My experience with the water bags was a complete failure. I have a mesh loop lock safety cover and I also live in a windy area. I get a lot of leaves in the pool which blow in under the cover, and damage to the coping due to movement. I have my cover tensioned very tight, but that doesn't seem to help either. If you watch when the wind blows, it creates "lift" on the cover, and actually tries to pick the cover up, this allows the leaves to enter and rubs the coping. When I tried the water bags, it made little to no effect on this cover movement. I don't think it made anything worse, it just didn't help.