Is there a way to heat an inground pool by a small solar panel? Everything I see online shows rack mounted, roof mounted, huge solar panels to heat the pool.

 

Don't most solar pool heating systems circulate water through the panels...and the panels are heated by the sun. Hence why you need a large surface area for the panels to heat the water.

How exactly would a small panel work?

 

^ That is my understanding as well. We looked into doing solar for the house and they explained we could easily add pool heating to it b/c of the large surface area...

 

Some women prefer smaller panels

 

If you have a solid stockade fence on the property that gets a good amount of direct sunlight during the day, you can weave some 1.5" black abs pipe on the back side. Then trickle-pump the water through the piping all day and it'll heat the pool on the cheap.

 

you could perhaps augment a gas or oil fired pool heater with a small solar set up to help maintain temp during the hotter months.

Not sure if this would work but if you were installing an asphalt driveway I wonder if it would soak up enough heat that if pipes were weaved through it that they would soak up the heat from the sun.

 

^^^ This is a very interesting idea and peaked my interest so I had to Google it. I came up with this article on the idea. http://www.pmmag.com/Articles/Column...00000001111089