Custom Pool Safety Covers: Cost and How to Measure

Who needs a custom cover, what it costs, and how to order

A custom pool safety cover is cut to your own pool's outline, and you need one if the pool is anything but a plain rectangle with square corners. Any custom pool cover works the same way: the shape is measured, not chosen off a chart. A rectangle is two numbers, so it can be picked off a size chart. Nothing else can. Gunite and freeform pools have no symmetry to order from, and neither do Grecian ends, Roman ends, true L and lazy L shapes, kidneys, or a step anywhere but the middle of an end wall.

Most land between $1,150 and $3,700 delivered, and the cover ships free. A very large pool in the heaviest fabric goes past that, which is what the estimator above is for. Building one takes 2 to 3 weeks once your measurements are approved. Two routes get there, equally good: measure the pool yourself with the A to B method below, or ship us the cover you already own and let the factory trace it.

Start a custom cover request and the form asks four things: shape, rough size, deck material, and what the cover has to work around. A specialist replies the same business day. To talk it through standing at the pool with a tape in your hand, call (888) 751-8084.

Which pools need a custom cover: L shaped, Grecian, kidney and freeform

Corners are the dividing line. Square corners need only a length and a width, and a cut or radius corner adds one point to point figure. Once a pool carries a genuine curve, no set of numbers on a size chart describes it. The measuring forms treat gunite and freeform pools as a separate process for that reason: with no symmetry to fall back on, the outline gets plotted point by point.

Four things force a custom build.

• The outline. Kidney, lagoon, true L, lazy L, Grecian, Roman end, or any gunite pool shot freehand.
• The steps. A step centered on an end wall is the only shape stock panels are cut for. A corner step, side step, wraparound, tanning ledge or swim out puts the cutout where no panel has one.
• Permanent things the fabric must reach around or climb over. Raised walls and bond beams, a spa, an open spillway, a waterfall, boulders, dive stands, slide legs, fixed ladders, grab rails, fill spouts, planters.
• A cover that was there before. Anchors already in your deck mean the new one has to land on them.

Rule the cheap answer out first. We carry 13 rectangular sizes, 12 x 20 ft up to 25 x 45 ft, at a fraction of anything made to measure. A plain rectangle takes something like the 20 x 40 ft King99 mesh cover, and a rectangle with a step centered on one end takes the Emperor solid with that cutout already sewn. The range sits in safety covers. Measure the water at its longest and widest first: a panel is cut to roughly the pool plus 2 ft.

What a custom cover costs, and what moves the figure

Most custom covers land between $1,150 and $3,700, delivered. The low end is a small rectangle in the entry mesh. Past about 2,000 sq ft of cover the heaviest fabrics climb above the top of that range, and two of the four are not produced at all, which is why the estimator gives you a figure per fabric rather than one number.

• Area. Everything on the cover scales with the hole in the ground.
• Fabric tier. Four of them, below, and entry mesh to commercial mesh is the largest single lever.
• Shape. A rectangle is built on a 5 x 5 ft anchor grid. Kidneys, L shapes and anything freeform take a tighter 3 x 3 ft grid: more straps, more springs, more holes in your deck for the same area. Covers over 2,000 sq ft use 3 x 3 too.
• A raised spa. Add roughly $700, often more. A spa is a second perimeter with its own height.

Solid covers come with a drain panel sewn in or a submersible pump instead, and you pick. On the mesh lines, the shade figure decides how much algae you open to in spring.

Two ways to order, and how long each takes

Both routes end with the same cover. They differ in who measures.

Measure the pool. You get an illustrated measuring guide, plot the pool with the A to B method, and send the figures back. A person reads the form by hand and checks that the plot closes before any fabric is cut. That review is what approval means, and the 2 to 3 week build clock starts there, not when you hit send. If something does not add up, you get a call first.

Send the old cover in as the pattern. Ask for a cover box. It arrives with a prepaid return label, you fold the old cover into it and ship it back, and the factory traces what you own instead of working from numbers. Built this way a cover is often finished about 2 weeks after the factory has the old one. You measure nothing, and the anchor positions come free, because the pattern knows where every strap lands.

The pattern route is better for almost every replacement. Measuring is the only option on a new pool, or where the old cover is gone. Tell us which route fits your pool and a specialist will say which they would use.

The A to B method, and why every point needs two measurements

Here is the part nobody explains properly. One distance from one stake locates nothing: a point 22 ft from a stake sits anywhere on a 22 ft circle. Measure it from a second stake and you get a second circle, and two circles cross in one usable place. That crossing is the point, fixed. Repeat it forty or eighty times around the water and you have drawn your pool at full size. That is all triangulation is, and why the form has two columns.

