Solar Blankets....really worth the trouble ????

[kevincad]

Something I just thought of after reading about the rings. How about a plain round cover, then you cut it in 3 sections. Jump in the pool, roll the center one up, then the end pieces. Each would be 8' long and the center one 24' long. That would be the heaviest but should be relatively easy to handle. Better than trying to roll up or drag a single piece.
Just a crazy thought.
Al

I tried that. I actually cut mine (for a 24' round pool) into four pieces. STILL a pain, unless you get in every time you want to take it off, and put it on. The reel is the only way to go.

[steig]

The 30' round cover is impossible to take off with 1 person. Very hard with 2 people, and a pain in the Butt with 4 people. I would like a reel, but I have a pool fence around the pool. Even storing is a major problem.

[medvampire]

I guess I will have to eat the words I spewed in the beginning of this thread. Two weeks ago I installed solar heating panels. After a few days I dumped my cumbersome solar cover back on the pool. I have quickly learned that the solar cover in conjunction with the heating panels is putting my temps up in the 90s. The best I could get before the solar cover with the panels was the low to mid 80s. I was hitting the high 70s with nothing heating the pool. I have a 7 to 8 drop with out the cover.
I did find a way to make getting the solar cover on and off less painful. I took a 10 ft section of 3 inch of pvc pipe glued 3 to 2 inch reducers on each end and added about 3 foot of 2 inch pvc on each end of the 3 inch. Capped the 2 inch pipe and rolled the cover up. If I get in the pool I can roll the cover up set it across the back if the pool in just a 3 or 4 minutes. The whole pipe assembly is about 16 foot long and floats very well. I can put the cover on and off from the out side but it takes 2 people then.
So solar covers do work but you need a external heat source to make the most of them.
Steve

[Spensar]

If your heating, definately worth it. Good link in this post I put up.

http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=5336

[matt4x4]

Steig - I have a 30 foot round pool with a 30 foot cover, now when i first received the cover, it was probably 32 feet big and curved up the walls once on the pool, I went and cut it so it's within an inch of the wall all around and floats perfectly flat on the water.
Ours was a cynch to remove, get in the pool, start rolling it up, once you get half way, stop moving forwards when rolling, rahter pull it towards you and roll so it gets rolled in the center of the pool.
Once all rolled up, I would start at one side and just lift it over the wall working my way along it's length until the whole thing was thrown over the wall and sat on large hooks that I bolted to the uprights.
To get it back on, I would reach over the wall from inside the pool, starting from one end and pull it back over and in, get it to the center and reverse the process.
Since then I have installed a reel at the far end of the pool, about 4-6" higher than the wall, and about 1 foot beyond the wall - now i can roll and unroll it by myself from outside the pool which is really nice since my kid likes to go swimming ALL THE TIME and I no longer have to drop what I'm doing to go and get changed etc etc... to open the pool

[bbb]

I live in a cold(ish) wet climate, using a blanket is a big plus for saving heat. I knew that from my old donut pool... then when we moved into the new house with a 42' IG pool ( & bought a heat pump), my DH said that he didn't want a cover on the pool because it was "ugly".
well I went along with this for a bit, but it rained every night in May, then almost everyday in June... I was tired of paying extra for heating. I already had solar fish ( btw you can also buy " heat savr", the liquid stuff in the fish, that you can pour in daily & "solar pill", a slow dissolve skimmer product of the same stuff).
Anyway, I got the blanket out the shed & proceeded to unroll it, which is when I discovered, that the blanket was nailed ( with rotton wood) to big PVC pipe & there was no way to roll or unroll the blanket. huge PITA!
I ordered a good solar reel ( waterpik, owned by jandy), & this helped great; but the store had told me that I didn't need to drill holes in the decking to make this work... turns out they were very wrong... I dumped the moving reel in the pool a couple of times.
Finally my DH drilled some holes in the deck for the reel to be screwed into.
( wasn't exactly as close to the pool as I would have liked, but my DH was concerned about cracks forming around the pool walls).

anyway, with the "proper reel" I can get the blanket on & off in about a minute.
This is including the time it takes to fold the deep-end part of the blanket in half because the pool is a lazy "L" & it's quite difficult to make the turn without folding the blanket.
The reel works so well that I can actually swim it on (unrolling & carrying/swimming the heavy blanket back to the deep-end).
So I usually swim it on as my DH gets the kid's floatation devices off & opens up the hot tub.

( I only wish that the diving board wasn't low-profile so that the reel could have been stationed at the deep end instead of the shallow. it would leave more deck space in the shallow end)

Anyway, I find using the reel ( with the 42' blanket) a lot easier than taking my old donut-pool blanket on & off manually.

I chols a Horizon HV 2000 reel for my pool specifically because it is tall enough to fit OVER my low profile diving board. The reel fits perfectly over my diving board even with the entire 20x40 solar cover rolled up on it. The only negatives to that reel are that it does sag a little in the middle when fully loaded (the manual says that can be solved by drilling extra screws into the post, but I haven't bothered), and that it is a bear to install the first day (well over 20 self-drilling screws without any pre-drilled holes). Totally worth it though.

[RavenNS]

I chols a Horizon HV 2000 reel for my pool specifically because it is tall enough to fit OVER my low profile diving board. The reel fits perfectly over my diving board even with the entire 20x40 solar cover rolled up on it. The only negatives to that reel are that it does sag a little in the middle when fully loaded (the manual says that can be solved by drilling extra screws into the post, but I haven't bothered), and that it is a bear to install the first day (well over 20 self-drilling screws without any pre-drilled holes). Totally worth it though.

Yeah, I looked at one of those reels ( don't know if it was brand though); but when i measured it it was only about an inch 'n a half + above my board..
( I'm sure my old low-profile board is so old that it's not very low-profile compared to the newer boards).
Anyway, I figured that with the blanket being so long ( & bulky because i have to fold part of it in-half), that I just didn't have the clearance to use one of those reels.
I think that maybe a good invention would be a reel that sort of works like a sardine can roller... goes along the edge of the deck & stores under a low-profile diving board; well, it might work

I agree about the drilling holes part. what a huge PITA!
my directions were basically nil. I was trying to do the install in the dark. I doubt that I was using a proper metal drill-bit ( I suspect that it was actually a wood-bit). I've never taken industrial arts ( & so have limited experience using power tools)... I learned very quickly that drilling in to a round tube that is esentially free-floating, is extreamly difficult to do with acuracy for someone so inexperienced...

[Spensar]

Setting up a solar cover reel doesn't get much consideration when someone is building a pool, and that's a shame. I probably wouldn't think about it either if I didn't have a pool already, but if I had to build one I would want a permanently installed roller so that it is easy to use. If you are going to heat a pool, this should be considered part of the system and as easy to do as possible.

Unfortunately I've seen a lot of new pools where using the cover is a real chore and people just don't bother. With some the setups I probably wouldn't either.

We bought a house with a simple rectangular 16x32 foot inground pool and luckily the reel stand is permanent and not it the way, so putting the cover on is a 15 second job. Something to be said for simple shapes!

[ShelleyAnn]

I would love to trim our solar blanket to fit our 15 x 30 AG...maybe even with a 1" gap all around. Has anyone ever regretted cutting theirs? It would mean loosing about 10" all the way around. I wonder if it really would be less of a pain in reality or if it just seems like it would.

Shelley

[AnnaK]

Here's what we did:

http://ellerbach.com/Pool/Solarcover/Solar.htm

Works like a charm, easy for one person, goes on and off in under 2 minutes.