I had to open my pool late this year due to the perimeter fence falling down over the winter, and not being able to spend the time or money to fix it. To avoid the horrible situation of my neighbor's youngest (2-1/2 old) from wandering into the yard and falling into the pool, I had to leave the safety cover on until last week (which is when I finished the fence, with help from an FTE friend!).

Even though I couldn't remove the cover all that time, I did toss in the robot, chemicals, and fire up the pump and get things circulating so at least the water is crystal clean - but alas very cold.

While cleaning out my garage last night after my son went to bed EARLY for a change, in the pile of junk I decided to get rid of, I spied two 10' pieces of 3/4" diameter copper tubing.

Hmmmm.

So, I bent it up and soldered on some elbows, fittings, and garden hose adapters. Actually a different FTE member than mentioned did most of the soldering for me since that's one thing I stuggle to get leak-free. Anyway...



Then, I jammed this into my outdoor fireplace:



And viola, pool heater that runs on firewood (which I have absolutely no shortage of). Obligatory midnight picture since fire looks so cool at night, and you can see the jet thrust coming out the chimney a bit).



Believe it or not, this really works. The water draining back into the pool via the exit garden hose is extremely hot - not quite hot enough to burn your flesh, but hot enough that you're not leaving your hand there for any length of time.

Aaaaaah.

 

That is to funny and cool at the same time! Reps sent to ya!

 

and inquiring minds want to know.


did the dummy that soldered it fer ya do it proper like, or is there leaks??

 

When you're done heatin' the pool, you can use the copper pipe to make some corn likker!!

 

HUSH UP winder liquor!!!

that is what we is usin it fer, ta make some corn squeezins fer the get tagether we be havin in 2 weeks!!

the pool heater thing is just a ruse fer the revenue's

 

Secret is safe with me.

 

That's actually pretty cool. If you use deadfall, you've got the only truly "green" pool heater in town.

 

I use a combination of unwanted firewood, deadfall, and smaller pieces from the overwhelmingly large "brush pile" (which is larger than my crewcab at the moment).

Basically, anything that burns and of natural origin, goes in.

Yes Tom, you did a fine soldering job. You didn't slag on the threads nor does it leak at all. I expect the thin-wall copper tubing not to last very long considering I've been burning mostly hardwoods, but all I need is about a week and I'll be out of firewood anyway, and the pool should be warm enough. I jumped in today without shivvering, unlike yesterday. So it's clearly working well.

A lot of heat (probably the majority) blows through the expanded metal sides of the outdoor fireplace... a much better "design" would be to use an old oven with a flue added on top. Since ovens are double-walled (insulated) that means most of the heat will not "blow away" as it does now, allowing for more "soak" into the water. Maybe next year I'll try that out, and use galvanized black pipe for the "coil". I had the copper pipe and a conduit bender so I figured free overcomes many faults

My "investment" to make this work was four 3/4" copper elbows, a brass outdoor faucet threaded into an existing pool fitting, a roll of teflon tape, and the gas to drive to/from Tom's house while he kindly soldered this kludge up for me.

Very small cost for what appears to be high gain. If the copper burns through and I'm not watching it, unfortunately the pool will drain onto the patio and if not noticed within a reasonable amount of time the water level will dip below the highest intake, resulting in the pump overheating and that's all she wrote for that pump. What I may do is turn off the skimmer at night to prevent that. Hopefully it will last a week and I won't have to clean up sopping ash off my deck and also avoid refilling the pool with ... cold tap water

After my son goes to sleep (whatever time that is :eyeroll I am planning on pouring two glasses of scotch "on the rocks" and standing in the corner of the pool with the hot water flowing on my back, sipping the scotch far away from TV's, babies, wives, phones, and chores.

Aaaaaaah.

 

Man, if I still drank that would be the ultimate evening. Funny how when you really are alone, you just want someone around, but when they won't go away you just want to be alone-

 

i know another way using recycled parts and NO fuel except the sun! get a car radiator, and build a wooden box thats slightly bigger than the radiator. paint the inside of the box flat black. mount the radiator so its not laying on the bottom of the box, and paint it flat black. useing your brazing/soldering skills(or someone elses if your not confident) make the 2 radiator ports(upper and lower) go into the copper tubing of your choice. now make a lid for the box with a double window pane made from lexan. 2 peices of lexan with a spacer and caulking works great! secure the cover. put the box in a place where it will get constant sun. it will keep your pool warm well into the fall. if you have a large pool you could benefit frome 2-3 of these.

 

frads first version of the pool heater was something like that.
black garden hose on the deck in the sunlight, with the filter pump running through it.

and it worked decently till his "helper" turned the city water hose bib on, filling the pool up with cold water and overflowing all the warm water out onto the lawn.

which in turn made the pool cold again.

 

when i was in high school, my shop teacher used to open his pool in april, and close it in november. he had 4 hotboxes running his pool water through. his pool was 80-85* almost the whole time. during heatwaves he would turn a couple of ball valves so that he didnt boil the water! it can get up over 200* inside one of those hot boxes! or as he'd say they get smokin' an jokin'!

i even thought about doing this to heat my garage in the winter. not so hot that i could smoke meat in my garage, just enough to take the bite out of the air. but i dont think it would get hot enough. it might?

 

hey Fred, remember when John disappeared in the garage for about 20 minutes??

i found out what he was doing this morning.
first, he picked up all the washers that were on the floor in front of the shelf from when i dropped the package earlier, and stacked them up in front of the small tool box.

then he went into the big tool box, and put all the metric sockets in the ase socket drawer, and all the small metric wrenches in the small ase wrench drawer.

smart kid ya got there!!



















but keep him out of my dang tool boxes!!!!

 

heh-heh. At least he put tools back. I usually have to fish mine out of the shrubs.

 

Red Green, without the duct-tape.