Does solar cover help with leaves?

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mknmike
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Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Mon 26 Sep, 2022 14:08

It’s fall, and the heat benefit of a solar cover is obvious, not to mention water savings.

But I’m wondering if it will help keep leaves and debris out.

Once the safety cover is on, it doesn’t come off. But a solar cover could go on and off. I have hangers in the garage and hope that the size of the solar cover won’t be so large that I’m unable to hang it on a pipe like we hang the long pool pole in the 24 foot deep garage. Oh… garage door takes up ~8 feet of that. Maybe this will be tight with 15.5’ wide pool cover.

Hmm… storage sounds like a potential issue for me. How big are these things? Can they be folded once rolled? I guess if not, they’d be very hard to ship.

I’m looking at the clear 8-year warranty 3200 at Doheny’s right now.


mknmike
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Mon 26 Sep, 2022 15:06

You can find anything on the internet. Whether it’s true or not, you can find a site that will say one type of cover is best at keeping bugs and animals out…

https://**spamm**/best-solar-pool-cov ... malsplants

Blue Wave NS520 14-Mil Solar Blanket, 16-FT x 32-FT, Clear https://a.co/20Ur3lb

The “article” says it is “The Best Protection Against Insects/Animals/Plants” with no explanation why.


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Teapot1
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby Teapot1 » Mon 26 Sep, 2022 15:17

Links not available to us over the pond but you really should stop listening to Swimming pool Steve and others talking nonsense.
Solar covers gain solar heat and stop water loss. Clear allows the suns rays to penetrate deeper into the water to warm more than the top inch or two. They do not keep out much dirt leaves etc as they escape around the sides. Yes you can fold them.
The best on the market is the GeoBubble.
I may not give you the answer you want to hear, but I will give an honest opinion of your situation as you decribe it.
mknmike
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Mon 26 Sep, 2022 15:21

This article has me sold that a bubble cover can help keep the water clean.

https://poolcoversandrollers.com.au/lea ... ool-cover/

“But what about keeping leaves and rubbish out” I hear you ask. Bubble pool covers are better at keeping leaves etc, out of a pool than many people think. Cut properly and used in tandem with a pool cleaner they can be extremely effective at keeping a pool clean.

The idea is to cut the bubble pool cover long so that it laps up the side of the pool wall. If you have an overhanging pool coping tile then, even better as the pool cover can then just tuck in under the coping tile. Doing this then seals off the sides of the pool cover so that leaves etc, cannot get into the pool. Then you can cut an opening flap into the skimmer box canal and any leaves can be just hosed, swept or blown in through the skimmer box canal and captured in the basket.

This leads me to another question I am often asked; “will my pool cleaner work with the pool cover on”? The answer is definitely yes, as pretty well all pool cleaners will run around quite happy under a pool cover.
mknmike
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Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Mon 26 Sep, 2022 15:57

Teapot1 wrote:Links not available to us over the pond but you really should stop listening to Swimming pool Steve and others talking nonsense.
Solar covers gain solar heat and stop water loss. Clear allows the suns rays to penetrate deeper into the water to warm more than the top inch or two. They do not keep out much dirt leaves etc as they escape around the sides. Yes you can fold them.
The best on the market is the GeoBubble.



Damn bro. You are tossing Swimming Pool Steve under the bus pretty haphazardly, aren’t you. He had absolutely nothing to do with this topic and I really think your comment is un-called-for and pretty unprofessional. I don’t think it makes sense for me to order a cover from the UK either. I’m attempting to improve information sharing about care and use for swimming pools, probably helping your site, and all you seem to do is trash the idea of RE-painting my pool instead of putting a plastic liner in it. My friend’s father did just that and it tore in 2 years. Plastic garbage. My pool had been abandoned for approximately 10 years, and the majority of the paint is still serving its purpose. Your paint must suck over there on the other side of the pond. LOL.

And to answer my own question, even your Geo Bubble advertices that it helps keep debris out.
https://www.geobubble.co.uk/

Ban me for respecting Swimming Pool Steve that takes the time to post logical videos! :)
mknmike
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Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Fri 30 Sep, 2022 20:07

So I will find out how this works with respect to keeping debris out of the pool. Here’s what I’ve got right now. Maybe some more trimming and perhaps some type of structure in the corners will help the sides stay up. They won’t really need to be that high, perhaps only an inch or two. Then they won’t be inclined to roll over backwards. Yet I want to make sure neither side slides away from the wall. Formed corners might help that.

