Where can I buy giant sheets of industrial bubble wrap?

August 12, 2012 9:57 AM

Where can I buy industrial bubble wrap? Must be min 25’ on one side, opaque to UV, and as light and strong as possible.

I need long sheets of bubble wrap to use as a floating pool cover. It comes in a lot of different variations - we need the kind that's designed to not pass UV for algae control.

We have bought this in the past, but sources have dried up and we need to locate more. There's a picture here: http://twitter.com/fields/status/234690840302346240/photo/1

Anyone know where I can buy this, preferably in the US?

If you have alternate suggestions for what material to use for this, that'd also be great. It must float, not pass UV, and be able to be cut into pieces so it can be put on or removed a piece at a time (by someone who isn't strong enough to lift the entire cover).

posted by Caviar to home & garden (9 answers total)

The phrase you want to search for is "solar pool cover"—for some reason, that's what people are calling this material used this way.
posted by limeonaire at 10:09 AM on August 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dozens of pool supply companies sell this stuff online. We got ours from solarcovers.com but there really isn't much difference between the companies, shop around a bit.
posted by ook at 10:10 AM on August 12, 2012

I purchase such stuff at a pool supply store. Look for "Solar Pool Covers." They have it in varying widths. A tip: it's less expensive in narrower widths. You can cover the same area in two pieces and save some money.
posted by blob at 10:11 AM on August 12, 2012

Unless there's some opaque variety that I haven't been able to find, solar covers are _not_ what we need. They're designed for retaining heat, and they let light through.
posted by Caviar at 11:39 AM on August 12, 2012

The pools are minimally chlorinated, and the opaque cover (we have now, but which needs to be replaced) prevents algae growth.
posted by Caviar at 11:41 AM on August 12, 2012

These guys seem to stock black-backed bubble wrap, but they're in Australia. Maybe they can point you to a US supplier?

My other tack would be to contact industrial supply places like Uline, McMaster-Carr, or Grainger and see if they have something. Actually, poking around, I found this silver-backed insulating bubble wrap at McMastar-Carr.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 12:10 PM on August 12, 2012

This and this solar cover are both opaque. (The first one looks like it may be the same stuff you're already using.)
posted by ook at 1:01 PM on August 12, 2012

Sun Blok Covers.
posted by barnone at 1:55 PM on August 12, 2012

Thanks - I think the Sun Blok looks like the right thing.
posted by Caviar at 2:17 PM on August 14, 2012