Heat Loss - How to Control your Pool Water Temperature

Heat loss is likely the most frustrating aspect of pool ownership. You can spend hours balancing chemicals, skimming leaves, and cleaning out your filter, but there's little you can do to prevent the heat energy in your pool from absconding.

If you have a pool heater, any heat loss you experience means that your heater will have to kick in to fill in the temperature gap. This can be pretty costly. If your pool relies primarily on heat from the sun to achieve a swimmable temperature, you've got a whole other set of problems to deal with. Nothing puts more of a damper on a fun, afternoon swim than being forced to hang out pool adjacent in order to avoid re-enacting the door scene in Titanic.

​My dad has a pool with this problem. Even in the depths of summer, jumping in can—at times—be a frightening prospect. And at the beginning and end of the season? It's an extreme sport, only attempted by the bravest or most foolhardy of my friends and family. (In case you're wondering, I am not counted among them.)

In previous years, before he discovered the beauty of having a liquid pool cover, dad tried lots of ways to keep his pool at a temperature suitable for human beings. He even went so far as to build his own solar heat pump. It was relatively effective, for a while, until we hit a string of cloudy days that rendered it useless. Then it broke. Turns out, when you jimmy together a bunch of stuff lying around in your back yard, things can go wrong.

Last year, with the heater out of commission, my dad tried a bubble pool blanket. I know what you're thinking: why didn't he just fix it? That's a good question. Regardless, he got a bubble pool blanket, cut it to fit his pool, and used that to heat his pool last summer.

I won't say the blanket wasn't effective; you would certainly notice a difference in the temperature when the pool cover had been on for any extended period of time. Therein laid the problem—the blanket was rarely ever on. There were two reasons behind this: the pool was often in use, and the cover was cumbersome. I, being the designated pool caretaker, was the only one of the many people who visited who would always ensure that the blanket was in place after my swim.

I get it, it's a huge pain. Not only do you have to contend with the arduous process of removing it, then skimming off all the leaves and dirt bits, but having to drag the thing back on after you're done? It's tedious work. And it's boring. Nobody wants to go through all that when they've just finished their swim.

So how do you get the most heat retention with the fewest downsides? Simple: a liquid pool cover.

Heatsavr and Ecosavr are designed to reduce up to fifty percent of your pool's water loss and overnight heat loss. If you have a heated pool, you can expect to save up to forty percent of your heating bill. Meanwhile, you won't be having to heft a cover on and off your pool. Though, if you're one of my family members, you already experience that benefit.