Bestway Pool Heater for Above Ground Pools, Suitable for 15ft Swimming Pools, Grey

UK user.I have a 15ft bestway pool, that was 18 degrees. whilst outside temperature was approx 20-22 degrees. Setup was pretty straight forward. I have a bubble wrap cover that I would definitely also recommend. I switched on the pool heater for 36 hours, during this time the pool was never used and so the cover remained on. The Pool temperature went from 18 degrees to 28 degrees. It cost about £6.00 extra a day to run for 24 hours. The heater SHOULD be switched OFF during use! - I have used the heater sparingly, when the weather has been sunny, leaving it on for NO longer than 48 hours at a time - the Pool temperature has hit 32 degrees, which is warm enough to just jump in! - I have also tried leaving the heater OFF, using just the bubble wrap cover, the temperature went from 31 degrees to 26 degrees over a two day period. The pool wasn't used during this time, so if the cover had been removed, it may have decreased more.I am very happy with this product, as a cheap cost alternative, I have seen other heaters advertised for between £250 and £1200, so this is an affordable solution that works surprisingly well on a 15 ft pool - I would expect it to work even better on smaller pools!Whilst the description and manual state NOT to be used with an Extension Lead. I had no real option but to use this with a heavy duty extension lead, ensuring that it was fully unwound and capable of 3.2KW. The heater uses 2.8KW. The heater has its own RCD built in - I have also plugged the extension lead into it's own socket with another RCD. After 48 hours of use, the extension cable was barely warm. The RCD in the plug socket was slightly warmer - but I check things frequently to ensure that I remain happy.It is imperative that the extension lead is FULLY unwound (my extension lead is ONLY 700KW when wrapped up, which would be VERY dangerous!!!) and that you do your own research and testing etc.

This product is a complete waste of time and very expensive to run on electricity! When it worked, the pool water was heated as expected but the unit kept tripping the power and so was unreliable at best and that’s being kind! Our electricity bill surged by £170 in the month we used the unit before giving up on its inability to stay switched on. Do yourselves a real favour and swerve this until Bestway fix its faults

I spent a lot of time reading though reviews of this before I bought it. They were a mixed bag so I was a little worried. I’ve written a long review but please bear with, I’d have found this information helpful when trying to decide whether to buy it and when trying to set it up.Once we got it set up properly (more on that below) I can safely say this is one of the best investments we’ve ever made and the kids LOVE it.So...The heater arrived faster than expected, well packaged and came with all parts and instructions. We have a 10 ft Bestway quick up pool which came with a pump and cover. I understood from the other reviews that the cable for the heater needed to be plugged in to a different socket from the pump. We don’t yet have outdoor plug sockets installed, so we bought two “outdoor“ extension cables and plugged them into separate parts of the house so they’re on different circuits (one off the living room and one off the kitchen). We’ve also ensured that nothing else is plugged into the same socket and that the extension cables are fully un-rolled.We got the pump set up with no issue.Setting the heater up is more difficult due to the instructions not being particularly clear. It makes reference to pressing the reset button to test the appliance and only using it if it flashes green. It took a good hour of frustration before we realised that the green light is on the control panel of the heater itself and not on the plug switch - that will always glow an orange-red colour. Next confusion was thinking that the Ed message on the heater control panel was an error message. Turns out this is just the heater’s way of telling you it’s ready. Once you see that, the next step is to push and hold the little power symbol on the heater below the control panel and it turns from Ed to On. At this point your pump needs to already be running and connected to your heater in order for the heater to work.The temperature takes 24 hours at least to build up due to it being a large mass of water. We have no thermometer to test it, but it feels like a few degrees colder than a bath, so is perfect even on slightly colder days.We also bought the bubble-wrap solar cover to keep the heat in when the pool isn’t in use. We turn the filter and heater on once the kids are out, we leave them on overnight, add chlorine and check ph balance (and adjust as necessary) the following morning, turn off the pump & heater about lunch time and the kids spend a good 4-5 hours playing before we put it all to bed again for the evening.The pump and heater are both fine to be left out in the garden as they are water-proof. We’ve wrapped the extension plugs in bags and hung them up so they’re not at ground level just to make it a bit safer. We’ve had no issues with over-heating of power sockets or extension plugs.I highly recommend this product. It’s going to get masses of use over lockdown and we’ve even put our Coleman’s event shelter over the pool for the days that are a bit more chilly or wet.

Does the job on our 10ft pool; kids can now enjoy it again without shivering uncontrollably instantly. Took the pool from 14c - 27c in about 20 hours so it's not the quickest, but that is using the bog standard pump that came with the pool (I expect a better pump would get substantially more throughput so would be quicker). It's expensive to run, and the electrics do get hot (make sure you get an extension able to manage 3kw and that it's completely unwound if you need one), but it does the job and is making the pool a lot more useable for a lot longer, so is worth it.

I am very disappointed with this purchase. The quality and style is of a good standard but it really does not heat my pool at all. It stated in the description that it was suitable for pools upto 15ft. My pool is 14ft X 42". In the review people said that it would probably take a full day or leave over night to heat the pool to a comfortable temperature. I left the heater running for almost 2 days and the temp of the pool only raised from starting temp of 10 degrees to 12 degrees (typical temp of the sea). I had to turn the heater off after this time as the unit began to get very warm. I am now on the look out to purchase a much better heater but in the meantime I have purchased my grand children 5mm wet suits which work perfectly and they are now able to swim in the cold water. I would not recommend this heater for above ground steel framed pools it would be best suited to a small blow up pool or kids paddling pool.