30 Tube Water Heater Pool Collector Evacuated Vacuum Tubes Hot

My opinion of this company? It is a dumpster fire! I tried to solve this at the lowest level. I really did. While their tech support was excellent, their customer service manager was atrocious. I have over ten hours tinkering with what should be a simple support rack put together in half an hour. It still in pieces on my driveway. Missing pieces, incorrect measurement, pieces too long with too few holes cut into them, the machinist that fabricated this unit must have been drunk. Instructions were written in a second language and never translated into English properly. Pics were wrong for my unit. Can't heat any water with THAT pile of junk! I spent over $1,200 on a pool heater that would cost me hundreds to ship back because it doesn't work, or I have to request parts for because the support rack is jacked up, and they told me I would have to pay a restocking fee for their mistake. What sucks is their tech support was friendly and supportive and the customer service manager was so bad, so bad. She had a defensive attitude and accusingly and falsely saId she reviewed the phone call with the techs and I had fixed the unit and could use it. LOL! Waste of money, time, and discouraging! Not so hot, if you ask me. Now on to small claims court to get my money back. DUDA should have been called Doodoo.

I bought this system April 2021. I use it to keep the water temperature up so the gas heater doesnt have to raise the temp much. I like 80F water, which this easily maintains on sunny May-September days here near Chicago, Illinois. The wife likes 85F. So just having 1 duds solar heater is not enough to keep it that warm for my climate. I turn the gas heater on when she wants to swim. But natural gas is $1.11 a therm right now, so not running gas heater this year. Your most difficult task will be plumbing this heater to the pool. It likes a slower flow. Right now I'm running 4 gallons a minute, seems to work good, and my pump is only 36watts. So very energy efficient. Pool is a inground 27,000 gallon. For winter when I shut down the pool I disconnect the heater pipes. Drain enough tubes until I can tip the unit over and drain the rest of the water. Any left over water will evaporate before winter. If you fear freezing, pool safe antifreeze will work. Just be gentle with the tubes. Glad they sent 10 extra. I broke one when installing because they are long and didnt pay attention. Extremely happy with this product. And have had many people inquire this year about my heater due to gas prices. Get this. Be happy! You will not be disappointed. Just email the company for the build/installation instructions, because for some odd reason they do not ship instructions with the unit.

I’m living in Deep South Texas, so lots of sunshine here. The collector is facing south with unobstructed sunshine. The temperature output is at best 2.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pool water input. I tried input flow between 1.5 GPM to 6.5 GPM, with the “sweet spot” being at around 3.5 to 4 GPM. So the heating capabilities of this rig are quite low for my pool of 8,500 gallons.

Contacted Duda directly. They priced it the same as Amazon and arranged the shipping. It arrived in a week and the shipping company was great! They backed an 18 Wheeler all the way down our Court and my Private Drive. The packaging was great. 40 vacuum tubes were shipped and only two were broken. Not sure how that happened but we'll have 8 extra if there is any future breakage. There were a bunch of nuts and bolts placed loosely in one box but it was short about 15 nut/bolt combos. I had enough in my "everything leftover" box so it wasn't an issue. It didn't come with any assembly instructions but i had printed them from the Duda website so it was pretty easy to do. My two nephews and I were able to do it in about four hours. It doesn't come with the plumbing needed but that wasn't too difficult. I used a small submersible pond pump kit that's on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XXPJ3WW), some extra garden hose connectors (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V5JSVRD), and some home brew hoses (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LD5P9KP) that all work pretty well. The submersible pond pump has a solar panel so it comes on when the sun shines on it. It doesn't run at night but it doesn't need to. I think it's a great set up. It provides free pool heating. The connectors on the Duda pool heater are one inch, so you'll probably need adapters to get it down to a smaller size. Again, I used Amazon ones (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078L6PHD1) and they seem to work great. It seems like they want it taken down in the winter, so I'll need to think through storage of the boxes. A cover may make more sense, but I don't think it will survive freezing temps. with any water in it. 06/04/23 Winterization update: I turned all the tubes upside down and used bungie straps to put a tarp over the system for the winter. I just took all of that apart, turned all the tubes back upright, and got the system running again. All is well. We had a full freeze and snow this winter, and the winterization appeared to work great! Other details: My desire was for the system to use no external power so I have a 20W solar panel that's made for garden fountains. It was limited in how far uphill it could pump water, so I had one immersed in the pool that pumps water up into a 5 gallon bucket under the solar heater. The second was immersed in the bucket and pumps the water from there up into the heater. I upgraded to a pump (last Black Friday on Amazon) with more flow so the bucket is no longer needed. The system runs from the time the sun rises in the morning until it sets in the evening. The solar panels need pretty strong sunlight to operate the pump. I plan to take some more temperature measures in the future. I originally installed the steam vent DudaDiesel recommended on the heater water exit, but found in my first season that it wasn’t necessary as long as I kept the water flowing enough. If not enough flow, the system will generate steam and will, and did, melt the exit tube. The little solar pump I’m using appears to have enough flow, so I’m just using a garden hose as the exit from the heater to the pool. I figure even bubbles, or steam, that goes into the pool should help heat it up, so that wouldn’t be a bad thing. The hose I’m using is a fairly strong, reinforced, 25’ garden hose (available here on Amazon) but it was residential off-the-shelf and fairly cheap. I hope it will do the trick long term. 06/12/23 Update: Using new 20W solar panel and submersed pump (got it last Black Friday here on Amazon) so the two systems were reduced to one and the bucket was removed since the pump is strong enough to pump all the way up to the heater. No bucket overflow required anymore. Working great!

