8 Easy Ways to Cool Pool Water
Most pool owners know how to heat their pool water, whether it is by installing an electric heating system or with the many solar solutions out there. However, when it comes to cooling the pool, things do not always seem that straightforward.
A pool with warm water can be pretty uncomfortable in the hot summer months when you want something to give you a much-needed escape from the blazing heat. Luckily, there are many ways of keeping pool water cool, and you just need to decide what works best for you.
8 Easy Ways to Cool Pool Water
1. Install Water Features
If you do not already have water features like waterfall, jets, and fountains, you need to install them if you are looking for an effective way to cool your water.
Water features keep the water moving which means it will get more contact with the air. The interaction with the cool air reduces the water temperature over time.
Also, as the water moves through these features, some of it evaporates, allowing heat to escape from the remaining water.
Running the water features at night when the temperatures are low is often more effective at cooling the pool water than during the day.
2. Adjust Your Landscaping
Your pool landscaping has a significant effect on your water temperature. Therefore, if you are looking for a long-term solution for keeping the pool water cool, adjusting the landscaping will be a great idea.
If you have trees and other plants like bushes around your swimming pool, the chances they are blocking the normal airflow, making it hard for the air to cool down the water.
Therefore, simply removing some of these plants around the pool can help allow more air to flow over the water’s surface and cause a cooling effect.
You do not even need to remove the plants, as even pruning them is often enough to ensure they do not create a wall that blocks airflow around your pool.
3. Shade the Pool Area
Another straightforward way of keeping your pool water cool is by providing shade for the pool area. With some shade over the pool, you will ensure that the sun does not heat the water much, so the temperature remains relatively low.
You can build a DIY shade with the materials you already have at home, as it can be pretty straightforward if you are an experienced DIYer and have a relatively smaller pool.
Installing a canopy over the entire pool or even a section is another easy way of shading the water from the scorching sun. Shading the pool area will also minimize chlorine loss due to the sun and save you some cash on what you spend on your pool sanitizer.
4. Run the Filtration System at Night
Keeping your pool cool requires good planning that will entail managing different aspects of pool maintenance, such as when to run the filtration system.
Your filtration system can help cool down your pool water by circulating it to allow air from the surrounding environment to lower its temperature. However, this might not be very effective during the day when the air is also quite hot.
Therefore, if you want your filtration system to help cool down your pool, make it a habit of running it at night only.
When the air cools at night, your filtration system will work like a mechanical evaporative pool cooling system.
If the temperature in your area is low enough at night, you can get an overall pool water temperature drop of at least a few degrees, which makes a massive difference for swimmers.
5. Add Some Ice to the Water
While adding ice to your pool to cool the water might sound a little weird and farfetched, it can be an effective solution if you do not have a massive pool.
You will need a large quantity of ice, and if you can get it at a reasonable price, it is worth the shot. The ice melts in your pool and slowly reduces the overall water temperatures as the water circulates.
However, you should know that ice can dilute your water and affect your pool balance, and so you should be ready to test and balance it again afterward.
6. Drain and Refill the Pool
While draining your pool and refilling it again comes with some extra work as you will need to balance the chemistry again, it is a highly effective way of reducing the temperature.
You do not have to drain the entire pool because just emptying and refilling it partially can lower the temperature significantly.
However, this method only works best when you get water from a cool source such as a well, as municipal and other surface water sources also get pretty hot in the summer.
If you prefer to use this method, it is good to reuse the pool water you drain to ensure you do not waste a lot of clean water.
7. Install Pool Aerators
Aerators provide one of the easiest and cheapest ways to cool pool water. These small attachments will mount on the side of the pool and work by introducing air to the drops of water they spray into the pool.
The aerators use the pump’s return water and spray it back into the pool like small fountains. With the air in these drops of water, heat can escape easily as there will be increased evaporation.
Although this is quite a simple concept, it can reduce the water temperature by at least a couple of degrees within a short time. However, aerators work better in dry climates than in more humid ones.
8. Use a Pool Cooler
When you want to drop your pool’s water temperature within a short time, a pool cooler is a good option. A mechanical evaporative chiller is also a good option when all the methods above cannot keep your water temperature low enough and it continuously.
Pool coolers work like air conditioning units as they use fast-rotating fans to cool the water as it passes through. They provide excellent results, especially when you use them at night when the temperatures around the pool are lower.
A good pool cooler can help lower your pool temperature by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, it will help minimize the breakdown of pool chemicals like chlorine, which degrade fast when the temperature is high.
Bottom Line
Nothing beats diving into a cool swimming pool on a hot summer day as it is just refreshing, and the cooling effect makes the heat of the season more bearable.
While keeping the pool cool in summer is not always easy given the extreme heat from the sun, it is still doable. You can use various tricks, like shading the pool, installing water features, and using mechanical evaporators to cool down your pool.
In many cases, you will need to combine several of these methods to get a cool enough pool temperature. And besides making the water more comfortable for swimmers, cooling your pool also helps minimize pool chemical usage.
