Automatic pool covers in Benahavís

Two questions come before everything else here

The first is who actually turns up. We are the manufacturer: your cover is built to your pool's own measurements in our workshop in Torrijos, Toledo, where we have been making slatted covers since 2005 — more than five thousand of them. What matters in Benahavís is that you never wait on a van from Toledo. Our Costa del Sol base and crew sit in San Pedro de Alcántara, on C. Jorge Guillén, ten to thirteen minutes below the hillsides. The same people survey, fit and come back afterwards, and access to La Zagaleta, El Madroñal or Los Flamingos is cleared with the gatehouse in advance.

The second is whether your pool can be covered, and the answer turns on one thing: when the shaft can go in. On a pool that is already finished and tiled it rests above the water on the coping, on 316L supports, and nothing is broken into — that is the usual answer on these hillside plots, whatever shape the architect drew. A submerged shaft, in a pit under the water, has to be allowed for before the shell is concreted, so it belongs to a new build or a full refurbishment. Every cover is motorised — there is no hand-cranked version — and the slats move only while the button is held.

Both answers end at running costs, which are larger than people expect. A closed cover cuts evaporation by 70 to 80 per cent, chemicals by roughly 35 per cent and a heat pump's energy by 50 to 60 per cent. An 8 by 4 metre pool loses 15,000 to 25,000 litres a year to evaporation, and pools on these plots are rarely that small: left open through a Costa del Sol July, one can want topping up almost daily, and water allowed to go past rescuing ends up drained and refilled. We publish no prices, but on the saving alone a cover of this kind generally pays for itself in four to seven years.

How this is done when the house is empty and you are abroad

Start with what we need, not with a visit. The internal length and width of the shell, photographs of both ends, of the coping and of the narrowest point on the way down to the water. If you would rather not touch a tape measure, our crew measures on site with whoever has access — the property manager, the concierge, the caretaker, or the company that maintains the pool — and in a closed estate we clear the visit with the gatehouse beforehand: vehicle registrations, working hours and the estate's own site rules. You do not have to be in the country for any of it.

Then the decisions, and all of them travel by email. An itemised written quotation, free of obligation, with the drawings. Where the shaft goes: above the water on the coping, with a box over it or without, which is the answer on a pool that is already finished and tiled; or submerged in a pit, which only works if the shell is still to be poured. Which slat: PVC, solar polycarbonate, which lifts the water six or seven degrees with nothing running, or transparent polycarbonate where the point is that the cover is barely seen over an infinity edge.

Manufacture is four to five weeks in Torrijos from your approval, and the fitting one or two days. We set that date around your travel if you want to be there, and around the key-holder's if you do not; either way photographs come as the work goes along and when it is done. Handover matters more than usual when the owner is abroad, so we show whoever will use it — housekeeper, caretaker, pool company — how the hold-to-run control works: key switch or remote, the slats moving only while the button is held, on the mains supply the pool already has.

Upkeep afterwards is short: a fresh-water rinse every few weeks on the lower plots where the salt reaches, leaves and pollen cleared off higher up, the fasteners checked once a year. We do not sell a maintenance plan. When the cover does need us, the visit comes from San Pedro de Alcántara, ten to thirteen minutes away, arranged with whoever holds the keys. One limit: our covers are built to NF P90-308, the French standard the sector works to, and a closed one will take an adult's weight, but it is not a walkable surface and never replaces an adult watching the water. We answer Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 16:00 CET, on +34 91 631 59 40.