The $190 (after $10 discount) solar cover from Doheny’s is far tougher plastic than I’d anticipated. I was thinking it would be like bubble wrap. I expect this to last more than 8 years for sure.

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Edit:
Also, I have been letting the water level drop in anticipation of draining the pool this fall, or perhaps just winterization. So the skimmer flap is currently out to assure that 1/2” of water can still get into the skimmer basket. Also, the robot is running underneath the cover. I was able to sweep bubbles out of the center and water and leaves into the skimmer basket. So anything that lands “in the pool” just lands on the cover and doesn’t get all throughout the pool water. I can see how this really would help keep the pool water cleaner in that sense (if I keep the sides turned up). There is a cut I made at the skimmer to let water on top of the cover into the skimmer. I’m not sure if that’s in the picture, or if I made the cuts later.

Having this cover also makes me think that maybe heating the pool could be feasible. I ran natural gas to the garage where the pool equipment is, and I plan to do hydronic heating in there (some day) with antifreeze in the heating system. With that I could have a heat exchanger with the pool water and radiator zones. I don’t know if it would be as efficient as a pool water heater, but the cost would be not much more than that of a heat exchanger and circulator pump with another zone off the heating system. Anyway, maybe this is “step one” in that direction. Im excited to see if it makes the water “swim-able” this October by keeping it clean and warmer. Last year that wasn’t happening.

Edit2:
I picked up two 10 foot 1.5” PVC pipes to glue together to something more than 16’ upon which I plan to be able to roll up the cover. I will want to devise a simple way to actually clip the cover to the PVC to start the rolling. I’m thinking that maybe ropes into holes in the pipe with something like stainless binder clips on them that I could clip to the cover would be ideal.
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Sat 01 Oct, 2022 21:39

Had a bunch of rain with Ian passing through. That made sweeping the leaves to the skimmer very easy. I’m glad those leaves didn’t get into the main water.

I need to trim the sides and devise a good way to assure the cover doesn’t slide side-to-side in the pool. One side curled over towards the center of the pool and leaves were on top of that, the bumpy side. It was tedious to get leaves off of that.

The big pool broom was easy to use with the water on top of the cover to push everything towards the skimmer.
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Mon 03 Oct, 2022 15:53

So now the pool must be up at least two inches from where it was. The edge of the bubble-liner that has no bubbles seems a little problematic catching under the coping. I think I will trim that side and try to slide the whole cover over that way a bit and probably also have to trim the other side a little too. That other side is folded over while the one with about 2” of no-bubble on the end of this 16-foot-wide cover is caught under the coping and also into the skimmer (as intended).

The other problem I’m seeing about the flap into the skimmer is that it floats, and with the water level high, most of the skim water is coming from the pool, not the water on top of the cover with all the leaves on it. Lowering the water level would solve this. Perhaps this later in the season, and with the skimmer flap removed, I should probably pull the drain plug that I keep in all year. Evaporation should be very minimal with the cover on, not to mention the cooler fall temperatures. Rainwater should go in, but probably not come out. So that’s a lesson learned. It sure helps save on water though.

I also noticed small bits of debris floating under the cover. While we had TONS of leaves on top of the cover that were easy to remove, the water below is not crystal clear. Yeah, we are having a Nor’easter (remnant of Hurricane Ian that just decimated Florida and did some serious damage to South Carolina) come through. So I’m not trying to complain about some fragments of debris in my pool. I’m just pointing out that the way I have it setup now, it’s not the end-all-be-all solution to keeping the water clean. I do think it helps a lot though. Just turn on the filter when you want to sweep wet leaves into the skimmer. Turn it off when done. Let the robot and filter run at its regularly scheduled time.

As for the water temperature, it really felt warm to my hand. But the fact is that the thermometer is only reading 52-53 F. It was 43 F this morning when I took the kids to school, and it’s 51 F now at the high of the day. The sun should come out on Thursday and Friday when we will get back up to normal fall temperatures. It will be interesting to see if the pool water temperature rises or stays at this ~52 F. I really don’t know the temperature the water was when I put the cover on. I now wish I’d checked.

Next step will be to assemble the 1.5” PVC (two 10’ pieces to make one ~17’ pole, and add clips to attach to the cover for rolling. Hopefully that will help the creases come out. The cover still has the obvious crease marks after a full three (cold) days.
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Thu 06 Oct, 2022 19:12

Rain from the remnants of hurricane Ian finally stopped. Maybe tomorrow will be a day to assemble the PVC to roll the bubble cover on and see if I can hang it in the garage.
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Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Fri 07 Oct, 2022 22:46

Today the cover was much drier after two days of no-rain, and the leaves were harder to sweep off with the broom. Perhaps a leaf blower would have been better.

