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If you have an inground pool, it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea to consider buying a winter cover for it. With winter pool covers, inground pools stay healthier, cleaner and safer (more or less). As with anything else though, there are drawbacks too. Let's take a closer look at what these things do.

With winter pool covers, inground pools are protected from debris getting in, and from loss of water to evaporation and from loss of winter pool chemicals. What they don't do is to actually protect a child or pet that chooses to walk on the cover. Regular winter pool covers aren't made to be strong enough to take that kind of weight. They also don't have what it takes to help your pool retain heat – the way solar pool covers do. They do exactly what they say – protect your inground pool from dirt and losses to evaporation.

They make winter pool covers out of either vinyl or plastic mesh. Both these types of material happen to be UV resistant. If they weren't UV resistant, you'd have them cracking and breaking up pretty soon in the cold and in the sun. Buy the better quality ones, and you'll find that they make them out of them multilayer vinyl. This material happens to be stronger and usually, it resists algae growth is well.

An inground pool cover like any other cover, is designed to fulfill two kinds of functions – to keep dust and debris out, and to protect your pool from the effects of exposure to harsh weather. You get them in all kinds of materials and in all kinds of designs to achieve what they are supposed to achieve, in different ways.

Let's start with the solid inground pool cover. Now these are your traditional pool covers. They are tough, they seal your pool off quite well, they keep all sunlight out of your pool so that no algae ever finds your pool a hospitable environment, and they are lightweight enough that you could manage them yourself.

If you live in an area where it gets very cold and snows, you need to make sure that you buy something made of high-quality vinyl. Vinyl is a substance that can easily harden with exposure to the elements and accumulate damage and tears. You need to make sure that the stuff you buy is of high enough quality.

It's an interesting concept that you have in solar pool covers. You buy one of these for your pool at home, and it serves as an insulating layer over the surface of your pool so that whatever warmth the sunshine puts into your pool, stays in. It isn't just the sun’s warmth that solar pool covers aim to keep in, either. If you have a pool heater, a solar pool cover will do a good job keeping the heat in the water from going to waste to the atmosphere. It's a great way to save your money in the winter.

Take a look around a swimming pool supplies store, and you'll find that solar pool covers come in more than one type. You'll find that they have solar blankets, solar sun-rays, liquid solar blankets – all kinds of choices. Let's quickly run through the options available to you and understand what they do.

Let's start with regular solar blankets. A solar blanket is an insulator, basically, that consists of a sheet of something like bubblewrap, protected by two sheets of strong vinyl on either side. The air in the blanket is your insulation, and it keeps whatever heat gets into your pool, safely within without letting it go to waste. And since your solar blanket covers the pool tightly you'll find that you lose very little water to evaporation.

When you make your mind up that you need a swimming pool cover for the winter, you can go one of several ways – there are a number of options that are presented to you. You get different kinds of pool cover for pools that are above ground and ones that are set into the ground, for example. But quite apart from that, you have a choice in a swimming pool safety cover, a mesh cover or a solid cover.

Among those choices, a swimming pool safety cover happens to be one of the more expensive ones. Why would you want to invest extra on this? Why would you spend more money when it sounds like any old cover would do the job for you? That's what we're here to see.

Your first reason for why you would want to invest in a swimming pool safety cover instead of a regular one is this – it can just makes a swimming pool look better.

To many people, owning an above-ground swimming pool is just about the pool itself. Spending even more money on a pool deck that surrounds the pool is just a waste of money. The thing is, building an above-ground swimming pool deck doesn't cost these days what it used to. They make them in all kinds of sizes for every budget. And anyway, you have to realize that a deck-less swimming pool is just an invitation to everyone who swims in it to bring dirt in on their feet.

Consider an above ground swimming pool deck that's pre-fabricated out of aluminum. These days, these would cost you just about the same as a standard wooden deck, and aluminum is maintenance free. With wood that's exposed to the sun all the time, you always have to be on the lookout for splintering, cracking or just a washed-out look. Aluminum on the other hand just lasts forever. You just don't need to do anything about it. The great thing is, aluminum deck manufacturers do their best to mimic the construction design of a standard wood deck. So it should look familiar, more or less.

A pool in the backyard used to be something that only the rare well-to-do family had. Pools, though, have become quite affordable. Still, to those who can't afford a regular inground pool, a ready-made above-ground one is always a possibility. An above ground pool though can be expensive both to buy and to maintain. To the typical family that buys one of these, it often is tempting, the thought that they could just dispense with any aboveground pool landscaping completely, to save on costs.

What difference could it make, they ask themselves, and who’s going to know the difference? Well, you have to know that a pool isn't just a functional thing. People don't just buy pools to swim in them. They buy them for the lifestyle that they get to enjoy.

I recently decided to build an above ground pool deck for our back yard. It seemed like a good idea at the time, because we have two children and I wanted to be able to watch them when they were in the pool to make sure they were OK. What I soon discovered, however, was that while there are advantages to having an above ground pool deck, there are also many disadvantages as well.

The biggest advantage is the one to which I have already alluded. Having an above ground pool deck allows my wife and I to keep a better eye on our kids whenever they get into the pool. We don't have to worry so much about what is going on behind the barrier that we can just see over. We do not have to worry about one of them slipping off of the top rung of the ladder on their way out and falling to the ground. The top of the ladder comes up to the deck, and they can walk across the deck and down some stairs to get inside.

When you first think of getting a cover for your above-ground pool, you kind of think of the market in above-ground pool covers as a simple thing – kind of like a plastic sheet to drape over the pool and nothing more. Little do you know that they've managed to come up with a number of options in above-ground pool covers. And the kind of thing you can achieve with each differs – from model to model. Let's take a look at what they have on the shelves, shall we?

Solid above-ground pool covers are covers that they make out of several layers of vinyl all bonded together. These are great if you want to keep leaves and other garbage out of your pool. And since installing such a cover blocks sunlight altogether, you can keep water from evaporating and you can make it inhospitable for algae. Pool chemicals stay active for longer when they aren't exposed to sunlight as well. Solid above-ground pool covers are great idea because they do all this and they tend to be quite durable.