Thanks Pete. I think that's why marine grade aluminum is the gold standard in submersible stoves. It's resistant to the chlorinated water - but expensive and not as easy to weld.
Thanks. I have a working electric inline spa heater that came with the pool. The pool is 2400 gallons, a lot more water than a small spa heater is designed to heat. I could run pex tubing from the pool to a rocket stove I've built in another part of the same basement 30' away, and run loops of copper tubing inside or outside the barrel of the rocket stove or the masonry bench/bell I'm heating with the rocket stove. I like the idea of heating it with wood but I didn't want to get into pumps with running the pex that far.
Yes Brian I have a sornkel stove and it works great. Before we got this I was thinking about building a therm-o-siphon system, did some research on You Tube I think the alum. stove in the water is the best way to go I can go two or three days of cold weather and not have a problem with freezing. We have had couple inches ice on top build a fire and its all good Therm-o-siphon you will worry about lines freezing and the water jacket stove.
Fortunately this therapy pool is in the basement, so I really hope freezing pipes never become an issue! Do you have any photos of your set up? Does the stove have any internal baffles? How is the ash removal process?
Actually using one of these TEG generators TEG Thermoelectric Power Generators For Sale - Thermoelectric Generator on top of the rocket stove to power a TEG powered D.C. pump Pumps - TEG15W-12VDC - Thermoelectric Generator to circulate water from the pool to the rocket stove to be heated in a copper coil is mighty tempting...
Not until you get to very high concentrations (unless it is a very low grade stainless) pool water is well below that threshold. Plate steel will work for a while...but it will begin to degrade pretty quickly.
This would be more than adequate to run a D.C. circulator pump, plus since you're moving water anyway you can use a more efficient water cooled TEG generator: http://www.devilwatt.com/datasheets/DW-WC-100W.pdf
Stainless discoloration happens very fast if it's submerged even in small amounts but structuraly it won't have much effect unless its higher volume. Good point!
I work for the city water utilities and customers usually do have a hard time wrapping their head around the "pool in their basement" when their sewer plugs up! More on topic, we clean tanks using HTH (powdered chlorine) making solutions up to 50 mg/l with no ill effect on the stainless steel parts. IIRC it takes more like 200 mg/l to start causing problems
Actually this is the second one for me. When the kids were smaller I had a 10'x15' oval above ground pool in the basement of my house in Johnstown. We had a heat pump pool heater from a 28' round above ground pool that I found used online at the time. I could get that thing up to hot tub temps pretty easily. I'd never put one in a finished basement. But that pool is a giant heat sink that slowly heated the house. We saved far more in natural gas to heat the house than we spent in electricity to run that heat pump to heat the pool at the time. But we're living with my mom now to help keep an eye on her and I don't want to put up her electric bills if I can use my wood to heat the pool.
Canadian border VT said this: just out of curiosity isn't there an easier way.. Yes. And after reading a little of this and thinking about it...... Brian. Are there any Colleges close by that you can buy a membership to there gym facilities ? We have a couple where you can get a single or family membership for the year and use everything they have. Which is a lot and includes huge pools to swim in. It may be much easier to not have to go through all your going to have to do and then maintain and do the whole wood thing to bring it and keep it to temp. (I don't know all of your circumstances, so bear with me here man.)
