Gas Pool & Spa Heating – Tips for efficient operation

Gas pool heating is economical when use correctly:

The best way to use your gas pool heater is on-demand. What this means: if you know you’re going to be using your pool on the weekends, then turn the heater on Friday night or Saturday morning (depending on the size of your pool heater) then simply top up the heat Sunday morning. Turn it off again after topping up and repeat the next time you know you’ll be using the pool.

To reduce heat loss overnight it’s recommended you cover your pool with a Pool Blanket.

Gas pool heating is particularly effective leading into and out of summer, spring and autumn, extending the swimming season when solar just doesn’t quite get there. You’ll even have the option to use your pool mid-winter.

Using Gas On-demand

Running an electric solar pump every day to maintain the heat in your pool can become costly when run seven days a week – particularly if you’re connected to a smart electrical meter when the sun is hottest and power most expensive. And if it’s a warm cloudy day the pump is chewing power (money) to achieve little to NO solar gain adding nothing to your swimming comfort yet a significant amount to your power bills.

Having a gas pool heater sized to suit your pool and lifestyle is one of the best ways to achieve an on-demand pool heating system or maintenance heating (the latter involves frequent short-term heating turning off and on with the filter). In a lot of cases a larger gas pool heater will use far less gas then a smaller gas pool heater for demand heating giving even further savings. This all come down to heat-up time, whether there’s is a blanket on the pool, if your pool’s in direct sunlight etc. Please refer to the line graph below or Master Temp PDF for approximate heat up times.

Be it natural gas or propane (bottled gas, LPG) on-demand heating works! I speak from experience because I’m using propane and disconnected my solar 2 years ago.

Gas Spa Heating

With gas spa heating you want to be able to use the spa now, not wait 24 hours or longer which is typical of electric spa heaters. To keep your spa warm with electric heating often requires that the electric heater and pump are running up to seven days a week driving up your power bills.

Due to the smaller volume of water to be heated a larger gas heater will not necessarily save you much on your gas usage, although will certainly give a very quick heat up time so you can get into your Spa and relax sooner. Please refer to the MasterTemp PDF for approximate heat up times.

Safety & Heater Protection…

To meet relevant gas codes, a pressure relief valve (45psi) is required to be fitted if the water from the Pool or Spa can be shut off 100% to the heater either by valve or any other means. Failure to do this can result in damage to the gas pool or spa heater. » Download the Apollo 10-322 and 10-512 Series Safety Relief Valve PDF or contact us for further information.
A flow switch is required when the location of the heater is either 1 metre higher or lower than the pool water surface otherwise the pool’s pressure switch may not operate correctly. The flow switch is an ideal secondary safety system to protect your pool heater. » Download the 626 Flow Series PDF or contact us for further information.