Heating Options

Extend Your Swim Season Wherever You Live

We recommend that every pool we sell has a heater installed inline with the rest of the equipment. Our friends in North Carolina told us a heater is unnecessary because their pool water in the summer was often over 90 degrees. That’s a bit warm for swimming and it’s a remedied problem that will not be addressed in this article (it does not involve ice cubes!).

The reason we want you to have a heater on your pool is so that you can get the most out of it. I’ve been in cold pools in Ft. Meyers Beach, FL, so yeah Florida, you need a heater too. You may not want to swim all winter long, especially when there’s snow on the ground, but what about that stretch of Indian Summer in the fall? The air gets cold at night, cooling your pool water, but the days are amazing and begging for swimmers. Who can’t wait to go swimming in the spring, when new leaves are popping and flowers are jumping out of the ground? You really want to tell the kids you’ll open the pool on Memorial Day?

This is an unheated pool.

So, now that I’ve talked you into a heater, we need to figure out how much heater you need. A large enough heater will allow you to leave the heat off most of the time, right up until about an hour before you want to go swimming. That will mean you will want a gas heater.

There are basically 2 options for most people for heating their pool: Gas or electric. Electric heat pumps are fine in warmer climates but for most of the US a gas heater will work best for most people.

For the Magic Pools we most often recommend the Raypack 156,000 BTU gas heater. It gets the job done in most applications, but you may consider a 250,000 BTU heater if you think you might like hot tub-like temperatures from time to time. Remember too that a larger heater will warm your pool more quickly, so you can run it less often.

For the adventurous among us, other pool heating options are tying into a ground source heat pump (generally used for home heating during winter), tying into a wood boiler used for hydronic heating and domestic hot water, and of course there are plenty of DIY options for a solar heated pool.

Whatever choice of heat source you decide is best for your home, we absolutely encourage you to heat that pool! You’ll be glad you did.