Mesh vs Solid Pool Cover: Which to Buy

Buy mesh, unless one of three things is true

Mesh is the right safety cover for most pools. Rain and snowmelt pass through it, so nothing collects on top, nothing is pumped off, and no motor can fail in February. It handles far more easily: GLI and Loop-Loc both put their mesh at about half the weight of solid, Merlin at roughly 40 percent lighter. And at brands publishing terms for both, mesh is warranted as long as solid or longer, never shorter.

Solid earns its place in three situations, specific enough to check against your yard:

• Heavy organic debris overhead. Leaves pile on a mesh cover, rain falls on the pile, and what drains into the pool is the tea that pile made. Solid is a full barrier: the leaves stay on top and you sweep them off.
• Dusty or sandy air. Mesh filters to about 40 microns and no finer. Everything smaller arrives in the water.
• You want to swim the week you uncover. Under solid, the water you closed with is roughly the water you open with.

If none of the three describes your pool, buy mesh, and spend the difference on shade rating rather than material. Our covers are on the safety covers page, where mesh outnumbers solid roughly four to one.

The two materials, by published numbers

Ranges hide their owners, so: mesh weights run from Meyco at 4.4 oz and Loop-Loc at 4.7 oz up to Latham's max shade at 7.9 oz. Solid runs from Latham's current vinyl at 12 oz to Merlin's supported PVC at 15 oz, or 18 oz on the heavier version.

The shade ladder, and a manufacturer arguing against its own cover

Shade rating predicts what your water looks like in April, and the spread inside mesh is wider than the gap between mesh and solid.

• Standard mesh: Latham publishes 91 percent, Merlin 95 percent, Loop-Loc about 97 percent.
• High shade mesh: GLI publishes 98 percent, Latham 99 on two lines, Loop-Loc 99. Merlin claims 100 percent shade on its premium mesh, which is that manufacturer's own claim and not a figure anyone else matches: no competitor publishes above 99.
• Solid: 100 percent, published by every manufacturer we read.

Work the arithmetic. A standard mesh at 91 percent lets about nine percent of daylight through. A premium mesh at 99 lets one percent through. The step from basic mesh to premium cuts transmitted light by roughly nine tenths; the last step to solid removes a final one percent.

The best evidence for that is not ours. Latham publishes 91 percent on its standard mesh and then, in its own brochure, warns that a cover at that shade level may not do enough to hold back algae at some pools. A manufacturer volunteering the limits of its own entry level product beats any comparison a seller writes. Read the shade percentage before the material.

Forty microns is the number that decides dusty climates

Two manufacturers publish the same filtration floor independently. Latham states it for its high shade fabric and Merlin for its premium mesh: the weave holds debris down to 40 microns. That is the honest description of a mesh cover. A filter, not a barrier.

For scale, a human hair runs 50 to 70 microns across. Wind blown dust, pollen and silt are well under that, so in a dry or windy region a mesh cover passes a season of airborne grit into the water. That is a mechanism, not a manufacturer recommendation: no cover manufacturer publishes advice about desert climates. But the 40 micron number is theirs, and it is why one cover opens cloudy in dusty country and clear elsewhere.

Meyco is blunt about the trade: a tighter weave catches finer particles and drains slower in heavy rain. No mesh does both. Pick the end your weather argues for.

A solid cover is not the low maintenance choice

Most buyers do not know this, and it reverses the intuition that solid is the simpler option. Water is not allowed to accumulate on top of a solid cover. Merlin's installation manual sets that out as a general rule, and where a solid cover has no drain panel it instructs the owner to get a pump going and keep it going at all times, adding that failing to do so voids the cover warranty. Meyco says the same of its solid line, the pump in use at all times as a condition of the cover doing its job. Loop-Loc calls for an automatic pump on the all solid version of its cover.

So the comparison is not cover against cover. It is mesh against solid plus a pump, plus the power it draws, its replacements, and a warranty condition to keep meeting all winter. If you buy solid, buy the pump with it: an automatic cover pump that switches itself on is the version that survives a January when you are away.

It fails both ways. Loop-Loc flags the opposite case, a pump nobody checks running the pool down past the level the cover needs, which voids the warranty just as surely.

Two different products get called hybrid

Keep them apart, because they solve opposite problems.

