A typical way to secure an above ground winter cover to your pool is with a cable and a winch. You’ve cleaned the pool and optimized the water, maybe you bought a new cover, and the finishing touch is to secure that cover down for the winter weather to come. It is very typical to have it in your head that you really need to crank down on the cable because you want it to stay on through the cold winds, the ice, the snow, and the rain.

Right off the bat this practice tends to work well. Fall turns to winter and maybe there’s freezing temperatures and ice accumulates, or several snowstorms have happened and now there is a considerable amount of snow on top of the cover. You continuously do your best to keep the pool clear which is all well and good, but the added weight of snow and ice, when combined with the tension on the cable, tends to “bite” the pool over time. What is meant by this is the cable cuts into the side of the pool wall, potentially leaving a mark and/or weakening the structure by continuously pulling in and down. This is not a good thing for the pool overall. Unless you plan on making frequent adjustments, an alternative way of securing your pool is cover clips.

It is in fact true that using these clips can help to hold more weight during snowstorms or extreme winter periods. They’ll allow you to wait a couple of storms and not necessarily have to be completely attentive during every weather event. Another thing to consider is if you are unable to get outside during a large series of snow storms and the tension becomes too great, these clips will completely pop off while a cable and winch, if fairly overloaded, could in fact, drag the entire pool down.

Cover clips secure the pool cover firmly to the pool’s top rail and are designed to fit most pools. They are designed to last several off-seasons sometimes even longer. Cover clips are usually a solid color such as blue or black which makes them easier to see especially when there is snow and ice involved. They’re UV-resistant and hold up during exposure to cold temperatures all of the way down to -50 degrees.

Cover clips also can help battle wrinkles and folds that trap water and debris then freeze and possibly cause damage to the cover itself. If the above ground pool has a deck adjacent to it or even partially or fully wrapped around it, then it may be really hard to get a cable around the deck side. Cover clips can help in this situation where you would secure one side of the cable further down toward the base while using clips along the top rails.

To determine the number of pool clips needed, take the number of uprights that your pool has and multiply by two. We even suggest to possibly multiply by 3 and use 3 per section instead of the suggested 2. This holds even more true in areas with high winds or regions where the winter weather can be exceptionally brutal. Another thing to consider is that by using more cover clips, you can secure more of the material to cut down on rips and tears as well as the noise created by the cover material moving in the wind.

We sell JED brand Cover Clips which are wider than most, made from high performance plastic, and work very well when it comes to holding the additional weight of ice and snow. They also work with smaller overlap covers.