Every pool is a different shape. So is every cover.

Most fall between $1,150 and $3,700, delivered, with free shipping. The low end is a small rectangle in the 4.5 oz entry mesh. The high end is a large pool in 7.9 oz commercial mesh. Four things move you along that range: the area of the pool, which fabric tier you pick, the shape, and whether there is a raised spa, which adds roughly $700 and often more. Shape matters more than people expect. A rectangle is built on a 5 x 5 ft anchor grid, while kidneys, L shapes and freeform pools take a 3 x 3 ft grid, so they carry more straps, more springs and more holes for the same area.

Because one locates nothing. If a point on your coping is 22 ft from a stake, it could sit anywhere on a 22 ft circle drawn around that stake. Measure the same point from a second stake and you get a second circle, and two circles cross in one place. That crossing is the point, fixed exactly. Repeat it around the whole pool at roughly 3 ft intervals and the factory can redraw your pool at full size from the numbers alone. It is why the measuring form has an A column and a B column rather than one list of distances.

Chalk them on the deck with A on your left and B on your right as you face the water, spaced roughly two thirds of the pool length apart: about 20 ft on a 30 ft pool. The critical rule is that the line between them, and the imaginary extension of that line both ways, must never cross the water. The pool sits entirely in front of the line. Measuring forms disagree on the exact setback, asking 3 ft or 4 ft from the edge, so work to the constraint rather than a number. Write the A to B distance down and draw the line on your sketch.

Yes, and for a replacement it is usually the better route. Ask for a cover box. It arrives with a prepaid return label, you pack the old cover and ship it back, and the factory traces it as an exact pattern. The new cover is often finished about 2 weeks after the factory receives the old one. You measure nothing, and the strap positions travel with the pattern, so the cover lands on the anchors already in your deck. The exception is a bungee style cover, which has no strap layout to match, so that pool has to be measured.

It will, but only if you measure twice. One full set of A to B measurements plots the pool perimeter and a second full set plots every existing anchor, and the factory needs both. For the anchor set the A-B line moves outward, roughly 3 ft beyond the outermost anchors, so that every anchor sits in front of it. Same rules otherwise: A on the left, number clockwise, measure from both stakes, take your check diagonals. Sending the old cover in as a pattern skips all of it, which is why that route exists.

Coping type, coping width and whether it is abrasive. Then every permanent object near the water, each located by its own A and B pair: rails, ladders, slide legs, dive stands, rocks, fill spouts, planters, spas with their height and whether the wall finishes flush with the coping, raised walls measured along their run, waterfalls plotted at about 1 ft intervals, and deck levels with their angle. Three distances matter and differ: inside 3 ft it goes on the sketch, inside 18 in a cutout may be needed, inside 2 ft slide legs and fixed ladders become cutouts.

No. A cover cut from your pool outline, with your cutouts and your strap positions, fits one pool in the world, so there is nothing to restock and nobody to resell it to. That is our policy on any made to measure product, and we would rather state it than bury it. It is also why a person reads your measuring form by hand before anything is cut, and why the form asks for 3 or 4 random check diagonals, labelled photographs and a sketch showing the A-B line. Those exist to catch an error while fixing it is still free. Unsure of a figure? Flag it.