The Pool Heating Season Budget

Price a heated pool season from your own pool: the heat-up once, a bucket test for the water and heat you lose every day after, each fuel at your rates, what a cover is worth, and a week of your own meter.

PoolBalance's Pool Heater Running-Cost Estimator prices the heat-up: the energy to lift the whole pool from one temperature to another, once. Its own notes say holding the temperature afterward costs more and is not modeled, and over a season that is where the money goes. The U.S. Department of Energy calls evaporation "by far the largest source of energy loss" in a pool, at 1,048 BTU for every pound of 80 F water that leaves. The Pool Heating Season Budget models it on your pool. An example: a 19,200 gallon pool heated from 68 F to 82 F costs $21.03 on a heat pump, but a quarter inch of evaporation a day carries off 697,392 BTU, as much heat as the whole heat-up in 3.21 days. A covered bucket test reading 0.09 in a day cuts that by 64%; a $180 cover pays back in 40 heated days on a heat pump, 543 on water alone. A week of the heat pump's meter each way puts the season at $1,187.27 uncovered and $619.44 covered; the same covered season on gas is $1,264.95. Every figure in it is an example computed by the code the site's calculators run; it promises no saving. It covers no pool chemicals, and it carries the safety a heated pool needs: GFCI protection and a qualified electrician, water at or below 104 F, drain covers, a fence on all four sides with self-closing, self-latching gates, a Water Watcher, and a floating cover never treated as a safety cover. You get a 24-page printable budget with four working pages, and a personalised sheet worked from the numbers you entered in our heater, volume and pump calculators.

Look inside

Two full pages from the budget, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• Step 1: the heat-up priced on gas, a heat pump and electric resistance, from the site's own Heater Estimator
• Step 2: the bucket test for the water your pool loses each day, and how to tell evaporation from a leak
• Step 3: inches turned into US gallons, pounds and BTU, and the days of evaporation that equal the heat-up
• Step 4: a day of that heat priced on each fuel by the heat delivered, with the heat pump's cold-air limit
• Step 5: the covered bucket test, what your cover is really worth, and why a floating cover is not a safety cover
• Step 6: the top-up water at your water rate, and the cover's payback on water alone and with heat
• Step 7: a meter week each way, a season budget built on your meter, and the wiring and water safety checks
• Four working pages: a pool and fuel sheet, a bucket test log, a meter week log and a season budget card
• Reference tables: evaporation by surface and inches, dollars per million BTU by fuel and rate, and units
• A quickstart that closes the loop on your own before-and-after scores

The budget picks up where the free Pool Heater Running-Cost Estimatorleaves off. The estimator prices the heat-up, once, and says itself that holding the temperature afterward costs more and is not modeled. The budget models it on your pool: a bucket test for the water you lose each day, that water turned into the heat it carries off (1,048 BTU a pound, the Department of Energy's figure), a day of it priced on gas, a heat pump and electric resistance at your own rates, a covered bucket test for what your cover is worth, the top-up water at your water rate, and a season checked against a week of your own meter. It uses the Pool Volume Calculatorfor the gallons and the surface. Every pool, heater, rate and reading in it is an example. It covers no pool chemicals, and it carries the safety a heated pool needs: GFCI protection and a qualified electrician, water at or below 104°F, drain covers, a fence on all four sides with self-closing, self-latching gates, a Water Watcher, and a floating cover never treated as a safety cover. No saving is promised.