Many years ago at a previous house we had a 24ft aboveground pool.
My dad made a pvc set up that consisted of pvc pipe that he connected together with 4way connections. There were 2 sets of these, for a total of 8 ribs that when flexed into place from side to side, they all formed a dome. The cover was then places over this set up.
It never really did work very well. We used a cover that wasn't a solid cover so water could get through. Even with that, the structure still bowed and one side eventually collapsed. I'd didn't do any damage to the pool, thankfully.
The next year he made a center support post for it. I remember he used the bottom rung of the outside pool ladder that we never used since we had a deck around it, for the base that the big pvc pipe went into. That protected the liner on the pool floor. That support did keep the thing up all winter but still some of the ribs flexed and bent the opposite direction so looked all lopsided. Lol After that we Jair went back to the usual floatie in the middle.
But like you I sometimes think about how I could improve on his idea and make it actually work. Problem is that here in Oklahoma we have horrible never ending wind and that was a part of the issue with this idea in the first place.
