Solar Pool Heater

Been a busy week on Roe Circle, Mark got started renovating the house next door, the Red house has the foundation back filled. This week I got the solar pool heater constructed. I've toyed with the idea in the past and we tried a variation when we first filled the pool in 2006. So after researching a bit on the net, and needing to buy a sump pump to help do some work on a friends pool the pieces fell into place. I'm using cheap irrigation pipe from Home Depot, $13 per 100 feet. Throw in some inexpensive fittings and a little tape and here you go.
Each circle is 100' of hose, they are all hooked together so that the water has to travel through all 500' before it reaches the pool. Thursday was our first non overcast day, we hooked up the sump pump to circulate the water. I put the pump in the deep end to help slow the water flow (takes alot of pressure away as your make the pump lift the water higher). Our test readings confirm that the heater works well. The surface temp of the water in the pool is 65 degrees (I bet the water at the bottom of the deep end is a degree or two cooler. At constant flow of roughly 2000 gallons per hour the water coming out of the solar heater was at 77 degrees. I'm not smart enough to calculate how long it is going to take us to raise the entire 18,000 gallons up in the 70's, I think we still lose alot of heat at night since temps still dip into the 50's.

I also have been working on the trellis for our pole beans to climb. I had a ton of Ipe scraps that are 1/4" x 1" that was used in stacking the Ipe I bought for the planters. So I painted some of it up to build the trellis. I was still deciding if orange or blue was the way to go. We ended up going with orange since the rim of the garden will eventually be painted blue.