Three Dog Night famously crooned that "One is The Loneliest Number!" They were so good that I would not argue with them, but when it comes to swimming pools, ZERO, as in EMPTY, is the loneliest number. For a pool to be used and enjoyed, it needs a heater. To heat up 10, 20 or 30,000 gallons of water with gas or electricity is expensive. The most efficient and economical way to heat a pool is with solar.
When I started in the solar business in 1981, I had no idea how cold pools were, and how expensive it was to heat them. Oil was $1 per gallon, gas was the same proportionately, and pool owners would literally beg us to get them a solar pool heating system. The first gent who kept calling, was in “The Earl and Gas Bidness,” and though he could buy oil wholesale for his own personal pool, and though he had a 50-foot yacht docked behind his waterfront home, and flew in on his own plane to meet me, he said it was too expensive to heat his pool with oil or gas. In 1981!
Solar changes the way people use their pools. If they’re using fuel for heat, they often turn off the heater — like when you go out to dinner, you turn the lights off in your house. But deep down, they just want the pool to be warm for whenever they want to go in, and do not want to always be deciding if they should turn their conventional heater on or off.
I often observe that on a street with 10 pools, if nine are heated with fuel, and one is heated with solar, usually the solar heated pool is warmer than the fossil fuel types because if the pool family is not using the pool that day, often the heater is off and the pool is cold. With no energy cost, the pool remains warm and welcoming whenever someone wants to use it.
THE SYSTEM
The solar system concept is simple. We do not need to heat the pool to 100 degrees, usually a 10- or 15-degree temperature rise thrills pool owners. Most systems use the existing pool pump and filter to move the water from the pool to the solar collectors and back. As a rule of thumb, a solar panel area equal to 50% to 75% of the pool’s surface area is sufficient to heat the pool. House roofs, garages, big sheds, outbuildings, properly set up cabanas, barns, and ground locations that get sufficient sun for most of the day are good candidates for panel locations. If the location available does not get as much sun as required, often we will add more panels to get more heat into the pool. Basically, we don’t need to split atoms or run high-tension wires. Our goal is to take heat from a place where we don’t want it and put it in the pool, where we do want it.
What are the components of a good system? Make sure the panels and piping are installed securely, and properly, and that everything can expand and contract on the roof. It has to tolerate a 150-degree roof in summer and a minus-10-degree roof in winter. Use proper fasteners, and pressure piping. There are 100 simple steps to a good solar pool heating system. Explain system operation and winterization to the pool owner.
PROFESSIONAL INSTALLATION
Getting these details right is always the key to success, and often that success relies on installation experience. When solar pool heat was still maturing as an industry, product was, at times, sold through other channels where installation might be more hit and miss, with the misses getting a disproportionate share of attention. Prices dropped, and the business fell on some tough times. The dealers were doing the marketing, and selling the need, but they were not getting the sales, and some of them left the business.
Some solar equipment being sold had quality issues, which tarnished the success of the product and drowned out the voices of thousands of happy solar heat customers. I once got a call from someone who had bought, and I quote, “a sprinkler system up on my roof” from a catalog. They needed me to convince them that doing solar the right way would make them happy. We took them from solar haters to solar lovers.
As everyone in the pool business knows, quality always lasts, but the short-term thrill of a bargain fades. As Zig Ziglar always said, “It is far easier to explain price once, than to apologize for quality forever.” As I have said a thousand times, there is no reason to do solar cheap, and with anything less than high-quality equipment, because the economics for solar heating a pool are so fantastic.
We just removed a 30-year-old system for a new roof to be put on the garage. The owner asked me if he had to buy all-new equipment. Upon inspection, I personally told him his high-quality solar equipment that we installed for him in 1995 was still in good condition, and we reinstalled it on his new roof. We added a couple of panels to his system because after aging 30 years, he said he could use a little more warmth! What a success story for solar! Great equipment, installed expertly, and from a company that made a fair profit, so they could be there for the client, and do marketing and sales to new prospects to help more folks get a warm pool with no pool costs.
THE BEST THING
Now I admit that I am prejudiced, but I have had scores of clients tell me over the last 45 years that their solar pool heater is one of the best things they have ever purchased.
When the Phillies won the World Series in 1980, one of the players built an amazing 24,000-square-foot house. It had an indoor pool, outdoor pool, a bowling alley, an indoor spa, an outdoor spa, a go-cart track and mini golf in the back. There was even an indoor bridge going over a creek running through the house. The owner was a real nice, smart, but very humble guy. I met with him, and he ordered a system. A week after we installed it, I personally called him and made sure all was good. He said it was GREAT. The BEST thing he ever bought. I said Mark, your home and property are amazing; the aforementioned features are stunning. Plus, I said, you have a sleek Black Lamborghini Countach in the driveway You are telling me this is one of the best things you ever bought. He said that he didn’t say that. He said it is the best thing. He said because it was so expensive to heat up his pool with gas, and because he could see the steam (money) rising up and evaporating out of his pool, he said he almost never heated it! He said with solar pool heating, his pool is warm, he has no expensive monthly heating bills, and he does not hear it from his wife and kids that the pool is usually cold.
Solar is great for our country — it helps us produce our own clean energy without the problems that go along with fossil fuels. The equipment that my firm uses is made by American workers in the U.S., which helps cut our trade deficit. Solar pool heating is a win, win, win situation. Yes, I am enthusiastic about solar pool heating, and will be glad to pass on the knowledge and love of it to pool professionals who want to genuinely help your pool clients and build a profit center in your business.
Frank McLaughlin ([email protected], 609-368-8219) founded All Quality Solar Systems in 1984. He has always loved giving back to the swimming pool community by speaking on the benefits of solar pool heating at the Atlantic City Pool & Spa Show for 20 of the last 26 years, and at seminars in schools, environmental and business groups.
