Caring for your Cover

Clean the vinyl fabric before the swim season starts to not only save the life of the cover, but also prevent debris from contaminating your pool.  Scrub the cover with a mild detergent or a specific vinyl cleaner for swimming pools.  Start with cover closed and your cover pump on the cover.  Wet the cover, add your detergent, and scrub with your pool brush about 6 to 8 ft.  Rinse the dirty water to your cover pump and then open the cover until the clean section is rolled up and you gain access to the next dirty section.  Don’t get lazy here and use a pressure washer, as it will cause excessive wear and could delaminate your vinyl.

Once a year, pull the lid off your cover box and clean the debris from inside the box so it will drain rain and pool water properly.  Do this with the cover closed so there the fabric rolled onto the drum is smaller.  The bottom of this box may be gravel, and that’s okay, but this gravel needs to be free of debris or it will become compost and not drain properly.  If you have a concrete bottom or a polymer box, they are equipped with drains usually on the motor end.  These drains must remain clean, but the bottom of the box should still be cleaned once a year.  You may be pleasantly surprised and find that missing pool toy, or a few other things that went missing last summer.

It’s also a good idea to wash the tracks with a good garden hose nozzle.  Start at the closed end of the tracks and wash back toward the cover box.  Spray in the channel that the cover rides in while opening or closing the cover.  This will allow the cover to run smoother and help prevent the cover from becoming misaligned.  While you have the hose out, you might as well wash the pool deck down too.