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[Jrg33]

I was thinking about heating my pool with my wood burner. Just wondering what the easiest way would be to do it.

[RSI]

Use a tube in shell heat exchanger in series with the pool pump and run pex from the OWB to the other side of it. What size pool and boiler do you have? They size the heat exchangers for the pool size normally but there is no point in going bigger than what your boiler can handle.

[muffin]

I use a tube and shell heat exchanger.  It is a huge load on the furnace but the best option I could find.  If you have a salt water pool, make sure you get a titanium exchanger.

Also, check these out on ebay: "Mini Digital Temperature Controller Thermostat Aquarium".  Fantastic little digital thermostat for controlling the heat exchanger.  And you can get em for under 15 bucks.

[Scott7m]

Heating a pool is one of the hardest things on a boiler, 99.9% of all pools are hooked up to the boiler incorrectly.

With return water coming back under 140 your going to have serious problems, one of the by products of burning wood is moisture, it collects on any surface cooler than like 136,   If your return water is hitting your firebox cooler than that, moisture will gather there and run down inside the firebox with the ash causing a highly corrosive situation.  I know of one guy who totally rusted out a 1/4" firebox in 1 year.

Please install some time of boiler protection when heating pools, and at the very least have an aquastat control a valve so that your not filling the stove and dumping heat into the pool wildly. 

[muffin]

I have the thermostatic valve on the main line.  I also installed some sensors on my lines so that the pool will be disabled if the line temp drops below 165 feeding the pool circuit.  That way the pool wioll only heat during the high portion of the boiler cycle.  Hoping that will help with recovery time and unburden the house.  It should only heat when the bioler is good and hot and the house is not demanding heat.

[Scott7m]

Muffin, most pool heat exchangers pulled off so much heat the return water comes back near the same temp as the pool.  Have you ever checked to see your return temp while it's on?!  Check it sometime and let us know.

[willieG]

when you send yoru poolwater to your heat exchanger you should only send a protion of it there and the rest directly back to the pool. you could use a valve to adjust how many GPM you send to the heat exchanger. lets face it, we all (or a lot of us) use the plate or tube exchanger to heat our domestic water but what we may not all realize is that most of us are pumping between 6 to 10 GPM  from our OWB and the water from the doemestic side is moving likley around only 2 to 3 GPM so the load on the furnace is not so bad. if you were to do this with your pool it would take longer to heat it up but it would likley keep your OWB running more in its own "performance curve" just my thoughts, may not be right

[Scott7m]

when you send yoru poolwater to your heat exchanger you should only send a protion of it there and the rest directly back to the pool. you could use a valve to adjust how many GPM you send to the heat exchanger. lets face it, we all (or a lot of us) use the plate or tube exchanger to heat our domestic water but what we may not all realize is that most of us are pumping between 6 to 10 GPM  from our OWB and the water from the doemestic side is moving likley around only 2 to 3 GPM so the load on the furnace is not so bad. if you were to do this with your pool it would take longer to heat it up but it would likley keep your OWB running more in its own "performance curve" just my thoughts, may not be right

Yep, there is kits that take care of all of this for you. 

[muffin]

Muffin, most pool heat exchangers pulled off so much heat the return water comes back near the same temp as the pool.  Have you ever checked to see your return temp while it's on?!  Check it sometime and let us know.

I have.  I intentionally undersized the exchanger to drag out the heating cycle.  I loose about 20* across the exchanger.  It was higher, but I upgraded the pump to get a higher flow rate.