We are about to pull the trigger on a pool. I am looking at how I am good to do it but I am definitely going to heat it with the Crown-royal OWB.
Don't currently have a pool in my home- but in the house I lived in with my cousin and our roommate (aka the best years of my life!!- don't show my wife....) we had a pool in the back yard. Above ground, I think 16 feet in diameter, and some of the best bang-for-you-buck is to get a hula-hoop or two, or three, or however many you want, and cover them in a black trash bag. Solar heat is underrated. But... personal preference reigns supreme.
How does that help? I can see the water in the ring getting warmer, but not so sure it would heat the pool that much. I have a half built solar heater built, haven't gotten around to buying the piping yet, but have the box built and the glass to cover it. I also laid an inch of XPS foam under the pool to keep the earth from sucking the heat out.
So, without the black plastic, the sun hits the water anyway. I don't see it, unless the reflection off the water is an issue.
My BIL has a 30'x4' above ground pool. This spring when he filled it he rigged up a plate exchanger on his OWB to the water supply. It took every bit of 2/3 cord of wood to get the pool into the low 70's. That little toy wouldn't be able to keep up with anything other than a kiddie pool.
They don't "heat up" the water any more than the sun already does. Especially black ones. A solar blanket doesn't either. They might help at night with evaporation and maybe some heat loss. So you start off in the morning a fraction of degrees warmer than without. They might help keep the heat in also if you have a lot of evaporation going on.
That is a fiberglass shell. It’s 16X38. We did a fair amount of research and fiberglass seems to be the way to go in this area. They all have some good things and some bad but it seems to be the best for us.
So how do you now fill underneath it? I imagine a complicated operation with wet concrete filling from below while you fill the pool with water so it doesn’t float. Different densities! So it would still float! You want it pretty level I would think.
It was a neat process to watch. They dig the hole out with a dig plan from the shell manufacturer. They go in like 5 foot increments so each 5 feet gets a little deeper. They dig about 2 inches deeper than the actual pool will be. Then they fill back up to the exact level with washed stone think drive way rock with no small sandy particles in it. They do all this measuring with lasers. After they get the bottom as close to perfect as they can they fly the pool shell in with a crane. Then they do any final adjustments with a small excavator. Pick a corner up and back fill under as needed. That’s about 2 days worth and during this time you really don’t want any rain. But as it happened with us we got an inch of rain the night before they set the pool. We just pumped it out with a pump they had. They do place an 8 inch or so tube at the deep end that will have the same cap on it that the filter basket does so that in the event water does get under the pool you just have to pump it out. When they get it set they put ratchet straps across the top. That keeps water from pushing the sides out and they also put 2x4’s across the top that keeps the back fill from pushing the walls in. We got one water truck that was 7 or 8 thousand gallons and the rest we ran from the house. It’s a long way from done but my 10 year old daughter has to be dragged out of it pretty much daily since they said you could jump in. The weight of the water is the only thing holding it down.