Can you install a heat exchanger on an existing heat pump that will allow you to heat your pool while cooling your home?

Answer 1

Yes, you can, but you will probably have to design and fabricate it yourself as I am not aware of any commercially available kits to help you accomplish this task.

What you are asking for is not unreasonable. It makes perfect sense to use the heat that is extracted from your house to heat the pool water rather than just exhaust it to the outside air.

However, only recently have the major HVAC manufacturers started thinking about their systems in an integrated fashion, i.e. figuring out ways to move heat from the places its not wanted to the places where its needed ALL WITHIN ONE SYSTEM.

At this point in time, there is no real standardization of heat pump components that would allow you to simply and easily take the heat from the heat pump and transfer it to another heat exchanger to warm the pool water because there are so many different types of heat pumps that have been manufactured over the past 20-40 years. Thus, even if someone did develop a kit of this sort, it would still require some kind of custom-built piping and control mechanism to interface with all of the different manufacturers and models of heat pumps that are out there in the world.

Hope this helps ...

from Jalex137: It's an interesting idea, but I wonder if it's practical. It seems to me that during the season that you would be cooling your house, you wouldn't need to be heating the pool.

from Uncledunc: the reason you heat the pool water in the summer is the difference in the temperature between the air and pool water. On a 75 degree day, your pool water at 67-68 degrees fees fine. But if tomorrow the afternoon temperature shoots up to 90 you turn blue and FREEZE. Living in So-Cal tells one all he needs to know about heating the pool (often with solar covers during the day, plus the heater) to enjoy swimming on hot summer (and Fall) days. Keeping the air to water temperature within about 10 degrees (max) is ideal, from my experience with 4 in-ground pools.

My father-in-law attempted the AC heats pool water trick back in the late '60's but the contraption he came up with had no controls - just a big water tank with SS piping for the Freon gas. Later he attempted to upgrade the idea with a switching mechanism to route the refrigerant to the normal condensing coils when the pool water was already hot enough. Bottom line - the hardest part is sizing the heat exchanger to the thermal load of the house (cu. ft. / not sq. ft.) and the gallonage of the pool for your typical summer ambient temperature (and nighttime temperature swings) in your local. There is no "1-size-fits-all" answer. And it takes some decent thermodynamic engineering to get it right. IMHO, the concept is feasible, but the trick is to over-size the heat exchanger and then TRY to locate a suppler of a high pressure switch to shut off the pool's heat exchanger. Otherwise you run the risk of have your pool turn into a sauna/spa... which some folks might actually prefer! But, if nothing else, in northern climates you'll get a longer swimming season without turning on the heater.

Hope this adds to the discussion. - Uncledunc