1. Set the two stakes. Chalk a point A and a point B on the deck. Facing the water, A goes on your left and B on your right. Backwards, and the plot comes out mirrored.
2. Space them correctly. A to B should run roughly two thirds of the pool's length, so a 30 ft pool wants a line around 20 ft. Measure it, write it down, and draw the line on your sketch. The factory cannot rebuild the plot without it.
3. Keep the pool in front of the line. Neither the A-B line nor an extension of it either way may cross the water. The pool sits wholly on one side. Forms disagree on how far back that puts the stakes, one asking 3 ft from the edge and another 4 ft, so work to the constraint rather than a number: far enough that the line clears the pool.
4. Chalk and number the perimeter. Mark points clockwise all the way round, about every 3 ft, numbering as you go. The form has room for 80. Tighten to 1 ft intervals or less wherever the shape turns hard, and make every step corner its own numbered point.
5. Start in the right place. Point 1 goes on the wall directly opposite the middle of the A-B line.
6. Mark the inside edge. Chalk marks belong on the inside edge at the water, not out on the coping. Overlap is added at the factory.
7. Walk the circuit twice. Hook a 100 ft tape at stake A, read point 1, then point 2, then all the way round, writing each figure into the A column. Move the tape to B and repeat into the B column. Feet and inches throughout.
8. Take 3 or 4 diagonals at random. Measure between numbered points on opposite sides. These are the check figures: they are how the factory proves the plot closes before anything is cut.

Measure obstructions last, after the perimeter is numbered.

What the form asks for beyond the outline

The outline is half the form. The rest is everything permanent near the water, each pinned down by its own A and B pair.

Coping first. What it is made of, how wide it is, and whether it is abrasive. Rough cut stone chews through a cover that rubs on it, and the answer changes what is sewn to the underside.

Then the rest. Grab rails and handrails, with how far back they sit or how far they reach over the water. Ladders, plus the cups if a cutout is needed. Slide legs and dive stands. Rocks, several points each along the left, the front and the right. Fill spouts with dimensions and height. Planters. A spa needs points all round it, its height, whether its wall finishes flush with the coping and whether it spills over, plus a point at each corner of an open spillway. A raised wall is measured at its start, along its run and at its end, with its height. Waterfalls and rock formations get points at roughly 1 ft intervals. Deck levels need each height and the angle the deck runs away from the wall.

Three distances appear on these forms and they are easy to confuse. They do different jobs.

Flag any run of deck narrower than 4 ft from the water, because anchoring gets difficult there: Latham asks for a minimum of 3 ft of deck, on the arithmetic that the cover lands 12 to 18 in onto it and the springs and straps reach another 18 in past that. And send labelled photographs of anything complicated.

Replacing a cover when the anchors are already in the deck

This is the case most replacement buyers are in, and it needs saying clearly: you have to measure the pool twice. One complete set of A to B measurements plots the pool perimeter. A second plots every anchor already sunk in your concrete. Both are needed, because the new cover has to be the right shape and land its straps on holes drilled years ago.

The A-B line moves for the second set. Where anchors are the target it sits outside the anchor line rather than close to the water, roughly 3 ft beyond the outermost anchors, so every anchor is in front of it exactly as the pool was. Every other rule is the same, diagonals included.

It is a long afternoon, and precisely the work the pattern route deletes: ship the cover you have and the anchor spacing is already sewn into it. What a pattern cannot rescue is a bungee style cover, which carries no strap layout to match against anchors, so that pool gets measured. Send us your pool details and we will pick the route or call (888) 751-8084 and read your numbers down the phone.

What arrives with the cover

A custom cover ships as a complete installation, not just fabric.

• Stainless steel springs and D rings, one set per strap.
• Brass deck anchors that screw down flush for the swim season, so nothing catches a bare foot in July.
• The installation tool, the lever that stretches each spring onto its anchor and off again in spring.
• Anti-rub strips for the coping, where fabric would wear against stone.
• The prepaid label for shipping your old cover back, on a replacement cut from a pattern.

Anchor type is specified on the order, and the deck decides it: concrete, wood, or lawn. Our guide to safety cover anchors covers the drilling, and how to close an inground pool puts the cover in the order of the shutdown.

A cover cut to your pool cannot come back

Our policy, plainly: a custom safety cover is not returnable. It is cut from your pool's outline, sewn with your cutouts and strap positions, and fits exactly one pool in the world. There is no shelf to put it back on and no second buyer for it, which is true of anything made to measure.

We would rather say that up front than bury it. It is also why a person reads your form by hand first, and why the form wants 3 or 4 check diagonals, labelled photographs and a sketch with the A-B line on it. All of that exists to catch an error while it is still free to fix. If your figures do not close, we call you. Unsure of a measurement? Flag it instead of guessing. Approval is a conversation, not a rubber stamp.