smaller circular solar covers instead of one large

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Librarybill

New member
May 22, 2022
2
Youngstown, OH
this may be crazy, but has anyone considered using 8 or 9 of the smaller circular solar covers instead of one giant cover?

my wife has a bad back and she can't manage a 24 foot cover without risking a miserable reaction.

Obviously, if I'm here, I'd take it on and off. But I work multiple 13 to 14 shifts a week.

My math is suspect, but I think 8 or 9 of the smaller 8 foot solar covers would do the lions share of covering the pool.

Is it ideal total coverage? No. But would it do the job enough to make some heat and prevent losing it overnight?

Anyone have any thoughts? I'd appreciate it.
 
Welcome to TFP.

Probably better than nothing.

They are inexpensive, so give it a try and let us know how it works.
 
Not sure if you've seen this but I have been considering trying it for mine, as my wife has a similar challenge in dealing with a full 24' round. I was going to see how close to end of life my cover is and if it is almost done, this would be worth trying before I replace it.

My functional if not pretty solar cover reel set-up.

My pool is 26 feet diameter, so putting the solar cover on and off by hand is really difficult. Reels wide enough to roll the whole cover were expensive and likely to sag in the middle, plus it sounded tough to space the straps properly so it would roll evenly. I got a round cover and cut it...
www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com
 
They sell 4ft (?) discs for this exact purpose. Covers of any shape or thickness eliminate evaporation, which accounts for 70% of your heat loss. Seran wrap would work just as well, but good luck rolling that up for next time. Lol.

Anywho, the evaporation loss is directly proportional to the area covered. Cover 75%, stop 75% of your evaporation. (Etc).

The will help and you'll probably hate them much less than we all hate(d) our full covers. Thats like the one thing we agree upon across TFP. Solar covers work great to their ability, and they suck.
 
Wind is the issue with the small discs. Some overlap occurs and that can be caught by the wind. Just be ware.
 
I have a neighbor that cut his cover in half so it would be a semi circle and weigh about 1/2 the weight. My wife talks about doing this to our cover but we haven't done it yet in all the years of pool ownership.

Since we don't actually swim in our pool we tend to pull the cover back and loop it a little over the top rails to keep it from floating around. Floating around with beverages is easy when we do this. If and when we have people over then we just remove it.
 
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I started using the 4' rounds last season after multiple different set ups with a standard 27' round cover. Reels, racks, cut into multiple pieces, etc all of which had their drawbacks. (On a side note, I now have a maybe 6" diameter by 28 foot long aluminum pipe that was my old reel. I can't bring myself to get rid of it - what cool things can I do with it? It's taking up room in one of my sheds (it breaks down into 8' sections)

So far, I like the 4' rounds. They are easy to throw in and take out. They do a good job, and they are a lot easier to clean than a large single piece of cover.

Mine have magnets on the edges, so they link up and form a giant flotilla. They are inflatable, but you are not supposed to inflate them fully. Once you get it right, wind really does not become an issue

These are the ones I have.


This has been the first time I stored them over the winter. I'll be opening the pool this weekend (if weather cooperates) and I'll see how they held up. I hope they held up well, they were not cheap.
 
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