A comfortable pool brought to you by the warmth of the sun

Our pool is just the right temperature for my little fishes. Leila is getting to be quite the swimmer! She even throws her arms over a swim noddle and kicks herself around. We are very lucky that our above ground pool is well heated; in years past it has been cold until late August, and even the doesn't get real warm.

Last year my dad built an ingenious solar water heater.


I think it's 100 feet of black tubing, attached to a wooden base painted black. A hose runs in from the base of the pool (the drain) to the heater, and the water gets heated. A pump on a timer pumps the hot water (and it does get hot) back into the pool 5 times a day. It'd be a perfect setup except that it does use electricity to pump the water.

So my brother Adam tried to outdo him this year by building a passive water heater.

Water flows in from the pool, goes into the copper tubing, heats up, and as it heats it bubbles out the hose back into the pool. If I understand the mechanism, that is. Pretty cool, huh? And it made use of recycling materials - the window is an old one reclaimed.

so we have both of these going on our pool, and a solar pool blanket (like bubblewrap, but stronger material, so the sunlight enters, but is trapped, like a greenhouse effect on the water). Super crunchy!