update on effectiveness of homemade solar disks

They work!!

A couple of months ago I posted about the solar disks I made using regular solar cover material and landscape irrigation tubing. People naturally wanted to know how well they worked, and I couldn't give a very definitive answer.

About two weeks ago our pool started cooling rapidly - sun angle changed, pool was in shade much of the day, and nights got much cooler. Our pool temperature dropped from 94F to 76F in a week, mostly because of dry, cool nights in the low '60s. Our afternoon-to-morning water temperature fluctuations were 8 or 9 degrees. I put our solar disks back in, and a couple of HeatSavr turbofish, and the temperature fluctuations dropped to 3 degrees. I have made additional disks to bring our total coverage up to about 80% of the pool area. I have also been careful to cover the pool before air temp drops below water temp, and not to fire up the pump until air temp is above water temp (I am DETERMINED to get the temperature back up!!). I am very happy with the results - despite many nights in the low '60s the water temp has not gone below 77F, and is now back in the mid '80s.

Obviously I can't say how much of this is due to the HeatSavr fish, and how much to the covers, but the combination is certainly working very well for us.

Alison