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Thanks for the reply. I had to drain about 10000 gal out because I had been pool stored(triclor and diclor). My cya was over a hundred and I had algea I could not get rid of. Since I have been on the BBB method all I do is add 1 jug of bleach a night and brush once a week. I did add 320 lbs of salt. I purchased some salt strips and tested. Took my salt to 1650 ppm. This really seems to help the comfort factor. My pool is the cleanest it has ever been, and upkeep has been very easy.
dhanger:
I'm also in Phoenix and still working on straightening out a pool I had royally messed up by following pool store advice. My CYA was over 250 a couple months ago. After partial water changes, we got it down around 30-40. I am currently losing 2.5-3.5 ppm of FC during most days. I'm using just a couple of trichlor pucks at a time to slowly increase my CYA, but not sure what my goal is. Not >250, though, that's for sure.
I did just add borax to 40 ppm and may be seeing a slightly decreased FC demand. I am going to start putting our solar cover on the pool to conserve FC, though not sure I can stand to swim in 95 degree water :). If the FC demand goes down significantly, I will go buy a solid colored cover. I'd love to avoid worrying about algae and adding LC every day! SWCG is not in our budget this year.
If you want to not heat up the pool so much, then have the cover be opaque white or reflective or certainly a very light color. That will minimize the amount of sun's heat transferred to the pool.
I've not yet seen a solar cover that won't heat a pool, no matter the color or style. If it's a floating cover, it's a solar cover and will heat your pool. I even had them with light blue on top and black underneath and THEY heated it, too.
Any cover holds in heat, unless it's mesh.
My mostly opaque electric safety cover was light tan and though it held heat in by eliminating evaporation and providing some insulation (not that much compared to a bubble-type cover), it did not heat the water very much from sun hitting it during the day. We just replaced the cover this year with a dark blue one (still a thin electric safety cover) and the difference is very noticeable in terms of increased heating.
So I was assuming that having the cover be white or reflective that it would transfer very little of the sun's energy to the pool. Yes, it would still retain heat, but it wouldn't increase the water temp -- just would maintain it.
C_G:
I have no knowledge of powered safety covers. I defer to your experience with them. But floating solar covers are a different story, by definition.