heater Archives - WNY Handyman

Heat Your Pool for Free

If you have a heated pool, you understand how expensive it can be to heat a pool. Because of that, many people resort to solar covers, solar panels to heat water, etc. There are other ways to heat a pool that are economical (free) and environmentally friendly.

If you are like me, you hate waste. It isn’t about the money spent on certain things, it is about the waste. Efficiency feels good. Green or not, efficiency feels good and happens to be “Green” most of the time.

When certain items operate they waste a lot of energy. A big one is your air conditioning unit. Another is a pool heater. You can actually take the heat that is wasted by your A/C unit and use that energy to heat your pool. Your A/C unit is pulling the heat out of your home and moving that heat outside. It does this with a coolant and coils. The coolant that leaves your home and runs through you outdoor A/C unit can be intercepted to heat up your pool water. It is that simple. You simply need to redirect that “hot” coolant and run your pool water past it (past a coil that is much like a water heater).

The item that you are adding to the loop between your A/C and your pool filter is called a “Heat Exchanger” and has been around for years. Frankly, this is one those items that should be used much more than it is.

Take a look at the video from This Old house and they explain the whole process along with the installation steps. Fast forward the video to the 14 minute mark for the segment from Richard Trethewey.

Water Heater Savings – Weekender Cottage Life

If you have a “weekender” type of cottage, it is possible that you could be saving a few dollars by managing your hot water heater usage. You don’t have to do anything crazy, just a simple on off switch to cut of power usage by the tank when you are are not there. That is the most basic part and many do that. They will turn the tank on when they get there on a Friday and turn it off when they leave on a Sunday.

Well, there is an additional step you can take to save a few dollars (you tree huggers will love this one as well). Today’s hot water tanks are fairly well insulated. So much so, that the tank will retain its heat for a couple of days.

I have found that our new hot water tank takes about 1 hour to get up to temp (115 – 120 degrees). After the tank is up to temp, it will retain that for the period that we are at our cottage. Since there are only 3 of us on most weekends (one being a 9 year old who is averse to bathing) our usage falls below the capacity of our tank. Because of this, we are able to heat the tank about an hour prior to needing hot water and turn the tank off at that point.

You can estimate your own usage. Let’s assume that 2 adults each take a 4 minute shower (longer than it sounds). The flow of our shower head is 1.5 GPM (gallons per minute). At that rate, our 40 gallon tank will only lose 24 gallons (2 adults x 2 showers x 4 min each=24). Let’s assume that typical handwashing and dish washing eliminates another 10 gallons from your tank. This will allow you 1 hour of heating for an entire weekend of use.

If you have a similar usage pattern, give it a try. You will feel a bit more green that you already are. If you do have a demand beyond the tank capacity, know that it only takes about an hour for the average tank to heat.