Archive for the ‘Home Exterior’ Category
Fun in your backyard pool
Winter swimming pool covers
Protecting your swimming pool over the winter will likely call for some kind of covering. Winter can be rough on a pool with a lot of dirt, leaves, rocks, twigs, plastic bags and food wrappers being blown into it. Accidents occasionally occur around pools so you might think about getting a strengthened safety pool cover for the protection of kids, pets and your pool. Some pool owners who experience moderate winters use solar heated pool covers to keep the pool warm, safe, clean and ready to use. You have a couple of fundamental choices: a solid cover that will not let anything enter your pool, or mesh covers that let rain or snow flow into the pool. In the case of a solid cover you keep the water below the cover clean but water often collects heavily on top during the rainy season, so always keep a pump handy. With any pool cover you need to carefully comply with the manufacturer’s guidelines and also check out the local regulations governing pool coverings.
Inground swimming pool covers
Swimming pools typically have safety and health issues and with a suitable pool cover you can do away with many of those concerns. Most evaporation of pool water occurs due to the impact of wind, no matter if it’s an in-ground pool or an above ground model, but a pool cover reduces evaporation. Vinyl covers which feature insulation are very popular and valued for durability and strength, as are the cheaper non-insulated models. Also very popular are solar bubble models, which capture the heat of the sun to maintain a warm water temperature and are usually less costly than the heavier vinyl ones. Solar bubble covers can’t support a small child landing on them, so for safety reasons that model isn’t appropriate for young families. The most costly models will be automatics, followed by semi-automatic ones, and then manual covers are the least expensive. There is a wide variety of prices and models on the market both in-store and on-line, so be sure you shop around enough to find the bargains.
The following are some websites that should be more enlightening when exploring the category of pools and accessories. Do you require more information about discount above ground swimming pools? Then Classic Above Ground Swimming Pools is the place to begin looking. If you are still wondering about swimming pool supplies then go to Best Swimming Pool Supplies.
Swimming pools: suggestions and recommendations
Add to the enjoyment of your swimming pool with pool toys
Getting decent exercise these days is difficult enough for adults, but getting kids to give up their tweeting, texting, face-booking, and video games in order to get outside and exercise is a daunting challenge, fortunately a solution for that may be the old fashioned swimming pool. While adults can enjoy an unadorned swimming pool for the exercise and relaxation, kids are better off with engaging swimming pool toys even grownups can enjoy. You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy water guns, fins and goggles, all of which are terrific for people of all ages. Children love to play on pool slides, avid swimmers enjoy diving in from a starting platform, and everybody likes a good diving board, just to mention three of the bigger poolside accessories that are available. Other terrific swimming pool pastimes are water games, which are many of the conventional recreational games adapted for the pool, like basketball, ping pong, badminton, tennis, polo, and volleyball. A terrific toy for bigger youngsters is the underwater surfboard, and if they have any skills with a skateboard or surfboard they will have an excellent time riding beneath the surface of the water. For emergency situations and general convenience it is the right idea to put in a pool ladder and railing at the deep end of the pool, and you can get these built out of stainless steel or polyresin. No matter what toys you provide for a swimming pool, if you have children in the pool you will be required to supervise their playing and make sure they are following proper safety procedures.
Pool heaters that use sun power
Have the most fun out of the family swimming hole by installing a solar pool heater, and you will save cash over other heating systems. There are four stellar components to a solar powered pool heater involving a filter, a pump, a diverter valve, and the solar collector set up on the roof through which the water is pumped, heated, and then pumped back into the pool. The solar panels on the roof need to be somewhere between 50% to 100% of the total surface area of the pool, and the bigger the solar collector the longer you can enjoy the pool in colder months. The first thing you will want to determine is where to put the solar collector to receive the maximum amount of sunshine, and remember to set your pump timer to operate during daylight hours. Because pools lose an enormous amount of heat it is prudent to use a pool cover to reduce evaporation, and help prevent dirt or debris from blowing into the pool. You can spend as low as $2,000 and as much as $10,000 on a solar heating system, but average costs run in the $3-4,000 range, comparable to old fashioned propane heaters or heat pumps, but without the on-going operational costs of conventional pool heaters. Solar pool heaters only require one moving part, the diverter valve which guides the water up into the solar collector, and so has fewer maintenance expenses than conventional pool heaters. Because solar pool heaters employ natural sunlight for energy, you will not be emitting pollutants as you might with a propane heaters.
The subject of swimming pool accessories is quite extensive and there will be a lot of Internet sites which address a specific topic. Here are a few recommendations that should be of help. Need additional help finding above ground pool liners? Then Buy Above Ground Pool Liners might be the place to begin looking. A different website is Buy Electric Pool Heaters which has articles concerning electric pool heaters. Additionally, you might feel the need to find out more about winter inground pool covers. If that is the case, Winter Inground Pool Covers will be helpful.