Dénia's climate and the right slat for it
Dénia gets around 300 days of sun a year. The summers are long and dry, the winters mild, and the rain arrives in short bursts in spring and autumn. The swimming season runs from May to well into October: by then the sea has soaked up a whole summer of heat, and the water stays pleasant long after the sun has lost its edge.
The sun is also what empties your pool. Over a July on the Costa Blanca an uncovered pool can lose several centimetres of water a week to evaporation, and every litre you top up has to be balanced and treated again. A closed slatted cover cuts that loss sharply, holds some of the day's warmth in the water overnight and keeps the chemistry steady between visits, which matters most when nobody is there to check it.
Then there is what lands on the water. The Aleppo pines on the Montgó shed needles all year; the levante blows sand up off the shore at Les Marines; and a calima — the Saharan dust haze — can leave a fine red film on everything for days. On an uncovered pool that means a skimmer basket full of debris on every visit. Closed, the surface simply stays clean until you come back.
Safety is the other half of it. Our covers are built to NF P90-308, the French safety standard the industry uses across Europe: with the cover shut, the slats rest on the water as a physical barrier and the water is not directly accessible. It is a barrier, not a substitute for supervision. If the house is let out or stands empty between visits, that barrier is doing its job every day you are not in Dénia, whether or not anyone remembers to think about it.
Which slat, then? PVC is the tougher of the two and the one most owners here choose: it shrugs off pine needles, dust and salt air, needs little looking after and comes in several colours. Solar polycarbonate is translucent and traps the sun's heat, warming the water by a few degrees and adding weeks at each end of the season. Clear polycarbonate is the third option, for owners who want to keep the water visible. <a href="/en/lamas.html">Compare PVC and polycarbonate slats</a>.
