Automatic pool covers in Puerto Banús

Three straight answers before the product talk

First, who you are actually dealing with. We make the cover ourselves: the structure, the shaft and the slats are built to your shell's measurements in our own factory in Torrijos, Toledo, where we have been making slatted covers since 2005 — more than 5,000 of them — and we set the price. The visit, the measuring, the fitting and anything the cover needs afterwards are done by our own crew, based at C. Jorge Guillén 6, San Pedro de Alcántara, about seven minutes from the marina. No agents, no subcontracted fitters: one company from the first phone call to the third year.

Second, no, you do not need to be in Spain for any of it, and many of the owners we work for around Banús are not. The measuring is done on site with whoever holds the keys, the quotation goes out itemised by email within 24 working hours, and the fitting date is set around your travel rather than ours. Manufacture takes four to five weeks from your approval, fitting one or two days, and you get photographs of the finished job. We answer Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 16:00 CET. The three-year warranty is Ingerclima's own.

Third, the money. We publish no prices, because every cover is cut for one particular shell, but the arithmetic behind it is no secret. An 8 by 4 metre pool loses 15,000 to 25,000 litres a year to evaporation; a closed cover stops 70 to 80 per cent of that, cuts chemical consumption by roughly 35 per cent and takes 50 to 60 per cent off what a heat pump costs to run. On a pool in regular use here that normally pays the cover back in four to seven years, and the structure lasts beyond fifteen.

How this works with the house shut and you abroad

None of this needs you at the poolside. Send the internal length and width of the shell, photographs of both ends and of the coping, and one of the narrowest point on the way in — or simply tell us who holds the keys and our crew measures it themselves: a property manager, the housekeeper, the concierge, the pool company. The quotation comes back itemised by email, with no obligation, and it is the only honest figure anyone can put on a cover that is cut for one particular shell.

Then two decisions, and both are yours. Where the shaft goes: above the water, resting on 316L supports on the coping, with or without a box over it, the usual answer on a pool that already exists; or submerged, in a pit at one end and out of sight, which has to be built into the shell. And the slat: PVC for hard-wearing opacity, solar polycarbonate to lift the water temperature by up to 6-7 °C with nothing running, or transparent polycarbonate if you want to keep seeing the water through the closed cover. We go through the three of them with you at the site visit. Structure, shafts, brackets and every screw are AISI 316L stainless steel, marine grade — which, this close to the port, is not a detail.

Fitting day does not need you either. Four to five weeks after you approve the quotation the cover comes up from Torrijos and our crew fits it in one or two days, out of San Pedro de Alcántara. Somebody has to be able to let us in: in practice the concierge, the agent or the housekeeper. Every cover is motorised, and there is no hand-cranked version. The control is hold-to-run, so the slats move only while it is held and the cover never travels over an unattended pool by itself. We show whoever is there how it works and send you photographs of the finished job.

What the cover is really for, in a house that stands empty between visits, is the months you do not see. Closed, it keeps the salt haze, the dust and the wind-blown sand off the water, holds the heat in overnight and slows down everything that eats your chlorine — sunlight on the water above all. The difference is not a few euros of chlorine. A pool left to look after itself through a summer here can reach the point where the water is past treating and the shell has to be emptied and refilled. Under a closed cover the same pool is water you treat in April, not water you throw away. And when something does need attention, the crew that comes is ours, out of San Pedro de Alcántara.