid when grid is down. So it is regulated when you want to go grid tie. The electric company can tell when you connect to the grid with their remote monitoring on your meter. When you are off grid, the power you produce does not connect to grid and back feed into the grid. So they can not tell you are even doing anything. You are basically producing your own power and using it in a closed grid loop so there is no way to determine anything you produce. It depends on your state, county, city. We live in a village that is not even a city and has no police force but has a nearby city police patrol and sheriff patrol as well. Since we are only a village there are no policies to enforce. We are pretty much in the country side where people still ride horses on the side of the road, in fact they have horse trail with rock paths for those who ride horses so the horses don’t have to walk on cement or asphalt for long stretches. When building off grid, most install the solar panels on ground mounts. If you install on your roof, you have to go through association to get approval and go through the city to get approval, inspection and permits. So most use ground mounts solar panels and avoid all of that above. No association approval need as long as not above fence line view, just mount on the ground and wire to your inverter, connect. To battery, run your electrical wire to what you want to run from the outside of your house to outlets or to air conditioners. My suggestion is I always try to follow code for wire to make sure it is safe for us. It helps to do things the right way if you are going to go to all that expense. Do your due diligence in being knowledgeable on all you want to do. The more knowledge you have, the better your system will be in safety, efficiency, early payback and no breakdowns. My system has been on pretty much autopilot for over a year now. No need to interact on a daily or weekly basis. The inverters stay on 24 hours and we just need to turn the appliances on or off when needed. Just like using grid power. It is now that simple for us. Everything is running perfectly. Hope this helps. Have a truly blessed day
how much $$ invested vs. using natural gas to burst heat your pool in 4hrs? With my 200btu nat gas heater I can heat my Mi. pool 10k gallons from 70F to 90F in 4hrs, $20 in gas, $1500 for the heater. Once it's up to temp, it stays there. Just curious what you have invested, everything. Wires, all.
@@dmc4770 wow, if you can heat your pool that quick with 20 degrees in 4 hours for $20, I would not look to change a thing. Why invest in anything else when you can heat that cheap and quick. I only have electric at my house so I chose electric heat pump pool heater. My pool heater was $4200 and replace pool pump with variable speed pump for $900. I was going trough severe cancer, 2 cancers at the time and had excruciating joint pain and I noticed when in the pool my pain was hardly noticeable from the buoyancy of water. It took the weight off my joints. So for me it was worth not having to take pain meds equivalent to morphine every 4 hours round the clock. I have to keep pool cover on all the time in winter. The pool is completely in shade all day long so heating it is a 24 hour deal but in the spring February and March the pool is in sun 50 percent of the day so I start heating then. When I ran pool heater year round, I believe in the winter it was an extra $200 on electric bill running 24 hours a day.
You're a man cut from the same cloth as myself. I love the dedication and execution of your vision. Someday all my other HoneyDo projects will be complete and I'll have time to work on exactly this type of setup, as I haven't been working on solar much since messing around with the Electrodacus and MPP 5048 equipment a few years ago. Really nice setup you have there, I'm very impressed!
Thank you so much. It is a larger system that can handle everything around the house I can connect to. I am so glad I started off grid solar 4 years ago. Now I share what is possible with off grid solar and the information I found out with practical use. I was a little if fun learning own my own. Hope you have a truly wonderful and extremely blessed 2024.
Nice video filled with good tips & trix. I'm setting up a much easier solar powered pool heater right now and my goal is 30°C / 86°F in the pool. I'm starting with 250 meters / 820 feet of 20 mm / ¾ inch PEM hose in a flat rooftop setup. A 20V rainwater barrel pump (2,000 liters - 528 gallons / hour) will be connected directly to a single solar panel, so it's a completely automatic system controlled and powered by the sun.
No sun = no pump = no heating.
Since I'm located at 60° latitude in the northern hemisphere, I'll guess it'll be some problems and math to solve along the way, but it'll be fun.
Keep up your good work
I did that with the 1/2 inch black drip line. 200 feet in a circle mounted in a black painted box.i had 3 sets connected to a Ryobi 18 volt sump pump. The biggest problem to overcome is having the water go through the tubing slow enough to pumice up the heat. It basically almost has to trickle out in order to pick up the heat. I have a 15,900 gallon pool and honestly using a thermal pool cover heated the water better than the tub I g heater. It was a lot of fun building but lack luster results. The 127,000 but pool heater is able to heat with the pool pump running at 2200-2700 rpm’s and heat water 1-3 degrees per hour while going through a 2 inch diameter pvc plumbing. . The more tubing you can use and the smaller the inside diameter, the better the results for the solar pool heater. Thank you so much for your excellent feedback on making a solar pool heater with one solar panel. I hope it will give you better results than I got. Hope you have a truly wonderful and extremely blessed 2024
@@diy-solar-guy I forgot to tell you that my pool only contains 3,300 gallons.
