The fifteen municipalities of the Sierra de Guadarrama that do not yet have a page of their own on this site add up to 13,651 pools on the Catastro register, 634 of which were not in the 2022 count. We make the slatted cover to the measurements of your pool and fit it with our own crew, from our branch in Aravaca and our factory in Torrijos.
When people talk about pools northwest of Madrid, the sierra comes last in the conversation and first in the data: the fifteen sierra municipalities that do not yet have a page of their own here add up to 13,651 pools on the Catastro count of open-air pools. Add the six that do — Valdemorillo with 3,099, Torrelodones with 2,943, Galapagar with 2,856, Moralzarzal with 1,261, Collado Villalba with 1,101 and Becerril de la Sierra with 992 — and the whole band passes twenty-five thousand. This is not a token second-home area: it is almost twenty-six thousand registered pools across twenty-one sierra municipalities.
And it is still growing. Between the 2022 edition and the current one, 634 new pools appeared in those fifteen municipalities alone: 96 in El Boalo, 71 in Guadarrama, 68 in Manzanares el Real, 60 in Los Molinos, 57 in Cercedilla and 49 in Hoyo de Manzanares, among others. Those are small numbers in absolute terms and very large ones against the existing stock of each village, because here every new pool is a new single-family house on a plot. The pattern shows on site: what used to be a weekend house has become a main home, and a pool that was opened six Saturdays a year is now meant to be used for the whole season.
That is where an automatic slatted cover stops being an accessory. In the sierra the water gives back overnight much of what it gains by day, the pine and holm oak fill the shell with needles and leaves, and the period when the pool sits idle is long. An 8 × 4 pool evaporates in the order of 15,000 to 25,000 litres a year, and with the cover closed that evaporation falls by 70-80 %; chemical use drops by around 35 %; and if there is a heat pump, closing the cover takes 50-60 % of the work off it.
The season is cut short at both ends. What rules in the sierra is the swing between day and night: the water takes temperature from the sun and lets it go as soon as the afternoon fades, which is why in Cercedilla, Navacerrada or Miraflores de la Sierra the pool is slow to start in spring and finishes early in autumn. Closed overnight, the cover keeps much of the day's heat. Choose solar polycarbonate slats and the water goes on receiving radiation while it is covered, gaining 6-7 °C at no running cost. That is the difference between opening the pool in May and waiting until late June.
Pine needles, leaves and hail on top, not in. Plots in Soto del Real, El Boalo, Los Molinos or Manzanares el Real usually have trees directly over the pool, which means needles and leaves all year round, not only in autumn. Closed, the slats cover the water surface completely: what falls stays on top and is swept off, the skimmer stops blocking and the filter is not fighting the pine all summer. The slat is rated for Hail Class 4, which in a sierra of afternoon storms is no small detail.
Sloping plots, granite and old shells. Half the sierra is built on rock and on a slope, with the pool on a lower terrace a vehicle cannot reach. None of that prevents anything, but it changes the installation: the cover goes up dismantled and is assembled beside the pool, and that has to be known before quoting, not on the day. What rests on the coping is the shaft on its AISI 316L stainless steel legs, never aluminium, and the housing if there is one; the slats float on the water and need no rails or guides of any kind. On old concrete shells, very common in Miraflores de la Sierra or San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the first thing we measure is the coping and whether the walls are true.
These are the figures from the latest Catastro count of open-air pools for the sierra band, grouped by valley. We install in all fifteen, and also in the six sierra municipalities that already have a page of their own: Valdemorillo (3,099 pools), Torrelodones (2,943), Galapagar (2,856), Moralzarzal (1,261), Collado Villalba (1,101) and Becerril de la Sierra (992).
We measure at the pool itself before anything is made, which in the sierra matters more than almost anywhere: old shells rarely match their drawings, and the approach to the pool is half the answer.
At these altitudes the limiting factor is not the summer, it is spring and autumn. A clear sierra night can take several degrees out of an uncovered pool, and the shell starts the next day from lower down. Across a season that compounds: the pool is comfortable for fewer weeks than the air temperature suggests it should be.
The slat is 60 mm wide, weighs 8.1-9.6 kg/m², floats on the water and is rated for Hail Class 4. In the sierra, solar polycarbonate is the slat that earns its place: it lets the sun through while the cover is closed and the water gains 6-7 °C at no running cost, which is exactly the help a mountain pool needs at the start and end of the season. PVC remains the straightforward choice for family use where the aim is to stop evaporation and keep the shell clean.