The water that was on top was green. There’s not much of any bromine in that rainwater on top. So that’s understandable that rainwater with leaves in it sitting in the sun will turn green. It went into the pool. Not too much I could really do about that other than maybe shop-vac’ing it out.

I was on a mission to test out rolling up the cover on the two glued together pieces of PVC, a combined 20’. I expected to need to cut it, but it was surprisingly nearly the right length and fit in my pool area rolling on the brick coping. Rolling up was fairly easy and should get easier when cutting the cover to a smaller size (still a little larger than the pool).

The most surprising thing to me was that the rolled cover with a pipe in it easily floated around the pool. That was nice. It sure made maneuvering the cover east when it was all rolled up, floating around the pool like a ship.

Rolling it out wasn’t too bad. I ran out of light to work in, and just laid it back down to try and keep leaves out. Maybe in daylight I can get a better look. It’s raining again now.
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Fri 21 Oct, 2022 14:34

This weekend I will likely get the tons of leaves off the top of the cover and also clean out the robot bag. I have not swept leaves out of the pool since my last note here. Before it was a task that had to be done several times a week, and that’s in summer time. We are getting to the thick of the fall here now when leaves can be cleaned up with snow shovels. And I think this solar cover has enabled me to postpone closing the pool. I will take pictures of all the leaves on the cover and what the water looks like after turning off the bromine and letting the filter run with no chemicals for the past week or two.
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Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Sat 22 Oct, 2022 14:26

Kind of wish I hadn’t bothered to take the cover off today. Knowing I will repeat this again in a few weeks made it kind of a waste of time.

Water on top was getting funky though. So much that I hated watching some of it spill into the pool and create clouds. I wonder if a shop vac would have been a good way to clean up the funky water on top. Because I’ve got the corners, I was able to collect a lot of the funk water and dump it out the corner of the pool by the steps. Of course I soaked my (yard work junk) sneaker.

The steps had algae on them that I brushed off, but that seems common in this pool. I guess the benefit over the wonder cover is that I can continue to clean the water running the filter and robot. Hopefully keeping the pool “open” later in the season like this will make for easy opening in the spring.

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mknmike
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Sun 30 Oct, 2022 18:04

I can’t remember when I stopped the bromine, but today I put two bags of shock in bc the water was turning green. We had rain and the weathers been pretty nice, highs in the 60’s. Maybe this week I will get time to close the pool for the winter.
Guest

Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby Guest » Thu 06 Apr, 2023 20:14

Opened the pool this week, well removed the mesh cover anyway. Lots of dirt was in the bottom. I believe it could be from the downspout that is clogged and washing dirt down and into the pool maybe.

Anyway, cleaning the water has been the first step, and I’m not sure the solar cover is any help at all. It has captured debris and leaves in the overlaps of the seals, and not having a good method to roll it up has proven cumbersome and perhaps causes me to dump debris the cover has captured in many places, not just at the end of the pool where a roller might put it all. Purchasing a roller may be on my list. More junk to store is not something I dream of though. My PVC-glued two 10’ pipes came apart when dragging the cover back to the pool. More mess.

So I’m about to research whether I should be removing the solar cover on warm days. The temperature increased from 40 F to 44-45 F in just one day of 80-85 F temps. But I think that was mostly with the cover off. I’m afraid the clear cover acts as more of an insulator than a greenhouse at this time of year.
mknmike
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Re: Does solar cover help with leaves?

Postby mknmike » Thu 06 Apr, 2023 20:14

Opened the pool this week, well removed the mesh cover anyway. Lots of dirt was in the bottom. I believe it could be from the downspout that is clogged and washing dirt down and into the pool maybe.

Anyway, cleaning the water has been the first step, and I’m not sure the solar cover is any help at all. It has captured debris and leaves in the overlaps of the seals, and not having a good method to roll it up has proven cumbersome and perhaps causes me to dump debris the cover has captured in many places, not just at the end of the pool where a roller might put it all. Purchasing a roller may be on my list. More junk to store is not something I dream of though. My PVC-glued two 10’ pipes came apart when dragging the cover back to the pool. More mess.

So I’m about to research whether I should be removing the solar cover on warm days. The temperature increased from 40 F to 44-45 F in just one day of 80-85 F temps. But I think that was mostly with the cover off. I’m afraid the clear cover acts as more of an insulator than a greenhouse at this time of year.

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