How Solar Energy Can Heat Your Home and Pool

Energy prices, such as the price of gas are expected to rise by 60% over the next five years. This will have a huge impact in how people heat their homes due to such a massive price rise on top of already high prices. The facts are the time of cheap energy is over from sources such as oil and gas, and while electricity is dependant on fossil fuels, electricity prices will also continue to be very expensive. So what do we do, home heating is a necessarily not a choice in most climates, so heat has got to be produced. Some homes who are lucky enough to have pools and currently use gas or oil to heat the pool will be left with a constant reminder of how nice it was when they had a warm pool, not a cold uninviting volume of water.

However, we do have options available to us to reduce our annual heating costs and use alternatives. Solar is one option we have available to us, we can use solar energy to heat our homes and our pools with a very low start up cost and practically zero maintenance costs. Primarily, when people talk about solar, they refer to producing electricity. While solar is very capable of producing electricity directly with solar cells, it is not really the most practical means. Using solar energy to heat water is a very simple and low cost way to capture solar energy. The hot water produced could be used to reduce the load on your existing fossil fuel boiler, and reduce fuel consumption. The hot water can also be use for washing or heating your pool as well as the house.

So how can you heat your pool with solar energy? Well, one of the first methods is to change your existing pool cover for a solar pool cover. These have the appearance of a large section of bubble wrap. As they are produced from clear plastic, they let in solar energy to heat the water. The bubbles within the cover contain trapped air, which act as a barrier to stop the heat escaping. To capture even more solar energy for the pool and your home, a solar water heater can be used. One of the most popular, reliable and most affordable designs is the passive solar water heater. The design is simply a black water storage vessel within a solar collector box. This is very cheap to produce but is very efficient.