I've seen some videos with these black boxes with circle mounted hose, but it seems to be alot of troubles with them, so I choosed this setup instead. Sure the wind will lower the surface temp on the hose, but as long as I'll get around 110°F in the return from around 70°F pool water, then I'm happy.
In Sweden there is still freezing temp at night time, so I haven't been able to test my theory in reality so far, but I'm eager to start.
@@SolarProjectsSweden thank you for the wonderful info. Let me know how it works for you. Always interested in anything solar.
@@diy-solar-guy I'll give you an update when it's up and running
Whats your total amount of solar panels? I have 15kw (48 Panels) and am about to add 8kw (16 Panels) of bifacials so I will be over 23kw. Lets prepare for the Arizona summer! :D
I have 48-250 watt mono used solar panels connected with another 10-400 watt bifocal solar panels on EG4 charge controller to supplement my load for 127,000 btu pool heater. Can not parallel Growatt low frequency inverters so I use the charge controller connected to bus bar if Growatt inverter. I also have the second Growatt inverter with 26-250 watt solar panels. The EG4 inverters have 16-250 watt solar panels connected. Total 26,500 watts of solar available usually only need around 5000 watts for ac and pool. Better to be over paneled than under paneled. Especially when the used solar panels were $20-$40 each. Nice to have the power available if I need it. Can run my pool heater, upstairs and downstairs ac and garage ac as well as pool pump, 3 chest freezers and 24.5 cf fridge/freezer at the same time. Was nice and cool in house and garage yesterday with 94 degrees outside. Did not use any grid power to cool house or garage. Hope you stay cool this summer in AZ. Thanks for you input and hope you have a truly wonderful and extremely blessed 2024.
Thank you for all of this! I have several questions if you have time:
How long was your pool season?
Do you have to bypass your pool heat pump when night temps get down to create a frost?
What reel do you use for your pool cover? How long does it take to remove and to cover (1 person)?
I have a 20,000 gallon pool in SF East Bay. I would love to get a heat pump with dedicated PV to swim daily all year before work. I have roof top solar water to heat my pool, but I get some frosty days in the winter so I have to bypass it in winter. With my solar water, I can swim April 15 to Oct 15 without owning a pool cover. I can swim down to 70 or even colder, but if it takes time to uncover and cover the pool each day - I probably won't do it.
Hi, my pool season last year through December using pool cover and my 17,000 Btu pool heater. I started my pool season in Early February with the help of my 127,000 Btu pool heat pump heater which I use on my solar. I use both pool heaters on my solar. This year I changed my solar arrays and also switched the poly solar panels for mono solar panels. I now use the EG4 3000 watt off grid inverters,4 in parallel and should be able to produce the 6500-7500 watts needed to run pool heater during the day. I run my pool over night at 1200 rpm’s and during the day when sun is on the pool cover, I increase rpm’s on pool pump to 2400. I do not have a bypass for heaters. The water flows through the heaters when on and off so no need for a bypass. I bought my pool cover and reel from Amazon, both under $100 each. I can use the 17,000 Btu pool heater during the day to keep water warm and add 2-5 degrees when very little sun on pool. If you get sun on your pool all day long in winter or most of the day, that will help a lot to heat pool. I usually drop 2-5 degrees overnight when it gets below 50 degrees overnight. That’s where that 17,000 pool heat pump does a good job to recoup the temp during the day. It in January and February I have to use the 127,000 Btu pool heater. It gets down below 50 degrees at night and even down into the 30’s in February. But if I run the big pool heater 4-6 hours a day on solar, I can keep my pool temp between 82-88 degrees. The 127,000 Btu pool heater needs around 12,000 watts of solar from mono panels to run and I can only produce the 6500-7500 watts needed between 10am to 3-4 pm. You could run the pool pump on grid power like I use to, it is 9 cents a kWh out here in the winter so 9 times 6 kWh is 54 cents an hour to run times 6 hours $3.24 a day to keep pool heated using solar pool cover as well. The reel had to be put together and works well but when I just want to clean pool or go for a quick swim, I just pull pool cover off and fold over on ground as I remove it, much easier to put back on when I’m done cleaning or swimming. I do all this by myself and it only takes about 2-4 minutes to remove pool cover and the same to pull cover back over the pool. The pool cover with my shape of pool, like a peanut, tends to be hard to roll up and flattens out the bubbles because there is a lot of drag when reeling up so bubbles get smashed. You want the bubbles to stay full size to get the heat. The sun out here in Phoenix AZ kills the pool covers in just 2 years, I don’t think the sun out there is as intense so you might get 3-4 years out of pool cover. I usually get the 14 mill plastic cover. 