The slat lasts 10-15 years and is replaced without touching the structure, which, being 316L, goes beyond 15. There are no rails or guides to clean or grease: what you rinse are the slats and their own profiles, the shaft, the supports and the bolts.
The sierra's standard difficulty is not the pool, it is the last thirty metres to it. Plots are built on granite and in steps, and it is common for the pool to sit on a terrace below the house with no vehicle access at all. The shaft of a cover is made to measure in one piece, so the honest answer is to go and look: we measure on site, decide whether the cover goes up assembled or dismantled, and only then give a fitting date.
Old shells need the same care for a different reason. A pool built decades ago for a summer house frequently has walls that are not parallel and an irregular stone coping, so the cover is made to the shell as measured on site and not to the shell on the drawing. On a finished pool the installation is normally one day's work, with no breaking into the shell and using the 230 V supply that is already there.
A great many sierra pools belong to houses that are empty for much of the year, and that is where a cover shows its value most clearly. The problem with an unattended pool is not the water, it is what falls into it: pine needles, leaves, dust and everything an afternoon storm brings down.
Closed, the cover seals the water surface completely for the months you are not there. Nothing gets in, evaporation falls by 70-80 % and the chemistry holds far longer, so reopening the house means opening the cover and checking the water instead of recovering the pool from scratch.
What the cover does not do is operate itself. There is no alarm, no sensors, no notification and no timer or scheduled closing: opening and closing is always a deliberate action by an adult standing beside the pool, with the water in view, holding the key switch while the slats move.
The Sierra de Guadarrama grew as summer country and has settled as residential country. The Catastro count does not say what year each pool dates from, but it does show two things: that the stock is large — 13,651 pools in the fifteen municipalities on this page alone — and that it is still growing, with 634 new ones since 2022. What we see when we go out to measure is that two very different realities live side by side: old concrete shells, built in their day for a summer house, and recent pools belonging to single-family homes on plots. The cover is approached differently in each.
In the old shells, very common in the village centres, what you normally find is concrete without parallel edges and an irregular stone coping. There the cover is made to the shell as measured on site, not as drawn, and the usual answer is a visible shaft resting on the coping or inside a housing. Regular shapes take almost any configuration. The pools going up now — and the stock keeps growing, by 634 since 2022, above all in El Boalo, Guadarrama and Manzanares el Real — are the ones that can still allow for the shaft inside the shell, so the cover sits submerged and nothing shows.
In every case the product is the same. Structure and fittings in AISI 316L stainless steel, with a service life beyond fifteen years, never aluminium. Motorised at 230 V, because there is no manual version, and operated as standard beside the pool with a key switch, hold-to-run: the slats move only while the switch is held and with the pool in view, a safety condition that admits no exception. The slat, PVC or solar polycarbonate, lasts ten to fifteen years and is replaced without touching the structure. All of them are built to NF P90-308, which is French and not European, and which requires them to hold 100 kg as an anti-drowning measure: that does not make the cover trafficable or walkable, and it is worth saying so without hedging. Manufacturing is four to five weeks, the warranty is three years on the whole assembly, and the payback, counting water, energy and chemicals, usually lands between four and seven years.
One caution about the figures, because they deserve to be read properly. They come from the open-air pool count of the Dirección General del Catastro, compared against the 2022 count. It is public data, municipality by municipality, but it should be taken as a floor and not a ceiling: the Catastro is updated through valuation rulings and owners' declarations, so it under-records. It also does not separate the private pool from the communal one, nor from a hotel's or a sports club's, so some of those 13,651 are shells that do not belong to a single family. And it does not go below the municipality: there is no figure by urbanisation or by village centre, so when we give a number we are talking about the whole municipal district, never one neighbourhood.
The old concrete shell in a village centre, measured on site because the drawings no longer match; the recent pool on a single-family plot, where almost any configuration fits; and the pool still under construction, which arrives in time for the pit to be left in the shell before the concrete goes in. The first two are covered with the shaft above the water, on the coping or in a housing; the third can take the submerged shaft.