Solid fabric with a mesh drainage strip

This moves standing water off a solid cover without a pump. Latham publishes the geometry: quarter inch holes at 6 inch intervals down the middle of the cover, over a 12 inch wide mesh filter panel beneath. GLI describes the same arrangement on its custom sizes, with an alternative on stock sizes, a mesh drain running the full length of the center, which buys drainage area at the cost of a wider non solid strip. Merlin fits every solid cover with a fine sand mesh panel.

The catch is maintenance, and Merlin's manual is the only place we found it written down. Flood the cover after installing it and watch the puddles. If they do not clear, loosen the straps toward the drain and tighten those away from it so the cover slopes to the panel. Clean the panel in season and again at opening. A blocked panel is a solid cover with no pump on it.

High shade mesh, sold as virtually solid

This removes the algae penalty of mesh without taking on a pump or the extra weight. Loop-Loc names its 99 percent fabric virtually solid mesh and pairs it with that 80 gallon a minute drainage rate at half the mass of solid. GLI sells 98 percent as solid coverage with nothing added to carry. Latham's two 99 percent fabrics sit here too, as does Merlin's premium mesh behind its 100 percent claim. For a pool under a light or moderate debris load, this is the cover to buy.

Where the manuals disagree: winter water level

Every source gives the same reason for keeping the water up: the body of water is what supports the cover when snow lands on it. They do not give the same number.

• Loop-Loc splits the answer by material. Mesh, 15 to 18 inches down from the top of the pool. Its solid cover, higher, at 12 to 16.
• Merlin publishes a single 18 inches for every cover it sells, ties it directly to the warranty, and asks for a level check every month through the snow season.
• Meyco also says 18 inches, measured to the coping, with no split by material.

We will not pick one. Follow the manual in the box, and treat its number as a floor you must not drop below, not a depth to aim for. Our guide to the winter water level sets out why the published figures conflict.

The one difference nobody disputes is direction. Under mesh the level climbs, because what lands on the cover ends up in the pool. Under solid it only falls, and the pump is what moves it. No source publishes how many inches a mesh covered pool gains, so we will not invent one. Check in midwinter.

Warranty often runs the opposite way from price

Solid costs more to buy than an equivalent mesh cover and carries the shorter warranty at several brands. That is unusual enough to state plainly, and it is a pattern rather than a rule.

Three brands warrant mesh longer than their own solid, two treat them equally, and none of the five goes the other way.

The line we stock most of is the exception. Every solid safety cover we carry is warranted 20 years, which matches the longest mesh tier on our shelves and beats the 15 year mesh tier outright. So the table above is what the manufacturers who publish their terms actually publish, and it is not a law of the category. Read the warranty on the cover in front of you, not on the material. Check how much of any term is full coverage before it goes prorated: a 25 year mesh warranty can be 5 years full and 20 prorated.

Which one to buy

For most pools: mesh, in the highest shade rating you will pay for. A 20 x 40 ft mesh cover fits the most common rectangular pool we cut for.

Go solid if leaves rule your yard, or if you refuse to open a pool that needs work. A solid cover with a center end step cut out is what most pools with steps need, because the fabric has to follow the step rather than the rectangle. Both are 20 x 40 ft, a size with its own page; twelve more sit on the hub.

The closing itself does not change either way, and it is set out in how to close an inground pool. Two things there matter more under mesh: algaecide goes in at a double dose, and closing while the water is warm costs you, because light plus warm water is what algae needs.

What we are not going to tell you

Three things get repeated here that we could not stand behind.

• A price difference. No cover manufacturer publishes list pricing. Market ranges do put solid above an equivalent mesh and add the pump as a recurring cost, but every figure in circulation is a builder or a seller estimating a national average.
• A lifespan in years. The figures going round, which favor mesh, come from a pool builder rather than a cover manufacturer, and no manufacturer publishes a service life. Use the warranty table as the proxy. Two manufacturers note that covers routinely outlive their term.
• That light through mesh fades a vinyl liner. We looked for this specifically and found no cover manufacturer and no liner manufacturer claiming it. The liner manufacturer who publishes on color fading does not attribute it to covers either way. On record is the mechanism and nothing more: a standard mesh passes roughly nine percent of the light, a solid passes none, and one manufacturer says blocking all of it reduces UV damage to the pool. That is not the same as saying your liner will fade.