I have a 24 feet above ground pool with decking all the way around the pool. I've had problems every year with getting the solid winter cover to stay on the pool. Because my decking is very closely built underneath the pool rails, I can't tie the cover underneath the rails. In the past, I have used sandbags to hold down the pool cover.

This year, my husband and I was thinking of doing one of the two methods listed below. Please let me know what you think.

1. Use a winter mesh cover. I'm thinking that if water flows through this cover, perhaps wind will run through it too? For those of you who uses the winter mesh cover, what is it like? My biggest problems with the solid cover is the wind getting underneath the cover and tearing it off the pool whipping around like crazy. The sand bags certainly hold it down, but we need a lot of sandbags.

2. Use no cover at all. We live in a fairly new subdivision and don't get too many leaves. We would use the Aquador skimmer cover, return cover and unhook all the plumbing. I'm not sure if we should lower the water level to below the skimmer since we're using the skimmer cover. For those of you who don't use a cover, what do you do?

We live in a South suburb of Illinois. We do freeze solid. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.