New Solar Cover owner questions

[ePoolUser]

I'm covering my pool 24/7, except an hour while we swim most days. I am hardly using any chorine. I was starting to think the test kit is bad, so I checked my tap water (city), it was high, then checked the Brita water and it showed no chlorine. So I suppose the test kit is OK.

Is this normal to not lose much Chlorine when using a solar cover?

TIA,
Steve

[chem geek]

Yes. The use of a solar (or other) cover SIGNIFICANTLY slows down chlorine loss. UV rays from sunlight are cut down a lot so the chlorine only gets used up by combining with organics (and there's less of that because less junk gets into the pool). In my covered pool, the chlorine usage is about 0.5 ppm FC per day at a level of around 3 ppm FC and that's at 88F water temperature.

Richard

[tenax]

yep..between the lack of water evaporation and the shade from the sun, really does help a bunch. i would suggest when it's calm..say after a nice day of swimming in the early evening if it's calmer and sun is down but it's still fairly warm outside, leave the cover off for 2 or 3 hours a day instead of one. leaving it on for toooo long will make it like a greenhouse and promote algae growth..last year when i first got my cover and it was july and high 20s to low 30s, i left my cover on for 3 days and that's all it took for an algae bloom. chlorine was gobbled up at a much faster rate and it went from 5 to 0 in a couple of days and i figure by the morning of hot day 3, i had zero chlorine and one day of no chlorine and the heat was enough to make a mess..now, i'll add that was when i didn't have an swcg for steady output of chlorine and i can't remember if i was using cya to stabilize the chlorine or not at the time.

[NWMNMom]

I like to take the cover off during hot summer days for a couple of hours if possible, it warms the water nicely when there is no wind. Otherwise, our cover is on if we are not swimming. BTW, we cut slits in the cover where the rails for the drop in steps are set. Another thread shows the info on our homebuilt reel from plans Matt had.