Heating Options

[MarkC]

For the most part the heat pump is left on because it takes quite a while for the heatpump to bring up the water temp most are less than 100,000 BTU/hr as opposed to gas heater 400,000 BTU/hr. You can make the system more efficient by having the heatpump run during the warm part of the day like 11:00 am to 7:00 PM. I do this by having my main pump on a timer for those times plus an hour before and after so I have 10 hours filtering time. The heatpump won't run unless there is flow in the pipes so this works pretty well. A cover really helps with nightime losses.

[Poolsean]

Aqua Cal Heat Pumps is a sister company of AutoPilot Systems Inc.
Heat Pumps are designed to maintain heat. The use of a solar blanket, liquid blanket, or no blanket will affect the amount heat lost overnight. The fact is that solar is not a reliable souce of heat, although when it is sunny out, you can generate alot of "free" heat. However, on most cloudy days, you will not be able to generate any heat. A heat pump will continue to produce some heat. Remember, you're only putting back in what was lost overnight.

You can calculate how long a heat pump will need to run, based upon the gallons of water, the desired temperature (or rather, the desired temperature rise), and btu output of the heat pump. What this means is that you should look at the btu output of the heat pump you are interested in. Also, look at the COP of the heat pump, as this has to do with the efficiency of the heat pump. Like an Air Conditioners' SEER rating, Heat Pumps use COP. Anything above 5.0 COP is good efficiency. The higher, the better.

If you provide the gallons, desired temp, and heat pump BTUs, I can calculate how many hours your pump will need to be operated in order to maintain your water temperature.

If costs are similar, you'll have more reliable heat with a heat pump, without dependency on sunny days.
How many cloudy, partly cloudy days do we have in Florida? I'm in Ft Lauderdale, so I know how many days the sun is hiding..your weather is not much different in the Orlando area.

Hope this helps