Above ground pool questions

[Danz1man]

Hi all, I've just purchased a 12ft x 3ft above ground bestway pool for the kids but have a couple of questions.

We plan on putting it up next month and taking it down around September time and repeating next year.

We have purchased a solar cover (the bubble wrap type) - when does this need to be on? - is this the only cover we need? We have overhanging trees so may get debris but is this simply a case of scooping it off with a net or do we need to cover it with a proper cover at night?

It comes with a filter (although i've read that it's really not good enough so do plan on upgrading this but will cope for the time being) - when does this need to be on?

What's the easiest way to keep it clean, I have been looking at small kits on Amazon and the floating chlorine dispensers, are these any good?

Anything else I need to know? Thanks :)

We had one for years and never thought any of the covers were much good. We had the bubble wrap one and a proper one and tree stuff still got in. We just used a net and we all took turns in cleaning the bits out. It was quite therapeutic listening to the water sloshing about in the warm weather.

We upgraded to a bigger filter too, and it was worth it. We also had a brush and a hoover for it but the hoover was just ok. It did help but not massively so.

For the chlorine, we got a mushroom floater and had it in whenever there were no people in it. Occasionally we had to ‘shock’ it, such as when we’d been on holiday, as it got a bit of algae. For that we got a kit with different things in like this one in the picture. We also had a supply of test strips. When we did go on holiday we had the filter on a timed plug so it still got filtered regularly.

Lastly, we bought a pump to empty it straight into the drain.

Thank you, so did you not bother with any covers in the end?

How often did you have the filter on? - do I have to worry about wilflife drowning? I have steps that go on the inside and outside, would say a squirrel or cat be able to use them to get out if they fell in somehow or am I overthinking it?

We usually had the filter on for a couple of hours a day on an evening. We didn’t bother with the cover at all after a while and even if you did it probably wouldn’t affect anything falling in. As for that, it wasn’t something we ever experienced and we have trees and bushes and squirrels visiting regularly…it didn’t even occur to me to be honest!

We had a 10ft one and had a bubble solar cover and a normal cover we put in overnight. We had the filter pump permanently and the mushroom clorine floats in when the pool was not in use. We also had a net and vacuum we used for tree bits etc when needed.