How Large a Solar Collector Do You Need to Heat Your Hot Tub?

This is a pretty good method to determine how large a solar collector is needed to heat your hot tub. 

The size of the collector needed to heat a hot tub depends on a lot of things: volume of the tub, how well its insulated, how good the cover is, what your climate is like, how hot you keep it, ...   Its not easy to take all that into account to get a good idea what size collector you need.  But, I ran across the method detailed below in "More Other Homes and Garbage" that uses the temperature drop of the hot tub over 24 hours to determine the daily heat loss for your hot tub in your climate and for the way you use it -- it seems like a good approach to me.

All the details here...

By the way  "More Other Homes and Garbage" is a terrific book written the 80's, but full of good ideas, good analysis, and written in a style that won't put you asleep -- and, its only $8 used!  Better get one before they all disappear!


Given that hot tubs are the biggest energy users in most homes that have them, its not a bad idea to do the test on your hot tub to see how the heat loss looks, and even if you can't do a solar heater, things like more insulation and a good cover can make a lot of difference.


Gary