When you look at a chiller's spec sheet, you'll see ratings for horsepower and kilowatts (kW).
Of the two, kilowatts is by far the more relevant statistic.
The kilowatt rating shows how much heat your chiller can remove from the water at any one time.
It's a simple equation:
If the heat being added to the pool is more than the chiller's kW rating, the pool will warm up.
If the heat being added is less than the chiller's kW rating, the pool will cool down or maintain its temperature.
Let's use a real-world example.
The average person adds roughly 0.55 kW of heat during a three-minute plunge.
If you have 10 people use the pool, that's 5.5 kW of heat added.
Now, add the other heat loads.
Ambient air temperature, pumps, and sunlight might add another 3 kW of constant heat load.
That's a total of 8.5 kW of heat being added to the pool.
In this scenario, if you had an 8.5 kW chiller, it would be able to hold the temperature steady.
But if you had a 5 kW chiller, the water would inevitably warm up, because the heat going in (8.5 kW) is far greater than the heat the chiller can remove (5 kW).
This is the simplest way to understand what the kilowatt rating on a spec sheet means.
It's a direct measure of your chiller's ability to fight back against the heat load of your facility.
There is one major issue with this, however.
The kilowatt rating advertised for 99% of chillers on the market is not accurate.
I'll cover that in a separate email.
If you have questions about kilowatt ratings and what your facility truly needs, hit reply.
We can walk you through the calculations.