Blue Wave Bronze 8-Year 16-ft x 32-ft Rectangular In Ground Pool Winter Cover

Fall 2019: I bought this because of the low price and it’s a breeze to install. I’ll eat my hat if it last eight years. But I just needed to keep leaves and pine needles out of my pool during the winter months. For that it works great. It is in no way a safety cover and a fallen tree branch would probably poke a hole in it.Spring 2020 Update: After a moderate winter, the cover did the basic job of keeping debris out of the pool, But a couple wind storms ripped half a dozen grommets out of the cover and that allowed the tarp to develop long rips and worn spots. It was not salvageable for a pool cover, although I was able to cut it up in sections and use those to drag leaves to the street and cover some other smaller things... so not all was lost.Overall, it will last only a year or two as a pool cover. But considering the price, I could buy a new one of these tarps every year for 20 years and still spend less than I would on a "real" pool cover.Fall 2020:Ordered a new one for this fall/winter. The only thing I would add is that the tarp’s grommets cannot take very much tension. If you are going to drape this over something and lightly secure it with rope or bungee cords it will do fine. But if you need to put any tension on the tarp or pull it tight, the grommets will start to pullout within minutes.

The BWC752 8-year warranty cover as installed on the pool in October 2024. In January, we noticed that the fabric of the cover was deteriorating, and the fabric laminations was developing small square holes. This was happening on all areas of the cover; on the apron where the water bags are located, and on the curved surface from the edge of the pool to where the rain water gathers. In coastal NC, UV affects tarps and covers over time, but never have we seen a cover deteriorate so quickly. So we submitted a warranty claim ... below is the most hilarious reason ever given to deny a claim:As your pool is 18x36’ and the cover is 20x40’, this leaves 2x4’ of extra material. Over time, rain, snow, ice, and other kinds of debris collect in the center of the cover, and because the cover is so much larger than the pool, this causes it to sag in the center more than it was designed to do, holding more weight than it was designed to hold. B Glynn, Bluewave Products.In reply, I sent a diagram showing the stress strain curve of the cover and the following note (see photos):Dear Brendan, The sag on the cover is not to a function of the border width as you claim but the depth of the pool water. Our pool is always pumped out to 12” freeboard. The pool is covered as normal and secured using water bags (as shown in the photo). The water that gathers does not cause any sag in the center as you suggest: water is a fluid that behaves according to the force of gravity, and will always remain flat. Unless you have a cover that has created some form of polar vortex, there cannot be any sag in the center of a pool (at least not on Planet Earth).And your claim “because the cover is so much larger than the pool, this causes it to sag in the center more than it was designed to do, holding more weight than it was designed to hold.” is so far out in left field that it made me gasp! The weight carried on the cover (and therefore the downward force exerted) is a function of the area of the pool (in this case 18ftx36ft). For each inch of rainwater, the weight of water is 3,370 pounds, distributed over 648 sq. ft. (providing a force of 5lbs per sq ft on the stress strain radius). The weight CANNOT VARY ACCORDING TO THE SIZE OF THE COVER ONLY THE SIZE OF THE POOL.The failures of your cover are clearly delamination of the fabric and it is occurring within the strain radius, as well on parts outside of the stress/strain radius such as the parts of the cover underwater, and on the border area. Clearly, your company is using a material poorly suited for purpose.

It is what it is. I have paid twice as much for a cover twice as heavy and only gotten a few years out of it. After a cover is dead they are heavy and big and difficult to discard. In my locality the trash goes to an incinerator not a landfill, so finally I decided that this cheaper thinner cover would be easy to install, easy to remove and easy to discard...much as I hate being wasteful. If I get two years out of it I am probably ahead of the game as the mass of plastic I will be throwing out is easily half my old covers and I only get three years out of them. I bought a 18 x 36 cover for a 16 x 32 pool and it was too big. If you don't drop the level of your pool alot (I don't, I just put a plastic bottle in the skimmer) you can probably use the size of your pool as there will be a couple of feet extra all around. I didn't use the pool bag loops but they seemed pretty flimsy. My pool has grass all around so I just staked it down.

This product was a perfect fit for my 14' x 30' rectangle pool. Please know that this product has a 5' overlap, meaning that the actual dimensions for this product is 21' x 37'. The overlap is necessary and convenient because you want to have some lag that allows the cover to "droop" into the pool and touch the top surface of the water, and so you have enough of the cover material to weigh down so the wind doesn't blow it out of place. The material itself is decent, it is not going to be super thick, but feels tough enough to withstand a few winter usages if maintained properly. You get what you pay for in this case, and for this low price when compared to other vendors, it was an excellent deal. This is the first year so it's all good so far.Note: I had help unfolding the cover since it is large. I laid the cover out in the sun for a whole day to try and get rid of the creases that formed when the cover was packed. Instead of buying expensive water tubes, which all have received horrible reviews for their quality, I went to the nearby home improvement store and bought 10 of their 5-gallon buckets to use as the weight to hold down the cover. In order to minimize friction/damage to the cover, I cut out square pieces of 1-inch styrofoam and placed it between the cover and buckets.Blue Wave Bronze 8-Year 16-ft x 32-ft Rectangular In Ground Pool Winter Cover