I'm curious to hear about people's experiences/thoughts on chillers as well...it's our first summer with our pool (19' x 38' salt water, 3-9' deep) and yesterday the water temperature was 96 degrees! We're just outside of Memphis TN...Thoughts, suggestions??

our water was warming up as well.

I started running the aerator in the evening and setting up a few umbrellas in the umbrella sleeves.

It has lowered the pool temp by 4 degrees.

If you have solar heating, you can run it at night to cool off your pool. Also run any waterfalls etc at night. I am in phoenix and can keep the pool around 86 all summer. I have a 3 1/2' - 10', 33,000 gallon pool. LOVE LOVE my solar for both heating and cooling the pool.

I was looking at the Glacier chiller as well. I saw one at Leslies this week. I think I'll try the fountain method first since the Glacier cooler is around 2000 bucks. I found some fountains I am ordering at Lowes for 25 bucks. I have heard running these at night does a similar job as the 2000 dollar units. They sell a similar device also at http://www.poolcoolers.com/ It will give you plenty of info but the Lowes price is cheaper. Worth a shot for 50 bucks. I am in Kemah so I know what you mean

Here is a link that might be useful: pool fountain for cooling

OK, I ran a test last night using only my aerator.
If you are wondering what that is here is a pic of one, its not my pool but its pretty much identical to the one I have.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyblue2/2656738741/

I checked water temp last night at 5 PM.
93 degrees

Ran aerator from Mignight till 5:30 AM.

Pool temp 87 degrees.

Its funny, I actually did not want this item, but our sales guy insisted in Texas it might well be the best $100 upgrade we could add.

I am glad we listened to him.

Can ThermoFlo heat pumps be used in reverse to cool the water?

The largest, most expensive model (120R?)of the ThermalFlo can cool (as can other heat pumps) - has to be cooling capable from the factory.

My area of Houston got about 3 inches of rain this week. All that fresh water brought the pool temperature down from 94 to 88! :)

ok. I see some other Texas folks here so I am sure they can answer this question. I am in Montgomery Texas.

When should one run fountain ?

Dew Points are lower in the day time but does running the pool equipment during the day off set any evaporative cooling achieved with the Fountain ?

I can't think of a way of running just the fountain with out turning on the filtering equip.

Thanks for the help.

Run your fountains or sprayers from midnight to 7am for maximum cooling.
You have to run the pump to make it pressurize, simply change the start/stop tabs on your timeclock or erase the filter pump and pool cleaner run times on your computer and enter a program for minight till 10am or noon.

I'm curious, are y'all the Marple's on the lake I built a pool for a couple of years ago?

See ya,
Kelly

I bought two of the fountains for about $23 at Warehouse Pools and installed them and OMG! It works! Ran the pump and fountains overnight and the pool was much cooler.

Thanks for the info Janesm.....could you or someone else provide a picture or a link to this product.

Ibobi, there already is a link to this product on this thread posted by scum1 on June 22.

Exactly how would I install the Aqua EZ Wall Mounted Pool Fountain? Thanks.

I had to remove a return fitting for each of the two fountains. The eyeball part wasn't too hard to remove, but there is a second piece that is threaded, definitely required a big wrench. I worried that I would strip the threads but it came out OK. Probably is a cheap part to replace, if you do destroy them. Once those were out, you can screw in the fountains - they have a 1-1/2" threaded diameter. Yes, they are kind of cheap plastic, I wish I had known the water would get so hot before I had the pool built and could get really durable, permanent fountains, but these are pretty unobtrusive and cheap and my pool water is now 85 degrees instead of 95!

One other simple heat transfer method, though probably not as effective as a fountain woud be to aim all your returns UP towards the surface. This could allow heat saturated water to be closer to the surface at night and aeriate the surface slightly to aid in cooling...though you might have to reverse this and point them down during the day.

Last night, I switched my sheer descents to come on at 3 hours at night. Temp dropped by 3 degrees(from 92 to 89) so I guess it does work well. I will bump it to 5 hours and see what happens.