Intex 28685 Pool EcoFriendly Solar Heating Mat, Includes 32mm hose attachment points Suitable for above-ground pools with a capacity less than 30,280L

I bought two of these as I was told by a neighbour that they didn’t work that well….. we have a 3 x 2 m 800 gallon pool and one is fine. It doesn’t work quickly but it does work. It is well made - if a bit of a faff to put together. I have had not leak from it despite my loony Labrador jumping out of the pool onto it!! We have found the water still warms up even with the handle turned off, as it still runs through the larger tubes. After a hot day the pool is actually a bit too warm, but I’ll take that over the usual shock!! It is good value for money….. but, we had to buy a larger pump as the one we had - which was arguably too small for our size of pool anyway - would never have had the power to push water through this heater!

One reviewer here talks of turning off the pump to let the panel heat up. This is the wrong thing to do! It will give hotter water, but less heat, because heat lost to the air is greater the higher the temperature. Unless you want hat water, any panel without insulating glass is best run at maximum flow rate. This is like the basic physics question - put milk in your tea first if you want it to stay hot, as if you leave it sitting at high temperature and then add milk it will lose more heat. Any black panel is going to absorb around 500 watts per square meter in reasonable sunshine (full sun is 1 kW per square meter), so you can expect this panel to be the equivalent of a 500 to 800W heater in full sun. That's not a lot, but enough to heat a small pool significantly in time. The panel, laid out on a patio, tends to crease up unevenly in use, and the outlet valve is a rather ugly addition. I'd prefer a rigid panel mounted at an angel, but cheap ones don't seem to exist. It does the job though, on my 8ft long pool for the kids..

I had high hopes after reading the reviews. It made perfect sense that these should work. I bought two mats. Our pool is fairly modest (8ft circular). I set up as per the instructions, nice sunny spot:Issue 1 - the flow rate was non existent, our filter/pump isn't the strongest so bought a 800 gal/ph thinking this would solve the issue. It didn't, pump on its own was very powerful but as soon as you put it through the mats you couldn't even feel it on the return hose to the pool.So I sent that one back and got an evening more powerful one (1000 gal/ph) but the same issue. Could just feel it coming through but the flow rate was pathetic. Slowing the water down that much I'm sure would eventually destroy the pump.Issue 2 - this is linked the the first issue, the mats won't stay flat, they bunch up causing kinks.Issue 3 - even once I had them fairly flat and a trickle of flow going through them on a warm sunny day with them in full sunlight for hours it made no difference.Not sure if I had a bad batch but I certainly wouldn't buy again.Gave up in the end and sent them back. Very disappointed. Going to have to resort to good old electric heater

Brilliantly simple. Increased the temp of a 10 foot pool by 5 degrees C in a few hour (25 to 30 C). Was expecting a longer marginal gain but on a hot summer day this really makes the pool much more comfortable for the kids for long pool times. Really simple to setup. The black mat gets really hot in the sun before to get water flowing and then it cools as it’s taking all that heat into the pool. Genuinely surprised how effective this is.

Works reasonably well but the pump on the intex pool is not really powerful enough to filter and push through this, could do with an upgraded pump in combination with the solar heater and filters.

I was a bit dubious after reading some of the reviews but I'm glad I bought this. Exceptional value for money. The build quality is good with sturdy fixtures and thick plastic heat mat. It didn't take long to setup on our pool and it fits in really well. It has definitely improved the heat level in the pool as you can feel it coming out the inlet pipe and we have one of the larger rectangular pools.

That is way better than expected. We have 2.2/1.5/0.4m pool and on a sunny day it warms up the water nicely. On a hot day it turns it into a bath! The temp exceeded 35deg, it is like a hot tub. Highly recommended.Ease of installation:Very easy to put together Value for money:Cant beat it, free heating under 20quid, come on!

I wasnt expecting this to work that well, especially for the price, but I was pleasantly surprised how warm the water was coming back into the pool...however what I will say is depending on the size of your pool you may need a couple or even a few.