[LVAllen]

That's a decorative fountain. It wasn't intended for the kind of height or spray volume you'd need to get any decent cooling. Plus evaporative cooling works best in low humidity, which is during the day.

I have a short threaded PVC pipe screwed directly into one of the attached spa return inlets. That pipe is connected to an T, with one of the pathways following another pipe 5' straight up. The other end of the T is a ball valve. The vertical pipe connects to another T, this time attached to pipes about 12" on each side, each side having around 60 1/16" holes drilled in them, capped off on the ends. When I want to cool the pool, I shut the ball valve, which forces the inlet water up through the pipes. It then exits through the holes as a spray. As the water sprays through the air, some of it evaporates, shedding the heat, and the rest falls back into the pool several degrees cooler, creating a fun water feature for the kids. The higher / longer the spray, the more it cools. Total cost was probably less than $30.

Looks sort of like this:
Pool Cooler | Pool Cooler Creates Refreshing Feeling In Hot Summer Days

[LV2ndHome]

Originally Posted by LVAllen

That's a decorative fountain. It wasn't intended for the kind of height or spray volume you'd need to get any decent cooling.

Our fountain shoots about 15 ft high in the center, and about 10 ft high for the next tier pattern, which sprays in about a 15 ft diameter. This is about all it can do vertically and horizontally without blowing a lot out of the pool when the wind picks up. Total time the water droplets are exposed to the air for evaporation is a relatively long time when you shoot that high, generally in an upward direction, meaning the droplets not only travel that distance up, but they're slowing down on the way up and also take some acceleration time on the way down while they're traveling the same distance again. Compared that to shooting water out horizontally from a pvc pipe only 5 feet tall in which water coming out close to the water line on the vertical pvc pipe sprayer will hit the pool very quickly, and even the water being sprayed from the top part of the pipe is only 5 feet from the water line and immediately accelerating downward as soon as it leaves the pipe.

Also our fountain was on a dedicated pump instead of using the returns. Of course everyone's setup differs, but I'd say we were certainly putting at least similar gpm through our fountain as a couple of side sprayers and probably more than most. A fountain like we used and side sprayers like you have both help to a very similar degree and are a lot better than nothing, but neither is sufficient in many cases. Of course a lot factors into how much it will help such as the total volume of the pool, the construction material/color, how deep it is, how much exposure to the sun it has, water droplet size from the sprayer/fountain, etc.

Originally Posted by LVAllen

I have a short threaded PVC pipe screwed directly into one of the attached spa return inlets. That pipe is connected to an T, with one of the pathways following another pipe 5' straight up. The other end of the T is a ball valve. The vertical pipe connects to another T, this time attached to pipes about 12" on each side, each side having around 60 1/16" holes drilled in them, capped off on the ends. When I want to cool the pool, I shut the ball valve, which forces the inlet water up through the pipes. It then exits through the holes as a spray. As the water sprays through the air, some of it evaporates, shedding the heat, and the rest falls back into the pool several degrees cooler, creating a fun water feature for the kids. The higher / longer the spray, the more it cools. Total cost was probably less than $30.

Looks sort of like this:
Pool Cooler | Pool Cooler Creates Refreshing Feeling In Hot Summer Days

These have been around forever. There's probably hundreds of threads about them on the pool forum sites. They are very popular because they are cheap, easy, and they do help some on cooling. Downsides are they often don't cool as much as desired, you have an unsightly pvc pipe(s) sticking up from the pool, they can be easily broken if someone or something falls into or hits them, they can't be quickly installed/removed if desired to do so on a regular basis, they can interfere with some cleaners, interfere with some covers, and they take away water flow from the returns designed to circulate floating trash to the skimmer. Before getting the Glacier Cooler, we thought about adding these in addition to our fountain, but decided against for all the above negative reasons. Even the advertising in the link you provided admits this system doesn't cool as much as a cooler:

"1. Compare the result to buy costly ($ 1799+) Pool Chillers, Vs only $34.00 mistcooling’s poolcooler which achieve nearly close results."

There are several reasons the swamp cooler has so much more cooling capacity than a fountain, jets, or spray devices.

1. The water trickles over a corrugated plastic material instead of free falling, and there is upward air flow to further help slow the speed of the water falling, so the water is exposed to the air for a much longer period of time.

2. The swamp air uses forced air (fan) instead of the other systems using ambient air.

3. The swamp cooler can handle much higher gpm flow. They make a commercial model than handle up to 300 gpm for example. You can easily pick a model to fit your needs with capacity to spare.