On top of that there is the sierra's own variable: whether a vehicle can reach the pool. Where it cannot, the cover goes up dismantled and is assembled beside the shell. More than 5,000 covers in over twenty years means few of these situations are new to us, and every cover is cut and assembled to measure in Torrijos.
With an automatic cover closed overnight, the swimming season in the Sierra de Guadarrama runs from May to October. Without one the pool is down to the short summer: the water is slow to warm up and loses that heat as soon as the sun eases off.
The cover does two things at once: it stops evaporation, which is where most of the heat goes, and if you choose solar polycarbonate slats it lets the sun through and warms the water underneath at no running cost. And to hold the same temperature right through the season, a heat pump with a cover in place uses 50-60 % less energy.
Santiago R.
“As my wife rightly says — how lucky we were to find this company. They have done a flawless job because they genuinely know their trade. They know covers, which is what they make and sell, and on top of that they are good people. Thoroughly recommended.”
Google review · translated from SpanishJulia C.
“The cover is made from excellent materials and the finish is flawless. From the very first contact the service was outstanding and highly professional. They delivered everything they promised and the result exceeded my expectations. I would recommend them without hesitation.”
Google review · translated from SpanishTeresa
“From the first phone call with the office through to the fitters on the last day, everything was spot on: professional, punctual and tidy. It is a pleasure to find companies that still work like this.”
Google review · translated from SpanishGiuliana R.
“Excellent pool cover. Everything was good, from the advice to the installation. The cover is very well made, works beautifully and keeps the pool clean and protected. We are delighted with it and would certainly recommend them.”
Google Local Guide · translated from SpanishEva V.
“Thoroughly recommended. We are delighted with the cover they fitted for us. The service has been excellent from the very first moment, advising us at every step of the process.”
Google review · translated from SpanishIn all of them. The municipality pages exist because a few of them concentrate a lot of pools, but we fit just the same in Navacerrada, Bustarviejo, Guadalix de la Sierra, Collado Mediano or Los Molinos. Our factory is in Torrijos, Toledo, and we have a branch in Aravaca, so the whole sierra band falls inside our normal working radius.
From the open-air pool count of the Dirección General del Catastro, compared against the 2022 count. It is the sum of the fifteen sierra municipalities that do not yet have a page of their own, from El Escorial to Bustarviejo. It should be read as a floor: the Catastro under-records, it does not separate private pools from communal ones, and it does not go below the municipal district.
That is where it shows most, because the problem with an unattended pool is not the water, it is what falls into it. With the cover closed the shell is completely sealed for the months you are away: no leaves, no pine needles, evaporation down by 70-80 % and the chemistry holding far longer. When you come back, starting up means opening the cover and checking the water, not beginning from scratch.
Yes, and it is the most common case in the sierra. On an existing pool the normal answer is the visible shaft, resting on its 316L stainless steel legs on the stone coping, or housed in a box. The shell does not have to be broken into or emptied: what is needed is room at one end and an electrical supply nearby. We come and measure before quoting, because on old shells the drawings almost never match the real dimensions.
Four to five weeks of manufacturing, because every cover is made for your shell and nothing is held in stock, plus the installation, which is normally one day. On sloping plots or ones with no vehicle access, fairly common in the sierra, the cover goes up dismantled and is assembled beside the pool — and we establish that when we measure, not on the day. The warranty is three years and covers the whole assembly: structure, motor, slats and installation. Separately from the warranty, the 316L structure goes beyond fifteen years and the slat lasts ten to fifteen.
The sierra accounts for a good share of the single-family housing on plots being designed northwest of Madrid today, and in the municipalities where the pool stock is growing fastest — El Boalo, Guadarrama, Manzanares el Real, Los Molinos — the cover is far better resolved on the drawings than afterwards. We give you in writing the recess to be left and the electrical supply needed so that the shaft can be allowed for inside the shell, we come and measure once it is set out, and we fit with our own crew. We manufacture in Torrijos, with the structure and fittings in 316L stainless steel: one point of contact from the drawings to commissioning.
Tell us the dimensions of the shell, the municipality and how the pool is reached — in the sierra that last part is half the answer. We will come back with a concrete proposal and, if it is needed, come out and measure before quoting. Made in our own factory in Torrijos, fitted by our own crew from the Aravaca branch. Call +34 91 631 59 40. Our Madrid branch is at C. Gobelas 35, 28023 Madrid (Aravaca).
