a while back, I found a 150,000 btu hanging furnace on the roadside that someone had put out for the trash pick up. I looked it over and everything seemed in order. I took it home, cleaned it up, cleaned out the gas inlet filter, hooket it up and it worked fine. I originally picked it up thinking I could use it in the garage but I don't work out there as much as I used to. So now I'm wondering how I can turn it into a heater for the pool. Pool heaters are sooooo expensive. I've already cannibalized a hot tub heater for the electrical heating element but it only heats the water approx. 20 degrees above the pool temp and I don't have very much flow from it. So what kind of ideas do you have for turning this furnace into a pool heater?
Trade it in for a pool heater!! Seriously, it isn't worth the trouble.
I don't think it's a very reasonable idea. The heat exchanger in a hanging furnace could not be easily converted into a water heating system, You'd be better off with an old residential boiler or water heater.
Bastardize together the heat exchanger from a pool heater to the furnace. However, I HIGHLY do not recommend doing this. You have to have a flow limiter on it so that when the flow stops the gas stops or you will burn out your exchanger and furnace. The sizes are different so you are going to have to build a metal containment box or enlarge the containment unit currently there. Again, I HIGHLY recommend against doing this. There, I think I've satisfied the warnings ;-)
