Every year swimming pools are wasting billions of gallons of water that can be saved. This paper addresses the problems with the current use of full pool covers and how half covers are the solution to pool water conservation.

It is well known that pool covers can reduce water evaporation by up to 95%, yet less than 30% of pools are using covers. The current limitations imposed by full covers, for the most part, boils down to two problems. The core of the automatic pool covers consists of superior quality aluminium tubes. The length of the reel depends on the size of the inground pool. The main reel is strong and durable to withstand heavy rains and winds for years.

The Twofold Problem

First, full covers are difficult to stock. Full covers are bulky and must be stocked in 50 or more sizes requiring a sizable amount of floor space to have covers on hand for the myriad of pool sizes. If a size goes out of stock, the customer has to wait until the warehouse reorders another truckload of covers. This distribution and stocking problem severely limits the available stock on hand at any one time and prevents the customer from being able to purchase on-demand.

Second, full covers for the most part fit only rectangular shaped pools. Covers initially come off the production line as sheets in rectangular shapes and are heat seamed together for various widths. They can be further cut into an oval or round sizes, but nevertheless, most of the pools built today are irregular free-form shapes and custom designs.

In order to accommodate free-form pool shapes the customer many times must oversize the cover which means ordering an even larger than needed cover and cookie-cutting the cover to the free-form pool using the inside of the pool cover as a guide. This however can create a lot of waste. And how do you accommodate say an L-shape pool?

The twofold solution is that by using half covers, the number of cover sizes for distribution and stocking can be reduced from over 50 to just 4 half cover sizes (see below) which can be mixed-n-matched to work with almost all pools up to L-shapes solving both of the aforementioned issues.