NEWBIE Solar Blanket Reel Question.......

Hi:

I would like to purchase a solar blanket reel that one person could operate from my 15x24 fool oval above ground pool. The local pool dealer has a premium reel for $400. Maybe someone could correct me, but this price seems kind of high? I am in Northern Ontario and this dealer is the only one in the town I live in. Does anyone know of any online pool stores that ship, so I can compare the prices?

My neighbour has a welder and mentioned we could make one for a fraction of the price if we had some plans. Does anyone know if there are plans to make a solar blanket reel kicking around?

Thanks for any information.

Cheers..John

Hi John,
Here's what you can do:
about 1 foot off the short end of your pool, in a straight line side to side, mount 2 4x4 posts to which you can then mount a Feherguard solar reel - they should be plenty good enough for a 15 foot wide pool, or you can weld a reel up and mount it on the posts. I have a custom reel made by a local, it's primarily 4" Aluminum tube.
All you'd need to do is to get a couple of mounts made up for on top of the posts, each with a bearing chase in it, get some aluminum tube as the reel, fasten end caps to it onto which you weld steel rod to feed through the bearing in the chase. On the outside put a crank handle on each end.

john, in event you don't go that route, you might check out intheswim.com

i am in alberta and bought a solar reel, cover and blanket from them. the reel was the midlevel for 200 u.s. and it's working great. i found that a lot cheaper than the local pool store.they ship fedex so i did get some brokerage fees (would be about say 35 canadian for this value of item) but their shipping and handling was only 8.99! i've now bought twice from them. the 2nd purchase was 2 bags of zeobrite for my sand filter. the first option i checked out was to get it from an online pool store in winnipeg, but they wanted 100 bucks for shipping!

We built ours with steel pipe/posts mounted into the ground about 2.5-3' back from end of pool, 20' steel pipe reel with 2.5" pvc mounted over/around it (welded washers onto pipe to support pvc), a crank handle and rivetted strapping between the pvc and blanket. Cranks up VERY nicely, pulls out very nicely. Nothing mounted on my pool rails and nothing to take off the pool when its rolled up. All mounted/installed on back end of pool so its out of direct view. If you do something like this, my suggestion would be to be sure to be high enough up from rail so blanket does not "catch" under rails as it rolls up. Matt has different rails so his won't but ours do - we are only a bit more than a foot higher than the rail. 1.5-2 feet would be better.