I recently installed two systems in series by pex with brass fittings for a 12,000 gallon pool in the phx area. You can forget about instructions. Like the description states, this is an unpressurized system. I have two pressure relief valves, I also has a two check valves and another two check valves on both sides of the pump. I had a problem with siphon, the result pulls the tube into the manifold deeper and out of the holder, I lost a couple tubes from this. Lots of trial and error to get this system to work correctly. I initially spliced off my existing pool equipment and then I couldn’t get the water back into the system being unpressurized in the solar. I ended up going with an independent pump. I am using a Pentair superflow VS at 1500rpm. This simplified the pool/spa issues I was having. I suck from the formally “quick skim.” and return directly into the top of the skimmer cover, not perfect but works. I think I will return into a former salt water cartridge. When I have time to play with it again. For best results, face into the south. I have this combined with a 110,000 BTU Hayward heat pump which kept my family swimming Oct-April without a huge electric bill.

I had to purchase directly from Duda Energy because Amazon was unable to ship it to my location. Duda Energy provided me a quote for delivery to my ocean shipping company and I received the pool heater in about 2 1/2 weeks (including a week of ocean transport). Of the 40 tubes shipped with the heater, all were in perfect condition except one (pretty darn good for 2,000 miles of shipping). There were two minor dents in the back of the manifold, but they didn't impact the function and couldn't be seen once assembled. It to my wife and me about 3 hours from unboxing to plumbing the system. Water going into the system at 80 degrees is coming out at 90-91 degrees in the spot checks I've done. Will be adding a pool cover at night is the evening winds don't rob us of the heat gains we make during the day. One lesson we learned about installing the tubes - get a spray bottle and mist the open end of the tubes before installing them into the manifold using a steady pressure and slight twisting motion. The instructions weren't in any of the boxes, but their support team quickly emailed them when I contacted them. The instructions show an older frame structure, but it's pretty easy to figure out the changes (two sets of cross braces on the back instead of one). We've only had the heater installed about a week, but I'll update after some time (if Amazon posts my review since I didn't buy it through them).

Update: I opened my pool on June 21, in New England. The winter chill lingered with cooler nights in the 50s even into June; My Duda is plumbed in by a T connection and I have it running off of my 1hp pump with a ball valve to reduce psi and two one way valves to keep the main water from backing into the Duda while everything circulates. After two weeks my water temp fluctuates between 83F-85F. Not bad!!! Customer service at Duda could certainly be better. If you have questions, they don't respond back to very quickly and when they do I was underwhelmed by their responses to my tech questions. Nonetheless I can say I am happy with the product even though I wasn't too sure if this thing would heat a 33,000 gal pool... it is doing it though!