The question is how much does it cost to heat a swimming pool. In this specific instance, a pool owner has just opened the pool for the year, and it’s currently 24 degrees colder than they want the pool to be. They’re going to heat it up with a natural gas heater, and the question is: how much will it cost in terms of natural gas and electricity?
Electricity Costs for Heating
In terms of a natural gas pool heater, the electricity costs to heat from a colder temperature (around mid-50s) to about 80 degrees are negligible. Running the pool heater for two or three days might cost around a dollar, if that. The real cost is in the natural gas. Most pool heaters are in the 200,000 or 300,000 BTU range, which is equivalent to running 10 barbecues on full at the same time. It uses a lot of natural gas, so let’s break down the costs of heating your pool.
Pool Size and Water Volume Calculation
The pool dimensions are essential for the calculations. First, you need to know the pool size, which is calculated by length x width x average depth x 7.5 to get the volume in gallons. For this example, a 16 by 36 pool, with an average depth of 5.5 feet, gives us a pool volume of 23,760 gallons.
Calculating the Water Weight
To calculate the weight of the water in the pool, you multiply the volume (23,760 gallons) by 8.3, which gives the total weight of the water as 197,208 pounds. Now, we want to increase the pool temperature by 24 degrees, so you multiply 24 by 197,208. The result is 4,732,992 BTUs. That’s the amount of heat you need to add to the pool water to raise its temperature by 24 degrees.
Time Required to Heat the Pool
To figure out how long this will take, you take the total BTUs (4,732,992) and divide by the output rating of the pool heater. If you have a 200,000 BTU heater, for example, divide 4,732,992 by 200,000. This equals approximately 24 hours to heat the pool.
Natural Gas Cost Calculation
Now, for the cost of natural gas: You divide the total BTUs (4,732,992) by 35,069 (the number of BTUs in one cubic meter of natural gas). This gives you 134.96 cubic meters of natural gas. Multiply that by the cost of natural gas, which in this case is 0.1218 cents per cubic meter, and you get a total cost of $16.19.
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Summary
In summary, it will cost around $16.19 to raise the temperature of a 23,760-gallon pool by 24 degrees, and the electricity costs will be minimal—about $1. So the total cost to heat the pool will be around $17.