To Bubble or not to Bubble that is the question....

First things first.....many thanks to the founders and active members and admins that make this site so great. I found the site last year just as I prepared to open a 30 foot above ground pool at our new home. I generally followed BBB this summer and my pool was cleaner than a baby's bottom all year long. I used less than a quart of poly quat and about 20 bottles of bleach from Walmart the entire season. My friend who's owned a pool for 5 years was flabbergasted every time he came over because his pool is never as clear as ours. His wife continued on a retinue of clarifiers, "brightners" and other assorted questionable chemical alchemy....I sent him a link and thanked my lucky stars for finding the way. So...thanks again to all those who've made it happen at the pool forum.

....So...Closing the pool the darn bubble blew off in the wind and in frustration I installed the winter cover without the blow up bubble...Mind you I'm in MA and we can expect a thorough freezing round about feb or so...The pool cover instructions had no reference to a bubble and suggested the slack cover material lay flat across the pool surface...and thus this is my current scenario.

Am I okay going forward without the bubble or does my location in N.E. demand installation of said bubble?

What is the purpose of the bubble?...I assume something to do with mitigating expanding ice???

The bubble also keeps water from puddling in the center of the cover which would then cause the pool walls to be pulled inward.

BTW --- Thank you for the kind words. However, I've had three babies and I have to say, it doesn't take a whole lot to be "cleaner than a baby's bottom!"

Welcome to the Forum!

Thanks for the testimonial!

(The following is just my well considered conclusion from years of experience, I'm making the assumption that this is an AG pool))

The bubble performs 3 functions - none of which have to do with ice expansion :eek:

1) It keeps undo inward stress off the walls of an AG pool - by being in the center, it will start to sink before the inward pressure buckles the walls. (a cover full of water will push pool water out of the pool and try to sink into the pool. This would draw the top of the sidewalls in towards the center of the pool.

2) It's an 'island' in the center of the pool and forces the water to the edge of the pool for more easy removal.

3) In a very similar vein, it also forces debris to the edges, for easier removal.


I've spoken of removal a couple times. Let me expound. An inch of water on a cover can help weigh it down and prevent it from shifting too much, a foot of water on a cover can wreck the walls or drag an edge of the cover into the pool and dump any algae-full water and debris into your pristinely closed and covered pool, making your opening, next spring, a hassle. Therefore, you should remove excess water, as needed, and try to keep the leaves, etc. on the cover down to a minimum!

A pool needs a certain amount of work each day/ week to keep it crystal clear when it's open and ready to swim in. It still needs a little work, over the winter, when the cover is on, to enable you to open the pool to a crystal clear, ready to swim in pool next spring. :)

So...what I'm hearing is...as long as I keep up with removing water from the top of the cover I should be okay without the bubble....that's about what I figured but I do see that putting that bubble in under the cover would make it easier to keep up with the water removal...

My mistake last year was constantly trying to keep the cover pulled taut....so that it didn't rest on the water surface at all. The constant tension from pulling it tight and keeping it tight with the clips wore on the seams. By the end of the spring some of those seams were coming apart wide enough to let a fair amount of debris and it's subsequently dirty water into the pool.

The cover was old anyways I don't know how long the previous owner had it but quite a few of the grommets had worn out and couple that with the failing seam I decided to scrap it in place of a new cover for this fall. Towards the end of the last winter I began thinking that the best approach would be an opposite tack of allowing the cover to lay on water with a degree of slack to eliminate the tension on the seams.

Seems like I'll do fine either way as long as I keep up with the water building up on the surface. And I do have a pump for the job...yet I think I'll try to stuff that bubble under there. I did take the time to blow it up manually !!.

Thanks for the insight and comments.

Or ................ just don't cover your pool. I never do. Neither does another one of the mods, Al -- a.k.a.Poconos.

Me neither!! :cool:

Janet