Solar cover worth it in Socal?

[BillF99]

I don't have a pool cover, although I wonder every year if I should get one. In S. Cal you can get a swim season from late March to mid or late October with no cover or heater. I doubt if the cover will extend that more than a couple of days unless you use a heater. The cost of heating (gas) the water will be prohibitive. Last time I checked (2000) it would have cost me about $300 per month to keep the pool warm enough to swim from October through March. I would guess that is closer to $500 per month now. You might rather spend the money on solar heating equipment.

With no cover, heater or solar, the pool will warm up from cold (58) to usable (73+) in a matter of 4 or 5 days when the sun is shining and the outdoor temperature stays warm (usually late March, although this year it was May as I remember). Unless you really like the water warm (85+), you'll probably not want to use a solar cover during the swim season.

[Socal_biker]

I'm in SOCAL (Inland Empire) and I use a solar cover. It will lose less heat at night, as the night temps drop significantly (I'm closer to the high desert) compared to the costal towns/cities.

I also use it, to prevent pine needles and other debris from falling into the pool.

I have a pool heater that I never used. I just bypassed the heater during my latest pool equipment upgrades and I will be disposing it. I'm almost certain that I will go with solar panels before the next swim season.

[chem geek]

I'm in NoCal (near San Francisco) and have an automated opaque pool cover so it's not as good for warming during the day (but we have solar panels for that) and only keeps the heat in overnight about half as well, but it does allow us to have our pool at 88F almost the entire pool season with gas supplementing only in mid-April to mid-May and mid-October to mid-November. Most heat loss is due to evaporation of water (both day and night) and not from direct heat transfer.

The other savings from using any type of cover (solar or otherwise) is in having a much smaller loss of chlorine from the breakdown from sunlight (UV). An opaque cover probably does better for this, but even a solar cover blocks much of the UV rays (which is partly why the solar covers degrade over time -- the UV breaks down the plastic).

You will also have less make-up water due to the lower evaporation. This is most helpful in areas that have restrictions on water usage.

And as alredy mentioned by others, you'll have less junk fall into your pool water which helps reduce maintenance on cleaning traps and keeping more stuff out of your filter.

Finally, you should also find that with a cover you have less of a tendency for a rise in pH over time, though this is also dependent on your TA and pH levels. The cover helps keep the dissolved carbon dioxide (carbonate) in your pool and slows down its outgassing which would normally cause a rise in pH.

So yes, a cover can be a PITA, but it has a lot of benefits. We got an automated cover to remove the PITA aspect with some loss of benefit (thermal efficiency), but found it to be well worth it.

Richard

[noworries]

Thanks for the info. Any issues with running the pool cleaner while the pool's covered?

[chem geek]

I found no problems running the sweep (we call it "devo") while the cover is on, but our cover isn't "loose" like a solar cover would be. My guess, however, is that there wouldn't be a problem even with a solar cover since the sweeper generally stays on the bottom or on the sides. The only issue I could see is if the floating water feed pipe to the sweep moved a loose solar cover around. Perhaps someone with a true solar cover could give you better info.

Richard