200 um. Price has increased to over $100. Last bought October 2023. Try just keeping the pool cover on without a heater. My pool is still 90 degrees even though we got down to 86 degrees last week. If your pool has sun most of the day, your pool will stay warm. If it get a lot of sun, run your pool pump on 2000 rpm’s to distribute the heat in water evenly, pool covers tend to heat the top 12 inches really hot but not below that so you have to run pool pump on at least 2000 rpm’s to evenly distribute heated water. Then just 1000-2000 rpm over night just to keep the chlorine moving through pool so you don’t get algae. I installed a jacuzzi variable speed pump myself. Paid for itself in electric cost savings in just 2 years. When I put pool cover back on after swimming, I just get in pool, grab pool cover and walk it over to the other end, takes maybe 1-2 minutes at most. Then I just get out. Try to keep pool cover flat without any large bubbles when on water. Pool cover will shrink a little over the 2 years. I usually cut the pool cover to the shape of my pool and add 3-4 inches extra all the way around the shape of pool. Wherever water is not covered, it will get cold in that area fast and the pool cover needs to lay as flat as possible to transfer heat. Bubbles need to face down. The smooth surface should be facing up, bubble in water. Like I said, if you get full sun on pool most of the day in winter, a pool cover might keep it warm most of the winter by itself with no heater. My pool is shaded right now thus time of year, only 40 percent of pool is in sun during the day, but it is enough to keep at 90 degrees by just using pool cover so far. Next month through February, the pool will be completely shaded for 4/5 months. That’s why I have to heat it. It a little over $100 to try using pool cover, what do you have to loose. Hope this info helps.
Good afternoon, I just posted a video trying to answer all your questions. Let me know if you have any other questions. Hope you have a truly blessed weekend and find all the answerers in the video you were looking for.
I was wondering if you are permitted and inspected etc for all that? I was thinking of going non permitted. I am in the country.
If you are on grid, everything needs to be inspected and permitted because you are connecting to the grid and can feed into the grid. Linemen can get hurt if you feed into the grid when grid is down. So it is regulated when you want to go grid tie. The electric company can tell when you connect to the grid with their remote monitoring on your meter.
When you are off grid, the power you produce does not connect to grid and back feed into the grid. So they can not tell you are even doing anything. You are basically producing your own power and using it in a closed grid loop so there is no way to determine anything you produce.
It depends on your state, county, city. We live in a village that is not even a city and has no police force but has a nearby city police patrol and sheriff patrol as well. Since we are only a village there are no policies to enforce. We are pretty much in the country side where people still ride horses on the side of the road, in fact they have horse trail with rock paths for those who ride horses so the horses don’t have to walk on cement or asphalt for long stretches.
When building off grid, most install the solar panels on ground mounts. If you install on your roof, you have to go through association to get approval and go through the city to get approval, inspection and permits. So most use ground mounts solar panels and avoid all of that above. No association approval need as long as not above fence line view, just mount on the ground and wire to your inverter, connect. To battery, run your electrical wire to what you want to run from the outside of your house to outlets or to air conditioners.
My suggestion is I always try to follow code for wire to make sure it is safe for us. It helps to do things the right way if you are going to go to all that expense.
Do your due diligence in being knowledgeable on all you want to do. The more knowledge you have, the better your system will be in safety, efficiency, early payback and no breakdowns. My system has been on pretty much autopilot for over a year now.
No need to interact on a daily or weekly basis. The inverters stay on 24 hours and we just need to turn the appliances on or off when needed. Just like using grid power. It is now that simple for us. Everything is running perfectly. Hope this helps. Have a truly blessed day
how much $$ invested vs. using natural gas to burst heat your pool in 4hrs? With my 200btu nat gas heater I can heat my Mi. pool 10k gallons from 70F to 90F in 4hrs, $20 in gas, $1500 for the heater. Once it's up to temp, it stays there. Just curious what you have invested, everything. Wires, all.
@@dmc4770 wow, if you can heat your pool that quick with 20 degrees in 4 hours for $20, I would not look to change a thing. Why invest in anything else when you can heat that cheap and quick. I only have electric at my house so I chose electric heat pump pool heater. My pool heater was $4200 and replace pool pump with variable speed pump for $900. I was going trough severe cancer, 2 cancers at the time and had excruciating joint pain and I noticed when in the pool my pain was hardly noticeable from the buoyancy of water. It took the weight off my joints. So for me it was worth not having to take pain meds equivalent to morphine every 4 hours round the clock. I have to keep pool cover on all the time in winter. The pool is completely in shade all day long so heating it is a 24 hour deal but in the spring February and March the pool is in sun 50 percent of the day so I start heating then. When I ran pool heater year round, I believe in the winter it was an extra $200 on electric bill running 24 hours a day.