Intex pool cover heats the pool now beyond what's refreshing. How to reverse the effect or cool the pool?

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ohb3one

New member
Jul 10, 2022
3
Las Vegas, NV
Pool Size
1480
Surface
Vinyl
Hi, everyone, first post here.

I have an Intex 10'x30" round above ground pool on it's 3rd summer. The last 2 years I covered it with a big tarp but this year I bought the actual Intex cover made for the pool. It works much better as a cover, however there is an unintended side effect.

It's totally heating the pool.

I do live in Vegas so of course it gets hot but the last 2 years even on the hottest days the pool would still remain cool enough to be refreshing. Not now. I don't have a thermometer but if I had to guess the pool is probably in the 90s. Definitely high 80s at least. I saw some solutions of making a fountain to cool the water but I'm not sure if it'll be worth the effort.

The main issue is, that this did not happen when I used the tarp. So is there a way to make this cover not actually act as a heater? It's a dark blue and just absorbs all of the heat and puts it into the water. I'm wondering if I can paint the majority of the middle of it white or some other resolution that will reflect the sun instead of absorb.

All ideas and advice welcome. The real heat just got started and our pool is no longer refreshing.

Thanks in advance!
 
Do you HAVE to use the cover? Since you see it does heat the pool up I would stop using it if at all possible.

You can use a fountain running at night to help cool the water but it only cools a couple of degrees.

I am not sure what your water situation is there. Maybe you can drain most of the water and start over and not use the cover.

I am not sure how good paint would stick to the cover with it begin plastic and moving so much.
 
The isn't ideal in every possible way, but one fairly good choice is to use a bubble cover that covers less than the entire pool. That will cut down on a good percentage of the evaporation (though not all of it) and get you less heating than you have now giving the water temperature you want. This approach has the advantage of being remarkably simple, just leave a portion of your current cover folded over (or on the deck) and you have a workable, if not ideal solution.
 
Thanks everyone. Sorry it took me so long to respond.
Yes, If I don't cover the pool, quite a bit of dust, debris, and bugs can get into it and I spend a significant amount of time getting all that out every time I use the pool or have to keep up on it daily. So the cover was ideal but I had no idea it was going to have such a strong heating action.
I think perhaps if I know we're going to use it the next day I can leave the cover off at night which I tried once and the pool was much cooler the next day, and of course if I know it's going to be windy I can leave the cover on. We had a lot more months of wind here than usual this year so I really couldn't leave the cover off for a while but I think the windy weather has finally died down, and we've had a bit of monsoon weather now that appears to be tapering off.

The previous 2 years I had a big tarp as a cover with cinder blocks on the corners to keep it on and it had a silver on one side blue on the other so it never did such strong heating action. And last year the filter pump that came with the pool stopped working mid season so the ppol would get even worse if I didn't keep on top of maintenance. This year I bought a replacement pump and it's so much better than the original so I think that helps in keep the water clear and loose debris down.

At this time I don't think it's worth it for me to put in a skimmer or anything like that. We only put the pool up during the spring summer and only go in so often. So I guess I'll stick to leaving it uncovered it's not going to be windy and I know we're going to want to go in it the next day.

Thanks all for your suggestions.
 
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Maybe floating a large inner tube like toy would allow air to pass through the sides.

Add a white or silver tarp over the top of that cover to reduce the solar loading effect.

Only run the pump from midnight to 7am.

Run the filter hose through a chiller of some sort.

Just float on the top? Haha.
 
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