Swimming Pool Today

The swimming pool solar cover (also known as solar pool blanket) may have an odd sounding name, but it makes more sense when you understand that it is a tool to keep your pool warm by using the sun. What makes the swimming pool solar cover so remarkable is that it works so well.

Swimming pool solar covers are little more than a plastic sheet with some air bubbles in it. These solar covers are equally suitable for below ground swimming pools and above ground swimming pools. These solar covers do more than insulate. They work on the greenhouse principle. Solar radiation is allowed in freely so that your pool is being continuously heated.

Additional Solar Cover Benefits

There is a lot more to a solar cover than having a warm pool in which to swim. While it is nice to have a pool that is ten to fifteen degrees warmer, it is also comforting to know the water is radiated as it moves through the upper levels of the pool, reducing bacteria counts. This is a very important point. Sitting water can become quite toxic for a variety of reasons. Solar radiation helps to keep this water safe for swimming.

Additionally, solar radiation would normally lead to evaporation of the chlorine that keeps your swimming pool water clean. But with the solar pool cover most of the chlorine cannot evaporate. This means that you will spend less money on chlorine and that your pool water chlorine levels will be more stable.

If you have a heated pool, you will drastically reduce the cost of heating your pool. In fact, in many regions a solar pool cover can completely remove the need for a pool heater. In the colder regions, it saves even more money than it does in these regions, though some artificial heating may still be required. It should also be noted that a solar pool cover keeps pool temperatures a lot more consistent than a heating system can, allowing you to swim any time of the day.

One more point about the swimming pool solar cover should be noted. It not only provides heating and solar-related benefits, but it also provides a physical barrier between debris and microorganisms floating in the air and your pool. This is not only great for hygiene, but it relieves a lot of the strain on your pool filtration system.

How Swimming Pool Solar Covers Work

As noted earlier, solar pool covers are made of a special polymer plastic material with tiny bubbles in it. These bubbles not only allow the blanket to float on the surface of the pool, but also create additional insulation to magnify the benefits of the greenhouse effect. The hexagon-shaped bubbles are really the keys to the effectiveness of the solar cover. Circular bubble designs are not capable of providing the same heating effect because they cannot geometrically fit together as densely.

Newer solar pool covers should take advantage of the benefits of a laminated surface. Additionally, they should be designed to resist having their lamination worn off. When the lamination comes off the swimming pool solar cover, it doesn’t work very well. Additional features to keep an eye on when shopping for solar pool covers are the storage and deployment mechanisms. You don’t want it to be so difficult to uncover your pool that it discourages swimming. It should be easy to put the swimming pool solar cover across your pool and take it off your pool.