Originally Posted by LVAllen

Plus evaporative cooling works best in low humidity, which is during the day.

Maybe I'm missing your point. I don't think there has been anything previously indicating any of the cooling devices presented (the fountain, the side sprayers on the return jets, and the swamp cooler) can't be, or should be, run at any particular times of the day/night.

That said, your statement only tells half of the story about evaporative cooling and doesn't correctly apply to this situation. Yes there is more evaporation at lower humidity, which typically occurs during the day, but the trade off is that is the time of higher ambient temperatures that must be overcome since in this situation we are only interested in the absolute wet bulb temperature we can achieve. The other thing to realize is that in dry climate areas like LV, night relative humidity is usually still very low, so it doesn't adversely effect the wet bulb temp very much compared to getting the benefit of a much lower dry bulb temp at night. If you look at a psychrometric chart, you can see that it's typically easy to achieve a lower wet bulb temperature at night even though the RH is higher than it is during the day. This is the reason the Glacier Cooler manufacturer recommends to run their cooler at night. I've checked the return water temp from my cooler many times and virtually always get lower water temps at night than I can get during the day. Note that I'm not saying one can't cool a pool during the day, but only that usually it can be cooled more quickly/efficiently at night.

The swamp cooler is pricey, but it has the capacity to handle the job even in the extreme temps when you need it the most, and we like that's hidden out of sight, nothing to continually install/uninstall on a regular basis, doesn't interfere with the skimmer cleaning efficiency, polaris cleaner, or any other pool functions, and most of all that we can simply set the water temp that we want on the Jandy controller and forget it.

[dajebriza]

Wow, I never even considered that a pool would have an issue of being too hot and you needed to coll it down. On average summer days in Vegas, are you saying that just from exposure to the direct sunlight, a pool will heat up to an uncomfortable level which is necessitating these cooling techniques and devices just to bring the temp down to a comfortable level? This is all new to me and a totall ynew consideration I had not anticipated. We don't like overly warm water and want a swim to feel refreshing and so cooling off the pool is probably something we need to consider if the Vegas heat and sun will make the poll too warm for us.

[BUGBULLY]

Our pool is in the sun pretty much all day long. We have only had one year, where I put the hose in the pool to cool it off, lol. Most of the time, the temperature is perfect for us. Not sure on the exact temp, because once it gets warm enough for me to actually go in, I don't really care.

[LV2ndHome]

Originally Posted by dajebriza

Wow, I never even considered that a pool would have an issue of being too hot and you needed to coll it down. On average summer days in Vegas, are you saying that just from exposure to the direct sunlight, a pool will heat up to an uncomfortable level which is necessitating these cooling techniques and devices just to bring the temp down to a comfortable level? This is all new to me and a totall ynew consideration I had not anticipated. We don't like overly warm water and want a swim to feel refreshing and so cooling off the pool is probably something we need to consider if the Vegas heat and sun will make the poll too warm for us.

The ideal temp is a matter of personal preference. We find it most refreshing for the water to feel cold when we first get in but only to the point the "cold shock" is gone after being in for a few seconds. All of my family starts calling it "bath water" if it gets much above 85 and besides their complaints it is obvious we don't use it as much at those temps simply because it is not as enjoyable.

The degree of the heat problem will vary depending on your pool design. Things like the amount of sun/shade it is exposed to, the color and type of material used, the depth of the pool, the designs of water features, like waterfalls for example, that might be incorporated into the design. But obviously it is not going to stay at our preferred 85 or less unless we have some cooling during times that the daily highs are 110-120, and the night time lows don't even drop below our target temp. It was not unusual for our pool to get in the 95 to 98 range before we started doing any cooling (our pool has a lot of surface area with a max depth of only 5 ft with a grayish marbleized pool wall color designed to go with some of our landscaping/waterfall design). With the fountain we could get the water down to upper 80's during those types of heat waves, but if the fountain was taken out during pool use and we forgot to later put it back in, it was hard to catch back up even to that level after missing a day.

Some may correctly say that many designs will stay cool enough for their pleasure on all but a few short heat wave periods with no cooling or only a fountain/sprayer type cooler. But my point of view is those are the times when you would/should enjoy the pool the most, and compared to the over all cost of our pool, another $2k for a cooler is minimal to assure we can get the most benefit/enjoyment from our big investment in the pool. But keep in mind that pools range anywhere from little plastic pools from Walmart to very large, elaborate, custom built ones, and they are put in a wide variety of surroundings, so the degree of the problem and the amount of money one is willing/able to throw at it will likewise vary greatly.