Winter Insulating Cover

[RaleighDawg]

So i we have just about made it through our first winter. My wife swims every morning. and i mean every morning. she was out there in snow storms, ice storms and temperatures in the teens. We keep the pool at 83 and she warms it up to 85 about an hour or two before going out to swim and let’s it fall back to 83 after getting out.

I used a solar cover on the pool when she wasn’t swimming and i just pulled off the section on her swim lane each morning before she went out. So about half the pool stayed covered all the time.

The solar cover cut our gas use by half, at least. but i still feel like there should be something that works better for what we are doing. something that is more for insulation instead of passive solar heating.

When it is months of never getting out of the 40’s as the high, i don’t think it is doing anything to heat it. but what i believe would help more is something that does more for keeping the heat in and cold out.

There doesn’t seem to be any type of double sealed cover with thicker sections of air in between the layers.

i tried covering it with two and three layers of solar cover and that seemed to really help. but i could see that because water and other things could get between the layers, it was a mess waiting to happen with all kinds of things starting to grow in there.

rubberized foam, like some pool floats, seems like it would be great, but i haven’t been able to find it big enough and fear even if i did, it would be outrageous.

Wanted to reach out and see if there were others that keep their pool open all winter and what covering they are finding helps keep the most heat in the pool.

Figure i’d get an early start on planning for next winter.

 

[cowboycasey]

You are in home brew territory from what I have seen here over 8 years.. I have only seen a couple people heat there pools up during the winter and never anyone to do it daily (other than indoor pools).. With that said I think you have come up with one of the best ways to do it but you need a way to seal the solar panels together so nothing can get between them..

I bet you could do it almost the same way they connect them together with heat but they do it using ultrasonic How Ultrasonic Welding Works

You could do it by heating a plate of steal or something and welding/melting them together

Here is a search that has many types/ways of doing it..

heat weld plastic - Google Search

 

[Pool_Medic]

You need a thermal cover.