i found the combination of aircons and surplus energy a good combination (for heating and cooling). So if your house does not have enough aircons that would be a solution.
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Didn’t you like my suggestion of buying a heat pump for your swimming pool? 
I don’t like the idea of a swimming pool at all. Way too many weekends wasted cleaning/fixing pools in the past…
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I actually found it to be to least maintenance intensive item around the house, since I got a pool cover. When we bought the house it had a bubble blanket, which I must have thrown out a month later. Rubbish.
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Well, I’ve had a pool for about 8 months now. So far I’ve had to add two bags of salt, some stabiliser, and I had to replace several of the pool cleaner’s pipes. The “Kreepy Krauly” has destroyed many of the plastic fins on its rubber/plastic face which all ended up in the filter basket, but somehow it still works. I did however buy a new cleaner since Takealot had a special last week…
So all in I’ve probably spent around 2.5k-3k on the pool so far this year. In terms of cleaning, I’ve pretty much backwashed the filter.
I’m told that replacing the filter sand is a messy job… not looking forward to that!
At least I have one kid who loves the pool. So it’s not the usual white elephant that nobody uses, but you can never get rid of it cause we might want to!.
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I guess it is the difference in wasting energy vs wasting money 
I would like to have a pool. Just not the cost and maintenance of it. The other problem is in my area there are really only 2 months in the year where it is warm enough to swim, so if you get a pool you also have to get a heat pump for the pool. Eina!
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So there’s this other product, a type of sponge, that you pack into the filter. You pack it out every 6 months or so and just wash it, dry it, and pack it back. Apparently no need to back wash (so far so good) and much easier to clean/replace.
I got rid of my “old school” cleaner probably a year after we had the pool. It didn’t cover the whole bottom well. It left little islands that it just never got it, though it cleaner thoroughly around it. Never bothered to try and get it to work better, because it was quite worn out and I bought an MX-8 on takealot. It works well, covers everything, but we have strelitzia nicolai’s on the one side of the pool, that sheds it longish “flower” leaves. Some still manages to find its way under my cover and these clog up the MX-8’s mechanisms, so I need to inspect it maybe once a week or so.
I’d probably go back to the “old school” one whenever the MX-8 breaks and hope that a newer model works better.
We also use the pool often, so definitely not getting rid of it! It is so old, at least 26 years old (previous owners stayed here for 23 years and didn’t build it, and we’ve been here for 3), so it could probably do with re-tiling those decorative tiles around the sides, but other than that, this gunite pool doesn’t give me any issues.
Can’t wait to dunk my baby in it once we get it up to a good 30+ degrees. Currently I think it is a little cold for her at 26/8 (though perfect for me).
I use those black pipes at the moment, works very well if you manage it. But it is on my only north facing roof… So I am very tempted to replace it with solar panels and get a heat pump. Yes it is more expensive. Yes it will be absolutely amazing to swim in the winter after a clear day or two…
Had a pool. Had the latest tech blanket on it that can go 1 year with crystal clear water and no pumping … but you have 12 hours after opening it to gooi the chemicals and turn on the pump or it goes green.
So the filter needed new sand …how difficult can that be? Well, lets just say I needed a new filter afterwards. With the sand some parts came out too. So I got a catridge filter … I cleaned it on the grass so there is no wastage.
Then we needed a large amount of soil removed, guess what, the soil we needed removing, fitted into the pool … so THAT was where the previous owners dumped it when they sunk the pool.
Soil moved and pool closed. Bliss.
Poolpump and filter now move rainwater from firstflow to a 5kl tank, as their is a difference in height.
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Maybe I’m just lucky, but even the previous owner of my house told me that a pool is trouble and he can’t tell me how to maintain it. Honestly I just can’t relate to the sentiment. Maybe people overthink it.
After putting a PVC cover over it, it is literally a jojo tank. How much can actually go wrong? Once a year, after the winter I put in an HTC product, Ultra Clear (something like that), to get rid of the slight milky look that happens after I don’t run the pump for a few months. Then I occasionally add some chlorine when I feel it might have been too long since I last added some.
I don’t uncover the pool unless I swim or if people come over to swim. If I uncover it for myself, I only open the part I use (to keep most of the heat in). If others come over I uncover it completely for the day. Never do I leave it uncovered for no reason. It cools down too quickly.
So far my experience is the same. It’s taken very little actual effort. I do run the pump every day, did so even in winter. It’s covered whenever it is not in use. Perhaps it helps that it is a salt water pool (which is also why the pump needs to run, cause the water needs to flow through the chlorinator). But I have no illusions about the cost. I know I’m going to replace that chlorinator at some point… I know the pipe to the cleaner will get replaced piece-wise about once a year (at R120 a length). I know the Kreepy will self-destruct every two years or so (at 2k a pop). The pool cover (which looks like a thick shade net) will die and cost thousands to replace. Also… in summer it needs additional water, cause even with the cover some is lost.
