[attachment=0:2wnaxs7p]pool cover comp.JPG[/attachment:2wnaxs7p]I'm back after nearly three months and guess what, my Loop-Loc Ultra is fitted and looking good as of this afternoon!
It wasn't quite as easy as I had hoped, but I guess its the result that counts, here's a quick description of what happened which might help anybody in Europe trying to do the same thing.
Firstly I ended up actually ordering the cover from poolandspa.com of Las Vegas, who were fantastic throughout the whole process, immediate response from 'Tim' to emails, and tons of really useful 'how to' info. on their site which is why I chose them as a vendor. Loop-Loc themselves resolutely refused to respond to any emails despite my special situation, not a great example of customer relations. However poolandspa very pragmatically forwarded all the necessary Loop-Loc forms and information to do A-B measuring and specify and order the cover from the other side of the planet.[attachment=2:2wnaxs7p]fixing comp.JPG[/attachment:2wnaxs7p]
A-B measuring was relatively easy if time consuming, I armed myself with a proper surveyors 50m tape measure, a lump of chalk, two bits of re-bar drilled into the deck as the A and B markers and a lot of patience. The most difficult and boring part was converting metric to feet and inches, it's easy to get feet and a decimal of inches, but not so easy when you want proper feet, inches and fractions of an inch. The computer generated drawing from loop-Loc of the pool line eventually returned to me, requiring many signatures that it was correct. How was I to know? There were just two suspect dimensions 'outliers' out of 63 so I re-checked those and corrected them, I think it was a conversion error, sent the money and waited. In the meantime 'Madame' decided that the standard green colour of the cover was too dull and wanted a blue one, women! Again Tim of pooland spa managed to get the order changed and even discounted some of the upgrade, full marks.
Christmas came an went and then I got all excited, in my first and only direct communication from Loop-Loc I got a TNT tracking number indicating that the cover was shipped, it quickly made it over the Atlantic, but then got stuck in Milan airport. I thought it was a customs problem and indeed there was 600 euros duty to pay, but that was picked up by the courier on delivery . The real problem was that somewhere along the line my address had just two letters transposed in the name of our province (county) should be Rieti, was Reiti. Of course, since everything is machine- read nowadays it got sent all the way to the tiny town of Reitano, in Sicily, 800 miles south of me. Oh Well.
When the cover eventually turned up I was in another country and could only get to it this weekend. Fitting was quite hard work,
I had 57 anchor holes to drill, and was dismayed to discover that nobody in Italy carried 19mm (3/4 inch)hammer drill bits, 18 yes, 20 yes, 19 no, so I had to wait another few days before one arrived from Germany. There are several 'how to fit videos' on you tube including loop-locs own ( I wish they would stick to the process and ditch the stupid play acting, depicting your customer, or even worse your re-seller as an idiot is always a huge marketing mistake, not funny, not useful.) The supplied written instruction are quite good however but they don't tell you the whole story. Firstly the 20 inch spacing back from the cover edge for the anchors is fine if the cover is stretched and tight, but not when you start and it is sagging slightly on your rope support grid. I ended up with a distance of 55 cm, 22 inches. The second thing is particular to my deck which is hard, natural stone in a random pattern with cement mortar in the joins. The brass anchors were a perfect fit into the cement but really didn't want to go into the stone, even when struck as hard as the alloy tamping tool could take. The knurled band would
just splinter and chip the top surface of the stone. Luckily I had a 20 mm drill bit to hand so just counter bored the top 1/4 inch of the 19 mm hole, perfect tight fit every time.
Fitting issues aside, the cover is a real quality, solid piece of work, when I finally pulled it drum tight with all the straps square it looks exactly right, I don't have an elephant to walk on it, but i'm sure one could!
Here is the works supervisor [attachment=1:2wnaxs7p]dog.JPG[/attachment:2wnaxs7p]