Slight

Thanks for your feedback. I tried the heat mat route and didn't really do much. I'm not looking to heat the pool to 90 degrees or anything. The ground area in our back yard is limited and we rent our home, so putting panels up and investing in a full blown system wouldn't be possible, especially for an above ground pool. One corner of our roof is just baked in the sun from April through October and it would just be perfect for some kind of solar heater to at least get the water from 60 degrees to 70. Anyway, thanks again.

I'm planning (to my wife's dismay) solar pool heater project 3.0 for the summer for our Intex 18x24 above ground pool. We get a ton of California sun and my plan so far is to get a glass table top off of Craig's list and use it as a cover on a horizontal box on the roof filled with 1/2 inch irrigation tubing. If I were to use a regular garden hose to bring the water to the base of the house, would it better to have the pump push the water up to the roof or have the pump on the roof pulling the water up? Would a $100 1.6 hp motor have enough power to do this? Last question, would I need to put some kind of check valve so the water doesn't fall back and then I have to re-prime the pump each time? Also, I have a salt water pool, so is this a problem when purchasing a general hobby pump? I'm on a serious budget, do I appreciate any tinker-ers out there who have input! I tried this last summer and used plastic sump pump hose and an old Intex pool pump but it was really inefficient.