Automatic pool covers in Girona and on the Costa Brava

The 46,007 pools in the province of Girona, municipality by municipality

This is the real order across the province, with nobody left out. Top of the list is Castelló d’Empúries with 3,066 pools on record, the municipality with more pools than anywhere else in Girona. Second comes Lloret de Mar with 2,862, third Calonge i Sant Antoni with 2,623, fourth L’Escala with 2,159 and fifth Begur with 2,039. Behind them come Roses with 1,850, Platja d’Aro with 1,517, Palafrugell with 1,466, Santa Cristina d’Aro with 1,439 and Maçanet de la Selva with 1,218. Closing the upper table are Caldes de Malavella with 1,152, the city of Girona itself with 1,143, Vidreres with 1,059, Pals with 879, Blanes with 794, Torroella de Montgrí with 761, Sils with 731 and Sant Feliu de Guíxols with 643.

Three things come out of that table, and together they explain what kind of province this is. The first: the capital is not in charge. The city of Girona comes twelfth, with 1,143 pools, less than half of Castelló d’Empúries. That is not a statistical oddity, it is town planning: the city is compact and built in blocks, and pools appear where there are plots.

The second: here the pool is, to a large extent, a coastal second home. The top five municipalities are on the coast or a step from it, and not in a single comarca: Castelló d’Empúries and L’Escala in the Alt Empordà, Calonge i Sant Antoni and Begur in the Baix Empordà, and Lloret de Mar on the coast of la Selva. There are small municipalities, Begur among them, that pass the two thousand mark. That changes the priorities: the cover is not bought only to warm the water, it is bought so that the pool stays clean and closed through the months when nobody is looking at it.

The third: inland la Selva counts too. Maçanet de la Selva, Caldes de Malavella, Vidreres and Sils add up to more than 4,100 recorded pools between the four of them: villa estates with proper plots, well away from the sea, with colder winters and more vegetation around them. These are two different markets, and the same order sheet does not answer both.

A necessary word of warning about these figures. The Land Registry count under-records: it is a floor, not a ceiling. Some pools are never declared, others are entered late, and some never appear at all, so the real figure is higher than the published one. Nor does it distinguish a private pool from a communal one, or from a hotel or campsite pool: the 3,066 pools in Castelló d’Empúries are every body of water on record in the municipality, not 3,066 houses with a pool. And the data does not go below municipality level: there is no official breakdown by neighbourhood or by estate. When we divide the province into comarques here we do it by geography and by where we work, never by pinning figures on a neighbourhood.

And that is where a slatted cover earns its place on arguments that have nothing to do with looks. Closed, it cuts evaporation by 70% to 80%, which is where most of the water goes and most of the heat with it. Chemical consumption falls by around 35%, because the water stops taking direct sun, leaves and dust. With a heat pump and the cover in place, the system uses 50% to 60% less. And with solar polycarbonate slats the water gains 6 or 7 °C during the day at no running cost. The other reason people call us is safety: closed, the slats form a continuous surface that keeps anyone out of the water and carries 100 kg to the NF P90-308 standard, which is French and not European. That does not make it a walkable or step-on surface: you must not walk on it, and it does not replace adult supervision.

A Girona winter is not a Levante winter

This is the difference most often overlooked. The Costa Brava is Mediterranean, but it sits at the far northern end of Spain’s Mediterranean coast and the winter shows itself differently from the south: the nights are colder, the season starts later and finishes earlier, and the water takes longer to warm up in spring. Inland, in la Selva and el Gironès, the gap between day and night is wider still.

For a cover that changes two things. The first is the slat: here solar polycarbonate carries more weight, because it adds 6 or 7 °C during the day at no energy cost, which is exactly what you need in May and in September, when the water is nearly there but not quite. The second is the habit: close it at dusk, because a cover left open overnight lets evaporation take away almost everything the sun has put in during the day.

And it is worth saying what we do not make, so that nobody is caught out: we do not build enclosures, domes, telescopic covers or walk-on covers, and we do not do winter tarpaulins or thermal blankets either. Our cover will keep the pool closed through the winter as well, but it is none of those things.

Which slat to choose in the province of Girona

We work with three slats, and the choice is not a catalogue decision: it depends on the pool, which way it faces and how many months you want to swim.

The PVC slat is the most popular and the best balanced: robust, resistant to the sun and to salt air, and it holds on to the heat the water has built up during the day. It is the natural choice on the most exposed stretches of coast —Roses, L’Escala, Begur, Palafrugell, Lloret de Mar, Blanes— and in any house that wants something durable and would rather not think about it.

Solar polycarbonate is the strongest card for swimming more months of the year, and in Girona that counts for more than it does in the south: its slats capture the sunlight and add 6 or 7 °C by day at no running cost, which is exactly what it takes to stretch May out and win September back. It is the one we recommend most inland, in la Selva and el Gironès —Caldes de Malavella, Maçanet de la Selva, Vidreres, Sils, Cassà de la Selva or Llagostera—, where the nights cool down earlier, and on hillside plots where the sun comes in full on for much of the day.

Transparent polycarbonate puts looks first: it lets you see the water and sits discreetly in its setting. It is what the cove villas of the Baix Empordà ask for, where the view is the whole argument of the house. All three slats float on the water and all three go on a motorised cover. The detail on each one is in Slat types.

Who comes to your house in Girona and who fits the cover

Here is the part that rarely gets put in writing, because it is the first thing people ask. We are the manufacturer: your cover is built to size at our factory in Torrijos (Toledo), and the people who come to your house to measure and who fit it are our Barcelona team, who cover all four Catalan provinces, Girona city, the Alt and the Baix Empordà, la Selva and el Gironès included.

We say it plainly because it is the advantage, not a shortcoming: the visit and the fitting are done by people from here, not by someone passing through. Our Barcelona team comes to your house, takes the measurements, fits the cover and is still there afterwards, for servicing or an end-of-season adjustment. We set the price ourselves and the three-year warranty is Ingerclima’s, covering structure, motor, slats and fitting. Spare parts —a slat, a motor, a control box— come out of our own factory in Spain, and in a province with this many second homes that continuity is worth more than it sounds. To get the quote out quickly we ask for three things before anything else: the dimensions of the pool, visible or submerged shaft, and where the vehicle can get in as far as the coping stone. With those, fitting day holds no surprises. Write to us from contact.

How many months can you swim on the Costa Brava?

Without a cover, the season in Girona comes down to a short summer: the water is slow to warm up in spring and loses it again as soon as the September sun eases off. With a cover closed at night it stretches at both ends, and with solar polycarbonate slats further still.

The cover does two things at once. It cuts evaporation by 70% to 80%, which is where most of the heat in an uncovered pool goes, and if you choose solar polycarbonate it lets the sun through and warms the water underneath, 6 or 7 °C by day, at no running cost. The difference between the coast and inland is mostly at night: on the coast the sea softens it, while in la Selva and el Gironès the temperature swing is wider, so closing the cover at dusk is what stops you starting from scratch every morning. If you want a steady temperature right through the season, the missing piece is the heat pump, which we supply as an official Calorex distributor: it is quoted alongside the cover and sized at the same time.

One local note that is worth making: the water-saving by-law of Caldes de Malavella, in la Selva, recommends in its article 10 that pools, public and private, be fitted with a mechanical system that makes it easy to cover the whole water surface, so as to prevent evaporation when they are not in use. It recommends, it does not require: there is no legal obligation to cover the private pool of a family home. The detail on Catalan regulations and on water is in the Barcelona and Catalonia page.