I have a solar saddle- no deck yet, so that was the next best thing. Our 28 foot cover is in three sections, with the middle one being 28 foot long and 5 foot wide. I push the cover sections over the side and fan fold them into the saddle one at a time. I have to get out at some point and fuss with the folds a little if they get off, but it works. I am only 5ft 2in and my pool is 4-6 feet deep, so this requires some water treading at some point (good exercise though). To put it back on, I start pulling it back over the edge from the inside- it just unfolds itself right onto the water and floats over to where it belongs, one section at a time.
If I am really lazy- I just move the middle section over onto one of the side sections and swim back and forth in my 28 foot long swim-lane.
We managed to get ours back in the original box for this winter, but I like the trash can idea. I already use a large plastic trash can for storing my autovac and all its hoses and pieces when it is not in use and that has worked really well. My solar cover is big enough and heavy enough to require a really BIG trash can, but I could use one that is on wheels to make it easy to drag around. Probably safer than a box too- as the cats can be hard on boxes.
In our area of Texas, the solar cover will go on as soon as the water gets a bit warmer- in the 70's. I do not know exactly how long we will use it, but I know by July we will be looking for ways to cool off the water. We put the pool in mid-August last year, and started using the cover mid-Sept as the evening temps were cooling and we were losing too much heat at night. We called it a season in mid-late October and put up the cover for the winter. We got an 3 weeks of pleasant swimming over our friends that did not have covers.
We are working on solar panel install right now for this year to get an early spring start. With solar panels, we could have swam right up through first week of November, I think, last year.
