Our twins are now almost 17 months old and they LOVE water! Bath time, kiddie pool time, or just water playtime. They both LOVE all things water. With the temperature rising into the 90’s, we have been having pool time in the afternoon’s after lunch quite often.
The only problem with our pool time is the water cools down super fast and after about 10 minutes in the pool, both kiddos were shivering and ready to get out. I was at my other twin-mom friend’s house and she showed me how her husband had made an awesome solar cover for her twin’s kiddie pool. He used a low-cost roll of bubble wrap that he got at Home Depot. What a brilliant idea! She even had a bit of the roll left and gave it to me to take home to make our own solar kiddie pool cover. I loved this hack so much, that I couldn’t wait to get home and create one of our own.
What we used to make the bubble wrap solar kiddie pool cover
In this post, I’m going to show you how my husband and I were inspired by our friend’s ingenuity and made our own solar bubble wrap kiddie pool cover. It works so well! The water is so warm it almost feels like bathwater.
This project is super easy and you only need a few things to make a perfect fitting kiddie pool cover:
- Bubble wrap
- Scissors
- Tape Measure
- Duck Tape or Electrician’s tape, whatever you have at home will most likely work great
How we made it – super easy directions anyone can do
We started by measuring across the lowest wrung on the pool. We only fill our pool up to the first wrung since our twins are still so little and they don’t know how to swim yet. We also NEVER leave them unattended in or around the kiddie pool or any amount of water during playtime and bath times. Babies can drown in less than 1 inch of water so this is so so so important!
Once you have the measurement across your pool, you can measure how much bubble wrap you will need. Most bubble wrap comes with a perforation so it’s easy to tear from the roll. We used four of the pre-perforated sections and then put duck tape in the middle of the four sections on both sides. The duck tape keeps the cover from blowing away in the wind and gives it some weight but still allows the cover to float on top of the water. When we had the duck tape on both sides, we laid the cover down on top of the water and then we trimmed around the edges so that it fits inside of our pool perfectly. We took it from a rectangular shape that was a bit too large to cover the pool properly, to a perfect circular fit for our little blue kiddie pool.
The kiddie pool was a gift from another good friend of ours when she moved. We have gotten great use out of it and I think she will be proud to see how we have improved it by making this awesome cover.
Water Conservation is important to us
The other reason we decided to make this awesome bubble wrap solar cover is so that we don’t have to pour the water out each time we use the pool. We were pouring the water out so that the pool would stay somewhat clean in between uses. Now with our great cover, we can leave the water in there for a few days and when the sun comes out it heats it back up for us pretty quickly. We do our part to conserve water inside, so we should do that outside too.
I have another hack to ensure we have warm water to use for the kiddie pool that I have to share with you. After I’m done watering my flowers and garden in the morning, I fill two watering cans with water from the hose. I leave those watering cans out on the table and the natural warmth from the sunshine heats them up perfectly. When we are ready to use the pool, if it feels a little cool, I just pour a bit of the water from the watering cans into the pool and it’s a perfect temperature for the twins to splash and play in.
Closing photos and thoughts
I want to leave you with a couple of photos of the twins playing in their pool. They really love this activity. We’ve also tried playing on the grass and running through the sprinkler with them. They don’t love those summertime activities as much as they love their pool. They splash, fill up the cup and bowl with water, hit the water as we are pouring it out in front of them, and even try to blow bubbles in the water. They love being wet and so far this is their favorite outdoor activity on a hot day!
I hope you are having a fun summer so far. I know it’s just the start and this summer is most likely going to be much different than most with many people choosing to stay close to home over the summer due to the Coronavirus. We are trying to figure out what we are going to do for our vacation this year and it’s most likely going to be a trip here in Colorado. I’m thinking a short road trip where we can camp or rent a cabin in the woods for a few days to get out of the city and out of the heat for a bit. There is still parts of Colorado that we haven’t traveled to yet. We have lived for more than twenty years, but most summers we travel to other places. We are excited to explore a bit closer to home for once.
What are your plans for the summer? What outdoor activities are you doing with your kids in your backyard this summer? Please comment below. I love to hear from my readers and I do respond to all legitimate comments.