Automatic pool covers in Benissa and Benissa Costa

Benissa has 4,120 pools on the Catastro register

According to the Catastro there are 4,120 outdoor pools registered in Benissa, 69 more than in 2022. That is an enormous figure for a municipality of barely over 12,000 inhabitants: there are more registered pools in Benissa than in Benalmádena (4,057), a Costa del Sol town several times its size. Across the province as a whole, the Catastro counts 132,495 pools in the 141 municipalities of Alicante, 6,360 more than in 2022, a rise of 5.0 % in four years, which puts it second in Spain for registered pools, behind only Madrid. Jávea leads the province with 9,317, followed by Orihuela with 7,375, Dénia with 5,175, Torrevieja with 4,931, the city of Alicante with 4,866 and Calpe with 4,744. Benissa, with its 4,120, sits in that same order of magnitude on a fraction of the population of any of them.

There is a simple reason why a municipality of twelve thousand people has four thousand pools, and it is very plain on the ground: on Benissa Costa there is hardly an apartment block to be found, there are plots with villas, and the plot ends up having a pool. That is the pattern of the four kilometres between Calpe and Moraira, with the urbanisations hanging above the coves, and it is also the pattern of the partidas inland, where the detached villa and its pool have stood for decades. That older stock, with dimensions that rarely match a catalogue, is exactly the job we are asked for most: covering a pool that already exists.

A necessary word about these numbers, so that nobody reads more into them than is there. The Catastro census under-records: it is a floor, not a ceiling. Some pools were never declared, others appear late and small shells never make it onto the register, so the real figure is higher than the published one. The Catastro also makes no distinction between a private pool, a communal one, a hotel's or a club's: the 4,120 in Benissa are all the bodies of water registered in the municipality, not 4,120 houses with a pool. And the data does not go below municipal level: there is no official breakdown by village or by urbanisation, so it cannot be said how many are in La Fustera and how many in the old town. When we divide the area up by village we do it by geography and by our own work, never by attributing figures to a neighbourhood.

In practice, that profile of a family pool on its own plot is the one that pays a cover back best, and here the argument is not an aesthetic one. A closed slatted cover cuts evaporation by between 70 % and 80 %: on an 8×4 metre pool that is between 15,000 and 25,000 litres a year that do not have to be replaced, which in the Marina Alta is no small detail. If there is a heat pump, the system's consumption falls by between 50 % and 60 %, and with solar polycarbonate slats the water gains 6 or 7 °C during the day at no cost at all. The other reason people call us is safety: closed, the slats form a continuous surface that prevents access to the water and holds 100 kg, built to NF P90-308, which is a French standard, not a European one. It is worth saying plainly: that does not make it a walk-on or step-on surface, and nobody should walk on it. You can see the whole province on our page for pool covers in Alicante and on the Costa Blanca.

Sun, salt and pine woods: what Benissa asks of a cover

The Marina Alta gets more than 300 days of sun a year and Benissa makes use of them from two different altitudes. Down on the coast the sea acts as a thermostat and the winters are mild; up in the old town and the partidas, the height and the inland air mean the nights cool down sooner. For a pool that means the swimming season really is a long one, and that a cover earns its keep here for more months of the year than almost anywhere else in Spain. It also means a great many hours of radiation on the slats: a badly chosen slat fades and turns brittle within a few summers, above all on the south-facing terraces of the coastal urbanisations. We work with profiles stabilised against ultraviolet light and we study the actual orientation of each pool before recommending a finish and a colour.

The second thing is salt. Benissa has four kilometres of rocky, open-cove coastline, from Cap Blanc to Les Bassetes, with hardly a long beach to soften it, and the breeze climbs the hillside to the plots of the second and third line. That is why the whole structure, the shaft, the supports and the fixings are AISI 316L stainless steel and not some other material, never aluminium. Maintenance, by contrast, is almost nothing: rinse the slats, the shaft and the supports with fresh water, above all after several days of levante winds. There are no rails or guides to clean or grease, because the slats float on the water.

The third is the pine woods. A good part of Benissa Costa is built under pines — Cala dels Pinets owes its name to them, and Fanadix and La Llobella are residential areas of close tree cover, as is the partida of Pinos inland — and the pine needle is a discreet but constant enemy of a pool: it slips through the skimmer, settles on the bottom and stains the water. With the cover closed that dirt stays on top and is cleared with a hose. It counts for a great deal in a municipality where many houses stand shut for half the year, and it counts again when the torrential autumn rains arrive, so typical of the Marina Alta, washing soil off the hillsides and off the almond and Muscat terraces inland.

And the fourth is safety, which is the other real reason people call us and not an afterthought from a brochure: a mat of rigid slats floating on the water is a physical barrier against a fall, in houses where grandchildren often come to stay for a few weeks a year. That said, the cover has no alarm and no obstacle sensors and does not stop by itself: it has to be worked with the water in sight and with nothing on top, and the slats must never be pulled by hand.

With all of that, the choice of slat in Benissa is not an aesthetic whim. PVC does well in the more sheltered pools of the old town and the partidas inland, and it is the toughest and most economical slat; solar polycarbonate makes use of that sun to gain temperature and stretch the season at the villas of La Fustera, Fanadix or Montemar; the transparent one looks its best in pools with sea views, which at San Jaime or on the way down to Baladrar is nearly all of them. We explain it all, with sections and weights, on our page of slat types, and the shaft arrangements on cover models. What we do not make, so that there is no misunderstanding, are walk-on covers, telescopic enclosures, pool enclosures, domes, winter debris covers or thermal blankets: only automatic slatted covers, and since 2005.