If your weekend plans include making a DIY solar pool heater, you’ve come to the right place! You can have an efficiently working solar pool heater in just a few steps. This article will explain how difficult it is, what you need, and list the steps you should follow to DIY a solar pool heater. Once you’re done, getting it up and running is as easy as fixing the most common reasons why you solar lights are not working, and you’ll be thankful for warm water when the weather starts cooling down.
DIY Solar Pool Heater: Is It Difficult?
If you can’t afford a professional solar pool heater, you can make your own! Making it isn’t difficult at all. You can tackle this task yourself even if you know nothing about pool heaters or solar energy.
It’s a cheap way to heat up your pool for a spring or autumn swim. Solar pool heaters don’t use as much electricity as traditional pool heaters, and the initial cost to assemble them is ridiculously inexpensive. Depending on the supplies you already have, you can have an up-and-running DIY solar pool heater in just a few hours. You’ll be finished even faster if you don’t need to go to the shops for anything.
How To Make Your Own Solar Pool Heater
There aren’t a lot of steps you’ll need to follow when building a solar pool heater. You can change some steps if you want another type of setup. Here’s the basics:
Step 1: Gather The Supplies
For this step, you just need to get everything required ready. You can use what you already have in your shed or head to your local hardware store. It’s much easier to put everything in one place to use as you need it. Having to look for things halfway through the work just slows you down.
What you’ll need:
- Filter pump
- Black PVC water pipes or regular pipes and black paint
- A surface for the pipes with access to direct sunlight
- Valves
- Clamps
- Mirrors or foil reflectors
Step 2: Set The Surface Up
Your pipes need to be mounted in a spot where they get the most sunlight possible. Wood would be an excellent option to hold it neatly in place because it can take screws and bolts. If you want extra sunlight to be pulled towards your pipes for a little more heat, you could paint or spray the surface black.
Step 3: Mount The Hose Onto The Surface
You’ll now need the hose, surface, and clamps. Start by rolling the hose up to fit onto your chosen surface. Leave quite a bit of hose for another part of the project. It should be rolled up in a way that the maximum amount of the pipe gets access to sunlight.
This is where the water will be heated to go back into your pool.When you’ve rolled it up and think it’s ready, use the clamps to mount it onto the surface. Add clamps in all the places where the hose looks like it isn’t tight enough.
Step 4: Add Some Extra Sunlight Reflectors
If you have a large pool, you might need some sunlight reflectors to sufficiently heat your pool. You can mount mirrors or aluminum around your pipes to reflect extra sunlight onto them. The more sunlight your pipes receive, the warmer they’ll get.
Step 5: Set Up Your Pumps
Use a valve to connect the black pipes or hose to a filter pump. The filter pump will ensure that the water running through gets cleaned and no leaves get stuck in your pipes.
You should connect the filter pump to your pool so that it sucks water from it. This can be done by connecting it to your pool pump or adding a hose from the pump into the water.
You should let the water run straight into the pool at the other end of the black pipes that are mounted to get warm in the sun. Keep in mind that the water coming from these pipes will be very hot and shouldn’t be in a place where children can access it.
Step 6: Test Your DIY Solar Pool Heater
If everything is done right, you’ll have a cycle of water running from the pool through the pipes and right back into the pool. Test this project on a lovely sunny day. Your water should be nice and warm but remember that it won’t heat your pool up in a few minutes. You should be patient while waiting for the water to get to the right temperature.
DIY Solar Pool Heater vs. Others.
| DIY Solar Pool Heater | Traditional Pool Heater | Professional Solar Pool Heater |
| Affordable to build and install. | Relatively low cost to install. Cheaper than a professional solar heater, but more expensive than a DIY solar heater. | Not the cheapest pool heater to install. It can be relatively expensive. |
| It takes a while to heat up, and there is no guarantee that it will heat up large pools. | Heats up large pools in a very short amount of time. | Heats any size pool up in minutes to an hour or two. |
| No running cost, except for electricity to use the filter pump. | It can add a considerable amount to your electrical bill if you use it regularly. | No running costs as it uses free solar power to run. It can be used as much as you want at no cost except that going towards maintenance. |
Wrapping Up
Solar pool heaters are a great investment, but buying one isn’t always possible. If your budget is tight, you can still enjoy heated pool water by building your own device.
Building a solar pool heater is relatively easy whether you’re a DIY expert or doing this for the first time. If you follow the instructions in this article and watch some YouTube videos, you’ll have it done in no time! I hope this article was helpful and that you enjoyed reading it. If you have more questions about DIY solar pool heaters or suggestions about what we should write about next here at SolarSena please put them in the comments down below.
