Automatic pool covers in Málaga

The two things owners ask us first, answered straight

Two questions come up in the first telephone call, and neither of them is about slats. First, who you are dealing with. We are the manufacturer: your cover is built to the measurements of your own shell in our factory in Torrijos, Toledo, where we have made slatted covers since 2005, more than 5,000 of them. The site work is ours as well, out of our Costa del Sol delegation at C. Jorge Guillén 6, San Pedro de Alcántara. The same company measures the pool, fits the cover and comes back if it ever needs attention.

That matters in a province that runs from Manilva to Nerja and climbs inland to Ronda and Antequera. A seafront flat in Torre del Mar, a plot above Coín and a villa in the capital are three different jobs, and the van reaches all of them from the same coast rather than from the factory. Across the province the Dirección General del Catastro has 83,789 outdoor pools on record (2026), and we quote yours one pool at a time: our own telephone, our own written quotation, our own fitters.

Second, whether it pays — the fair question when the pool here is open most of the year. A closed cover cuts evaporation by 70 to 80 per cent, chemical consumption by around 35 per cent, and the energy a heat pump needs by 50 to 60 per cent. Most owners get the cover back in four to seven years on water, chemicals and heating alone. The water on its own is not loose change: an 8 by 4 metre pool loses 15,000 to 25,000 litres a year, and with the terral blowing an uncovered pool wants topping up week after week through August, while a pool left long enough without care ends up emptied and refilled rather than rescued. In the Axarquía, only recently out of years of water restrictions tied to the La Viñuela reservoir, that is not a small thing.

Doing all of this from another country

None of it needs you in Spain. What we need is either your measurements or somebody with access. Internal length and width of the shell, photographs of both short ends, of the coping and of the narrowest point on the way in — a garage ramp, a communal gate, a street above Frigiliana or Cómpeta that turns into steps — because the shaft travels in one piece, several metres long. If you would rather not measure it yourself, our team goes out from San Pedro de Alcántara and measures on site with whoever holds the keys: the administrador de fincas, a property manager, the caretaker, the firm that already looks after the water.

Then three decisions, all of which can be taken by email. Where the shaft sits: above the water, resting on the coping, which is the normal answer on a finished pool, or submerged in a pit under the water, which belongs to a pool being built. Which slat: PVC, solar polycarbonate, which gains up to 6-7 °C in a day with nothing running, or transparent polycarbonate. The quotation is itemised, in writing and free of obligation. Manufacture is four to five weeks from your approval and fitting takes one or two days, booked either around a trip of yours or around whoever holds the keys.

One thing to be plain about before buying from abroad: you cannot close the cover from your phone. Every cover we build is motorised — there is no hand-cranked version — but the control is hold-to-run, so the slats move only while the switch is held, and somebody has to be standing at the poolside while they do. That is deliberate. The covers are built to NF P90-308, the French standard the trade works to: closed and anchored, the sheet of slats carries an adult's weight, which neither makes it a surface to walk on nor replaces an adult watching the water. So the cover is left closed when the house empties, and a keyholder opens it the day before you land at Málaga airport.

Afterwards the after-sales comes from the same coast rather than from the factory. There is no annual plan to sign: on the seafront, where the salt reaches the fixings first, rinse the slats and the exposed stainless steel with fresh water periodically, and have the fasteners looked over from time to time. Structure, shafts, brackets and every screw are AISI 316L stainless steel, the marine grade, on a plot in Nerja as much as on one in Antequera; the structure lasts beyond 15 years and the slats 10 to 15. What you are buying is the arrival: water you can treat in an afternoon instead of water you have to replace.