Minimum size of supports and top for heavy snow.

[Guest]

In my researching, I am noticing manufacturers commenting about how their pools with the 8"Top rails and 8" verticals hold up better to snow and ice.

Anyone know what is the minimum for heavy snow/ice areas?

I was looking at a 6" Top rail and 5.5" verticals, but wondering if I need to go with the 8" size.

Our building snow loads are 135 lb/square ft for the area where the pool is going and we usually have 5+feet of snow on the ground during winter for 4 months of the year.

 

[NWMNMom]

I'm not really sure why that matters that much, except for when the winter cover is on and you aren't frozen yet? I'm guessing if there is so much snow on that cover, you would need to get it off anyway - most people don't let a lot of water, snow and ice accumulate on the solid covers. Once the water freezes, everything just sits on top of the frozen water. When the pool freezes - the ice goes up, not outward unless there is something restricting the upward movement of the ice.

The winter cover isn't really intended to hold a huge amount of weight anyway so "snow loads" with regard to your rails and uprights seems a strange item to even have listed in the pool info. You would want to have a solid cover set up so that it's not accumulating great loads of snow/ice anyway. In the alternative, a mesh/flow through winter cover does not hold water and any snow ice that sits on it during early spring would melt through.

Obviously, the wider the rails and uprights the sturdier the pool for all use as intended - you can find some very reasonable priced pools with 8" rails and decent uprights. 5" uprights and 6" rails really is the starter package but many dealers have 8" rails on starter pools at the same price. Shop around more, I'm guessing you can find one for the same price as you were looking with the wider rails.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the information. I did not think it was an issue, but it looks like some marketing person thought it was something extra to sell their product.