Hi, Living in S/W France good hours of year round sunshine and plenty of land to lay pipes (3.5 acres) we are having a house built using geothermal heating. The decision we need to make is do we extend the geo system for an indoor pool or do we go solar for this? Speaking to the different companies it seems they favour which ever they are selling!!!! The pool is an indoor lap pool 60ft long x 11ft wide and 4 ft deep. Any one had any long term experiences of either system or do we just toss a coin? Thanks in advance for your help.

We have had an outdoor pool with solar hot water and indoor with natural gas heated. In this house we went geothermal for the indoor pool. It is WAY less expensive to heat. Maybe where you are solar might work, but your dependant on what the sun is doing. I would rather set a temperature on the pool and it stays there. We have a 16k gallon indoor and keep it at 88F, warm for lap swimming, but the kids and wife like it. We have a dual Badu jet system for swimming in place and really like it, it takes getting used to but once you figure it out your set.

So I would go for geothermal, if you share the field with your house you will basically have either free home air-conditioning or free pool heating. The cool you dump from the pool will cool the field and thus making cooling the house even more efficient.

But if you get a good installer it would be less expensive to heat the pool with solar, but probably more maintenance with the equipment and probably more up front cost especially if the home will already have a geo system.