Just wanted to provide an update on this.
1) These umbrellas are much better quality than anticipated. They still look the same and work flawlessly. Great buy back then for $220 each from Amazon. The fabric still has the same color, shows no wear, etc. despite being outside the entire year for more than 2 years now. And they have survived a couple of times when I forgot to close them in stronger wind gusts. They sway and bounce, but never broke.
2) I in the meanwhile bolted them directly into the concrete. I was nervous about mounting that that small 5 x 5 inch aluminum plate on the concrete. I bought 1/4" 316 stainless steel drop in anchors + hex bolts and now they have been directly mounted making it so much cleaner and easier to walk around the deck. 15 months in an no concrete cracking.
3) cooling power is still confirmed. We were on vacation and had the umbrellas closed. When we came back the pool was 95F. Within 2 days we brought the temp down by keeping the umbrellas up all day long and running the pool pump only at night. the temp would drop about 3-4 degrees every night and only increase by 1-2F during the day. After 4 days of doing this, the pool has stabilized to cooling to 86F at night and getting to 88F, sometimes 89F during the day, of course with the umbrellas open the entire day. This is in our current Texas heat wave of 100F sunny days every day.
I have 4 built in aerators as well that spray over the entire pool surface (about 12 gpm capacity). I experimented with them. Running them for 12 hours at night, cools the pool down by maybe an additional 1F or 2F compared to what would happen overnight anyway. (e.g. from 89F to 85F with aerators vs. 89F to 86F without aerators. This limited impact might be due to our nights being 82F with 90 % humidity. The umbrellas definitely made a much bigger difference than the aerators and don't require running the pump or adding acid to battle the PH increase.
1) These umbrellas are much better quality than anticipated. They still look the same and work flawlessly. Great buy back then for $220 each from Amazon. The fabric still has the same color, shows no wear, etc. despite being outside the entire year for more than 2 years now. And they have survived a couple of times when I forgot to close them in stronger wind gusts. They sway and bounce, but never broke.
2) I in the meanwhile bolted them directly into the concrete. I was nervous about mounting that that small 5 x 5 inch aluminum plate on the concrete. I bought 1/4" 316 stainless steel drop in anchors + hex bolts and now they have been directly mounted making it so much cleaner and easier to walk around the deck. 15 months in an no concrete cracking.
3) cooling power is still confirmed. We were on vacation and had the umbrellas closed. When we came back the pool was 95F. Within 2 days we brought the temp down by keeping the umbrellas up all day long and running the pool pump only at night. the temp would drop about 3-4 degrees every night and only increase by 1-2F during the day. After 4 days of doing this, the pool has stabilized to cooling to 86F at night and getting to 88F, sometimes 89F during the day, of course with the umbrellas open the entire day. This is in our current Texas heat wave of 100F sunny days every day.
I have 4 built in aerators as well that spray over the entire pool surface (about 12 gpm capacity). I experimented with them. Running them for 12 hours at night, cools the pool down by maybe an additional 1F or 2F compared to what would happen overnight anyway. (e.g. from 89F to 85F with aerators vs. 89F to 86F without aerators. This limited impact might be due to our nights being 82F with 90 % humidity. The umbrellas definitely made a much bigger difference than the aerators and don't require running the pump or adding acid to battle the PH increase.
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