It’s been a busy month for me in more ways than one. Lots of stuff happened, good and bad. I will keep the bad stuff for later, but the good thing is that we have had a gorgeous summer so far, not too hot, yet just perfect for taking dives in the pool and enjoying the water shimmer gently as it cascaded off the back or luxuriate in floating beds as kids made huge waves by splashing in the water.
However, we can’t deny that we are not nearing the end of this beautiful summer, savouring the sweet sunny rays a few more days before we start folding those lounge chairs to tuck away till next year.
As the winter approaches, we start worrying about winterizing the pool. A big part of winterizing the pool is covering it. I teamed up once more with Patricia Hogenes who has done a lot of research into pool covers recently. She has spent so much time out at her family pool with the kids that she feels like it’s her real home. Her writing assignments for AnApplePerDay.com are awesome, do check them out – writing about pools, parenting and health are her favorite topics.
She very kindly decided to guest post for me about her research on the pool covers.
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We bought a new house that had a pool in the back yard, and I couldn’t wait to let my kids begin to enjoy the fun of being in the water. But I wanted them to be safe, so I did a lot of research, and there was one item I knew we had to install – a safety pool cover. Here are the things I discovered about the importance of pool covers.
The key word is safety. I want my kids and the pets to be safe – that means they can go out into the back yard, and I don’t have to worry about them falling in the pool. With a pool cover, I can relax. The safety cover means that the kids are protected. While I have told the kids I don’t want them to try to use the pool as a trampoline, they’re not standing next to an open body of water. We also have a fence around the back yard, but just in case – I wanted that safety cover in place as well. Here are some resources I found with great information:
- Mesh Vs. Solid: Choosing The Right Pool Safety Cover
- Safety Pool Cover A-B Measurements
- Top Five Winter Swimming Pool Cover Care Tips
Getting the right cover. I discovered that measuring a pool for a safety cover is pretty straightforward if the pool is rectangular. If the pool has curves in it (which ours does) the measuring process to get a cover that fits right can be a throwback to my old geometry class or something – it is a lot more complicated than I want to try to do on my own. My husband is a software engineer, and he read a couple of articles and shook his head – he was all for my idea to get a professional. The cover that he helped us get fit perfectly, and was well worth the money we spent.
Different types of covers. We had to make a choice up front – do we want a mesh or solid cover. There were some advantages to either type of cover, and disadvantages that we had to consider as well:
- Mesh. With a mesh cover, getting it on and off the pool is a lot easier, because it’s so much lighter. Because it lets rain water and snow seep through, we wouldn’t have to pump water off the cover. The mesh cover doesn’t keep leaves and debris out of the pool, so there’s more chance of an algae problem developing over the winter.
- Solid. It might take two people to put on a solid cover, and they’re more expensive. Plus, over the winter, water has to be pumped off the cover periodically. With a solid cover, leaves and debris don’t collect in the pool, so we have less chance of taking it off in the spring and discovering an algae problem that requires some maintenance to clean up.
Weighing all the advantages, but in particular additional safety a solid cover would provide for the kids, we chose to get a solid cover.
Additional heating. One thing we discovered pretty quickly was that the solid cover lowered our energy costs. It held in the heating of the sun, which meant that the pool heating system had to run less. We really liked that advantage.
Fewer leaves and lower maintenance. My husband really liked this benefit. He would rather pump water off the cover over the winter than to have additional maintenance in the spring. The solid cover kept the leaves and debris out of the water very nicely, and my husband only had to clear them off the cover occasionally.
We love sitting on the back porch in the fall, watching the kids playing in the back yard, knowing that with the solid cover in place, they won’t accidentally fall in the pool.
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