The frequency of pool usage drops during the winter, especially when your pool is not a heated pool. Hence, without proper usage, your drive to keep your pool swim-ready is bound to diminish as the temperature drops during the colder months of the year.
Even if you are a motivated pool owner, who knows what good maintenance comprises, you are limited by what you can do to keep the water clean without a pool cover.
A pool cover is an efficient solution to help maintain the quality of the pool water, save energy costs, and reduce the effort required to maintain your pool clean.
Fewer Chemicals
Most pool owners use liquid chlorine to prevent the accumulation of algae and bacteria that make swimming an unpleasant experience. Un-sanitized water exposes the human body to various illnesses ranging from skin and eye infections to allergies.
The chlorine used to sanitize swimming pool water vastly reduces the concentration of microbes and algae that can cause these inconveniences.
Commonly used chlorine-based pool disinfecting agents such as liquid chlorine and chlorine tablets are made of sodium hypochlorite.
This tablet release chlorine by breaking down in a chemical reaction with the pool water and prolonged exposure to sunlight.
A pool cover vastly reduces this dissipation, leading to less requirement for pool sanitization and the use of chlorine-based pool disinfectants.
Less Debris
You would think preventing debris accumulation is an obvious benefit of using a pool cover. But you would be surprised to know how often pool owners undermine this consideration.
Even with the best efforts to keep the premises around your pool neat, there is no way for you to prevent the buildup of the microbial activity in your pool caused by the accumulation of organic debris such as a leaf, grass, and spore particles originating from your garden.
When these particles hit the water in your pool, it quickly becomes a hotbed for various microbes that thrive in this ecosystem.
Remember that pool water is stagnant; hence, the buildup of single-celled fauna in your swimming pool can quickly make things unpleasant if you are not watchful about debris accumulation.
Investing in a pool cover saves you the cost and effort involved in pool cleaning and increased desensitization schedules. Yes, no more poking around the pool with a net attached to a pole!
Savings on Heating Costs
Heated pools rack up quite the bill in terms of energy costs. Because it may take up to 8 hours for your heat pump to bring the water to the temperature you prefer, your energy consumption might translate into hundreds of dollars in a month.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way you could make significant savings by just preserving the heat of the water in your pool?
As it turns out, a pool cover gives you significant headway in saving energy costs. However, a simple pool cover won’t give you the gains that you need.
Specific types of pool cover (bubble/solar covers) enable pool owners to preserve the heat of the water drawn from the heating system and absorb the heat energy from sunlight to health your pool.
Experts estimate that solar pool covers cut down pool heating time by more than 2 hours per heating cycle of your pool heating set up.
Additional Read: When to Replace Your Pool Pump & Common Problems with Solutions
Safety
Many pool owners are concerned about accidental falls in their swimming pools. If you have pets and infant children around your house, their proximity to your swimming pool probably gives you nightmares.
Numerous pool safety solutions are crafted from polymer fabric reinforced with aluminum panels that can support a person’s bodyweight walking around on it.
Such robust solutions not only give you the benefits of simple pool covers that reduce debris collection and conversation of pool water heat but also eliminate the possibility of accidental falls into the pool.
Reduce Evaporation
If you find yourself turning on the water pump to maintain the pool water level often, then evaporation is affecting your set-up. It usually happens to pool owners who reside in a geographic location where the weather is bright and sunny.
Pool covers designed to absorb heat from sunlight are ideal solutions for this problem and make for a refreshing swim in the hot climate.
There are many materials to choose from depending on if you plan to set up a mechanical system to cover and uncover your pool. A simple pulley-based system that retracts the cover over the pool into an aluminum hosing is the most used solution.