What can I do to prolong the life of my Daisy Solar Pool Cover?

1. Ensure the chlorine level never exceeds 3ppm (3 parts chlorine to 1 million parts water). This level is shown as normal or ideal on your test kit. It is probably best to maintain your chlorine level at 2 to 2.5ppm. This level provides the health department recommended level of sanitation and guarantee your family’s safety. Higher chlorine levels increase the corrosive effects on the cover, and do not increase health standards. In fact, too much chlorine can be potentially damaging to your health.

2. Run your filter during the hottest part of the day – 10am to 4pm. Normally, when your filter is installed and set up, it is assumed you don’t have a solar pool cover and the filter is set up accordingly by the service person. You’ll be told that if you run your filter during the hottest part of the day your chlorine use will increase. Chlorine in its natural state is a gas.

However you add it to the pool water (liquid, solid or gas), it reverts to its natural state – a gas, which rises through the water and into the atmosphere. When you put a solar pool cover on, much of this evaporation does not occur. Instead, the chlorine continues to circulate through your pool water via your pump and filtration system and continues to sanitise the water.

This means the volume of chlorine in the pool will increase and your water will test higher. With a Daisy solar pool cover, you need to avoid this higher concentration by reducing the input of chlorine into the pool by about 50%. Either put less in (if you physically add chlorine), or turn down the amp-meter if you have a salt water chlorinator.

A further reason to run your filter during the hot part of the day is that when the sun heats the water it only penetrates the thermal layer – about 200 – 250mm or 8 – 10 inches. The sun is only heating the top layer of the pool, which gets hotter and hotter, while the water beneath remains cool. Add high chlorine concentration to this heat, and the effect of UV rays, and it's the worst possible environment for your swimming pool cover.

By setting up your pump to run during this hot part of the day, you can relieve this heat and get the chlorine evenly distributed through the water again. The pump mixes up the warmer and cooler water to spread the heat and mixes the chlorine throughout the pool and stops it building up under the cover. This allows you to gain the most of the benefits of a Daisy solar pool cover and prolong its life.

How do I protect the cover when it is off the pool?

If you have a Roller System, use the white over-cover supplied every time you recover the cover. If you don’t have a Roller System, the cover must be removed and placed completely in the shade. It must never – not even for a few minutes – be left in the sun when folded. This is because the heat generating effect of the cover is magnified immensely when folded, and it will very quickly self-destruct. The results may not be immediately visible, but they can be very serious.

There can be so much heat created that the air expansion creates sufficient pressure to force the lamination of the two sheets apart, causing the bubbles to join and form lines of larger bubbles. This is not life-threatening to the cover unless repeated consistently, however, the cover can get so hot that it becomes molten and welds itself together – completely ruining it.