Cooler Pool

[mikesthang]

I live in Central Texas and have a 16' Diameter Intex Pool. Can anybody tell me a cheap way to cool the pool down from 92 degrees?

[Watermom]

Do you have solar panels? If so, try running them at night.

[PoolDoc]

If the dewpoint in your area below 60 deg F, you can use evaporative cooling, via a spray fountain. Competition pool sometimes use custom build rigs for this purpose, but you can end up cooling the air, rather than the pool, if you don't get your droplet size correct. In any case, it appears you may be in an area of Texas where that won't work so well:
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick...rving&state=TX

You can also cool if you have solar panels, by running them a night during hours when the air temp is lower than your water temp.

People sometimes buy ice for the purpose, but it's a waste of $$'s, because the amount of ice it would take on a daily basis is huge.

By the way, for future reference, I found the difference in water temperature between a pool painted with bright white epoxy and the same pool painted with viking blue (dark) epoxy was about 7 degrees. Lots of folks in hot areas opt for dark finishes or liners and don't realize a white finish could have given them a much more usable pool in summer.

Good luck!

[mikesthang]

Actually the humidty for today is very high. Our temps have been 102 to 112 with a humidty in the upper 30's.
Thought about the mist cooler but was not sure if it really worked or not. Is there a way to build your own?
I would love to get my Intex 16' x 48" pool down to 86 to 88 degrees.

[PoolDoc]

with a humidity in the upper 30's.

30 what? % or degrees?

What's relevant, for cooling purposes is NOT the %, but the dew point temperature, because that determines whether evaporation cooling will work for you.

As far as the question whether such systems can work, they can . . . IF they are designed correctly for your LOCAL conditions. Years ago, I actually spent quite a bit of time looking into designing a modular system that would allow rapid fabrication of effective systems for use with the 50 meter long course pools used in USS events in summer. It can be done, and would be effective, but nozzle selection and flow rates are critical in order to produce results the coaches and swimmers would notice.

However, these would be multi-thousand dollar systems purpose built for individual pools, typically containing 500,000+ gallons of water. Everything would be standard plumbing except for the nozzles, which were specialty items that had to be bulk purchased from the OEM. And some 'tuning' would be required.

I'm not sure that amount of work would have been worthwhile for 500,000 gallon pools. I'm pretty sure it would not be for a 5,000 gallon pool.

If it were me, and I was inclined to experiment, I'd buy a 1/8HP sump pump, some 3/4 PVC pipe and fittings, and a high resolution thermometer . . . and begin playing around. But you'll need to learn your way around a psychometric chart, in order to make some intelligent guesses about what might work. Here's a good one:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...icChart-IP.PDF

Ben