Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Hillbilly pool heater

Our 5000 gallon pool keeps a steady 65 degrees, even with a solar blanket. Pretty cool even on a hot day. I rigged up this unit mostly from stuff I had around. There is 50 feet of 3/4" copper tubing coiled in the stove, inlet and outlet are teed into the pressure hose from the pool pump. I haven't taken temperature readings yet, but it seems to be working.
Summer in Alberta.

Nice! And you can make moonshine with it once pool season is over!

You mean he can go back to making some of his Alberta flamethrower.

Don't let Al catch you adding to GW with that thing.

I'm thinking it won't be long before Wood puts some Florida strain LMB in that pool. Or Peacock Bass, or Tilapia, or.....

what the heck, Catman can use the coils to drape some Virginia roadkill and smoke it up to make some Sunil-jerky.

I assume that you are speaking of jerky made for Sunil and not jerky made from Sunil.

Call me paranoid but I still have my doubts about Girl Scout Cookies.

Wood, do you fire that up in the winter? If so, how long do the copper coils last?

I was actually having thoughts of gin and yellow perch while building this thing. My kids were thinking hot dogs and smokies. As a side note, notice the white patch near the bottom of the pool?, a slip of the knife while cutting the hose resulted in my wife calling me moron and genius in the same sentence.

Esshup, I just built it last night, but no intentions of winter use. I'm hoping it will extend the summer swimming at least into the end of August. We have over 200 days of ice cover here, so I'm just trying to squeek a litle more summer before ice-fishing starts.

Wow Wood you must be really far north. No problems growing trout in an open pond up there eh?

Wow! what a great and conserving thing! AWESOME!!!

Wood - Good to hear from you.

That was 15 months ago.

Wood be nice to hear from Wood, and others.

Hello all, I'm still around although my fish growing days are over. My little pond has been fish-less for over six years now, you can only fight nature for so long and resistance is eventually futile.

Too many extremes in my neck of the woods for small ponds. After about five years of trout stocking I experienced numerous summer kill events, followed by winter kills after fall stocking attempts. Three feet of ice for many months in winter, plus a couple of weeks of heat wave in August does not support trout (in my pond).

For anyone interested, if I was to start over, here is what I would do: Minimum one surface acre in size, dig to 25 feet deep over most of the pond, think about it, then dig another five feet with side slopes as steep as allowable. Install summer bottom diffused aeration system and surface agitator for continuos winter run, keeping significant ice-free area all winter.

No regrets either way, I now have a nice little wild life refuge and moose swimming hole.

James, how are the boys? Good to hear from you.