Also, my neighbour has a big pool with a crack in it. He pretty much fills it two-thirds (just short of the crack) in winter (gutters all run into the pool), and then they swim in whatever is in there and just abandon it by the end of summer. Looks terrible… but it works for him! 
That is true, there is maintenance cost, and this would differ in all use cases.
The Kreepy I got with the house is still working (just need to replace the flap, as this is torn a little, if I want to use it again), and that this is so old, it faded all the way to a light blue. I’ve not had to replace the cleaner pipe yet, but I’m attributing that to the pool cover I have (no sun on the pipes).
My cover is now two years old. It is a PVC cover, cost me R5k two years ago. Cost me another R1k in repairs and improvements this year, which was due to my dogs playing on it, but also me walking on it to clean the cover. Hopefully now without me walking on it, it would keep for longer. Three of the eyelets started tearing loose. That was about R200 to fix. The rest of the money was because I asked that they put a double lining of PVC around the sides were it rests on the paving around the pool.
In the summer, I top up from my Jojo. I estimate this is between 2.5 and 5kl. I have a 5kl Jojo and never empty it completely, but we still get some rain in summer, albeit sporadically.
My biggest worry is, although my pump is still churning away nicely, that it might go at some point - Apparently these pumps also go bust more often when using the black heating pipes, but so far so good.
After a number of years and:
1 x attempting to heat it … till the pipes went.
1 x converting from salt water to normal chlorine pool due to old age of salt water system,
3 x cover replacements,
3 x kreepy replacement,
Lots and lots of pipes replaced,
2 x pump replacements - 1 was a recondition.
1 x filter replacement - darn filters at the bottom broke out with the hard sand in the bottom,
1 x paving replacement - pipes had to be dug up,
Lots and lots of chemicals,
Lots and lots of power usage - before I got the right cover and before I went grid tied,
Topping up the damn water in summer as the kreepy sucks air on the sides,
… all that with very little use compared to the above overall costs and say to day running costs?
Enjoy the pools guys … for unless someone uses them every single day to execrise, it is a white elephant.
Here is me now, without a pool … 
Hahaha! Point taken. Let’s hope that my mileage varies…
It is interesting to know where the white elephant saying comes from.
A White elephant were considered sacred in Southeast Asia and laws protected them from labor, receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was simultaneously a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because the animal was sacred and a sign of the monarch’s favour, and a curse because the recipient now had an expensive-to-maintain animal he could not give away and could not put to much practical use.
Some more late night reading White elephant - Wikipedia
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Stumbled onto this thread that Justin started a while ago.
Within the next month I plan to double my array which will then be a 4.2Kw setup, and after reading all the responses here (julle donnerse braggatte!) I started wondering whether I will not also sit with all this extra power sitting idle and nothing to spend it on.
And then, just thinking about the last 1-2 weeks of overcast days and rain we’ve had in Pta and how that affects PV generating capacity it became a no brainer.
Hell yes I’m doing it! Its more of want than a need currently, but what the hell, you only live once.
Regrettably my house is cool on the ground floor, so there is no need for an aircon there and the 2nd floor’s bedrooms is already sorted with aircons.
So these additional panels’s sole justification is only for those crappy overcast days.
My upgrade van 3.5kw na 4.2kw het ek te veel vir somer se gebuik … so nou wag ek weer vir winter om te sien of ek die ding reg het … 
… of ek kry meer batterye … maar dit gaan maar sukkel …
I started getting my old Ethereum GPU miner up and running again, only to discovery that it uses 4GB Radeon cards (and you can no longer mine Ethereum with 4GB cards). Then I also discovered that the one PSU is dead, so I’m down from 8 cards to 4 (until I replace the GPU). Then it was just too much trouble and the whole thing stopped. 
I know a guy who uses his excess PV energy to freeze ice and then sell it to the local restaurants??
I don’t have a pool (but my kids would absolutely LOVE one!) and I don’t have an aircon (but I would absolutely LOVE one!), so there’s not much I can do to use my excess energy at the moment.
I do have a borehole so I can water the garden, but it also feels wrong watering the garden at 12pm when the sun is lekker bright.
One thing I’ve wondered about – if you feed back to the grid, does your inverter run at full blast the whole time? Would you want to do that?
I tumble dry the washing, or have a portable AC i run in the garage to dry(dehumidify) the washing(washing line in garage due to wind and dodge neighbors)
with a baby, washing has gone up from once a week (or 2 weeks) to 2-4 times a week, so only thing left is to connect up the rain water tanks to save some water
Although practically I cannot do it (I’ve actually monitored my meter for this), when feeding back in theory with no limit/restrictions the inverter goes at full tilt yes with fans blazing. I’ve tested this once to see.