Well I say determined but within financial reason of course. What I actually was thinking of doing was to get a leaf cover without the solid cover underneath. Does this work? Would the leaves get too heavy for it? We have a HUGE silver maple tree in our backyard that sh**s all over our pool in the fall and spring. We've had the pool/house for five seasons and each one has been terrible, by November we end up with a swamp and Leslie pool ends up with all our money for chemicals that never did enough. Sooo...now that I've found y'all I'm determined to keep it blue all winter! Plan to have a supply of bleach on hand over the winter, but I'm not sure what else to plan on. Seeing as how this site was started in March there isn't much info on winterizing the pool yet so I'm getting a head start. Kids start back to school soon and I want to know what to do before it happens--preventative this year!

You don't want to leave the leaves in the net, because they will decompose in the water. Peel it off when it gets a bunch in it and keep it on until the leaves are gone.

if i'm going to need to keep the net clear what is the easiest way to hold it down on the deck. do i need to invest in the water bag things they sell for covers? i have a whole bunch of bricks, would they work ok or not strong enough? anyone have any other solutions? i'm probably going to need to peel it off every couple of days at least.

I would go with water bags. They don't cost all that much and are easy to work with. The crucial issue is that anything you use to hold down the cover is likely to end up in the pool eventually. They shouldn't but they always do eventually. I wouldn't want a brick falling into the pool, too much risk of damage.

Our neighbors have a tree that partially hangs into our yard. That tree is the bane of my pool's existence. It drops stuff all four seasons into our pool. I offered to pay for them to have it removed but it does a great job of shading their house in the afternoon. They hate its droppings, too, but it's huge and mature and, therefore, not easily replaced.

Anyway, last winter, I finally figured out a decent way of keeping up with the leaves from this beast. Rather than let the skimmer basket fill up with them, I created a simple wall in front of my skimmer's inlet out of 1/2" hardware cloth. Nothing larger than a 1/2" could get past it into the skimmer. Leaves would collect in front of the mesh and then I could either easily scoop them out or let the Polaris grab them after they sank into a nice little pile on the bottom. I still had to deal with it twice a day, but it seemed easier this past winter to not have the relatively-small skimmer basket packed to the brim within a couple of hours.

The mesh was held in place by bending it over the edge of the coping and placing weight on top of it. I had to cut it a little to allow me to shape it for a good fit. I was thinking of getting a little more fancy and fashioning something out of PVC pipe that would stop the leaves in the same manner, but then have a removable net underneath that would catch all the sinking leaves. I would then just lift it out and dump it as needed.

Great idea! We live in a highly wooded area and are constantly dealing with debris. We trimmed our overhanging trees and this helped considerably. Would your neighbor allow you to trim the branches off that hang into your yard?

Yes, plus we are legally allowed to do this. However, the bulk of the tree is on their side of the fence and it is so tall that it wouldn't matter even if we did trim our side. Since it wouldn't make a difference, we don't bother trimming it for the sake of keeping it looking balanced and healthy. Of course, if my neighbor wants to get rid of that tree, I will gladly help him!

The time will soon be here where I need to revisit my leaf-catcher idea. If I put something together, I'll take some pictures and post them here.

We have a blue solar cover on while the leaves fall. They lay on top and the wind blows them across and up and over the side and on across the yard. We have lots of trees, and this is the best year we have had. Before the solar cover, we were always battling leaves, skimming them off, having to empty the strainer basket nearly hourly, etc. When the leaves are down, we will remove the cover so we can enjoy the looks of the water in our winter landscape (and also avoid algae buildup, as my pool person advised.)

???? The cover reduces chlorine losses not sure how removing it helps with algae...

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Your pool person advised you wrong. The opaque cover actually prevents algae by blocking sunlight. Algae has to have light to reproduce.

You can have the tree thinned out and reduce the leaf fall without sacrificing much of the shade. It is OK to remove about 25% of the leaf canopy with a thinning. A good tree man will removed the limbs that were going to be shaded out and dropping off anyhow, and then the weak or badly placed limbs which also will fall anyway. Then he trims to make the tree look better lifting up the canopy to show the branch structure a bit and allowing winds to blow through the tree without taking full branches down. When it is all done, you will be amazed at the pile of branches on the ground but the tree simply looks better, not really lighter or smaller. All those leaves are ones that you won't have to pull out of the pool. It is really money well spent. And-- I do recommend letting a pro do this. Cutting is tiring and then clean up is such a hassle, chopping and binding and hauling the branches. If the trims are badly done the wound will weep and ooze and attract bugs and disease. I have a friend who fell out of a tree while trying to trim it, used a cane for years after that, and he was a young-ish 40-something at the time.