Insulating a swimming pool

Few layers of Kingspan?

Risky question for DIY.

Yes around the side i suppose. Underneath i don't know if it'd handle the compression. Can anyone work out the compressive load of 2 meters of water? i.e. using supabloc 7, could it cope with the weight?

Huh? That's easy. A cubic meter weighs near as dammit a tonne. (varies with temperature, but not enough to matter) so you are getting 2 tonnes per square metre, 20KPa or 1/5 of an atmosphere. 3 PSI even.

What? The blocks are in N/mm^2! that's a barsteward unit if ever I saw one!

One Pascal is one Newton per square metre, so 7.3N/mm^2 is 7.3MPa. Those blocks are easily strong enough.

Whether they'll still insulate when they've soaked up ground water for a couple of years I have no idea.

Andy

Surely a bit dangerous to disregard the forces on the sides. Could lead to a massive failure.

Supabloc7. Expanded Polystyrene or kingspan would be more than adequate with >100mm of reinforced concrete slab above it.

The force against the sides at the bottom would be similar.

Isn't earth a reasonable insulator by itself?

Surely the biggest heat loss, and the one most difficult to insulate will be the top surface?

Evaporation from the surface *is* tha major loss of heat from swimming pools. Even bubble wrap will reduce this considerably. Trouble is you can't swim in it then.

Air temperature should be maintained 1degC above the water temperature to keep the air from saturation. Condensation has ruined the structure of many

I think the temperature regulation system has been bred out of people in the last 50 years. Swimming pools 50s, 70F now 86F living rooms 50s, 55-60F now

Not compared to PIR foam... 100mm under the floor slab and around the edges would make a massive difference,

You can float a thermal cover on top when not in use. It will actually add to the water temperature on a sunny day. It prevents evaporation losses (water and more importantly heat) as well.

I got the impression, possibly erroneously, that it was to be an outdoor pool. In which case I'd guess keeping the air 1degC higher than the water could be very expensive... :-)

Yeah, what he said. From memory, mine had a layer of some sort of plastic foam, about 10-12mm thick across the floor and the sides were covered with something like extra thick hessian wadding. I think both were put there more for protection of the liner than insulation. The greatest heat loss is at the surface, a solar blanket is an absolute must.

ta for this. So King span is strong enough? cool. Yes it is an out side pool situated in France. I will be heating it by solar panels and my aim is to make it useable for as much of the year as possible.

Ok, so i go with king span. Do i go with their thickest sheet or does it matter much? Obviously i need the pool to be stable over a good few years, so no movement in the floor is essential. Should i lay them directly on the bottom of the hole i dig, or add a concrete slab under it as well as the pool bottom slab over it?

Steve

My thoughts exactly.

The actual m,ass of water in a pool is VAST. it is its own heatbank.

The volume of soil between it and the air is also vast.

Complete waste of time to insulate.

Going from nothing to 25mm generally makes a big difference. Increasing the insulation above that makes much less difference.

By far the most important area to insulate is the top of the pool, where the warmer water will tend towards, and heat loss by evaporation and wind-chill is significant.

The presence of the insulating blocks (or kingspan!) will have little effect on the strength of the pool. You'll still need to handle a lateral force of one tonne (ish) for every running metre of wall length.

I should add I'm not a pool designer, but I do know a _little_ _basic_ physics.

Andy

i think the kingspan would get damp and not be much use

Check out

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If you really want to insulate your pool properly and receive a Government grant too, visit the Thermapool website at

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