Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We have an 18'x36', 26,000 gallon inground pool so we bought the recommended 3 boxes of these solar panels (which is actually 6x20' long panels). We had just enough room to install them on our south facing roof slope by the pool. We live right near the NY/Canada borderline so we really wanted to extend our swimming season as long as possible. This is our first good warm, sunny day (77 degrees) with them hooked up and the pool went from 70 degrees this morning to 77 degrees by sundown. Without these panels we might have achieved a maximum of 72 or 73 degrees. A friend nearby has a similar set-up and says his pool stays in the mid-80s from May-Oct, and sometimes swimming in April. On the recommendation of other reviewers, we didn't bother buying the installation kit and instead bought our own connectors, hoses and clamps at the local Home Depot. We also bought the Hayward 3-way automated actuator which (using sensors in the water lines) will automatically feed the warm solar-heated water to the pool whenever that water is warmer than the pool, and then turn off to just circulate the pool water at night or on cooler days. On start-up, everything is working great and I must say I'm impressed so far, but I'll update our review in a few weeks after a longer period of evaluation.