Beating the Backyard Sun: How Your Local Pool and Shade Experts Keep Main Line Families Cool and Safe All Summer :

A practical companion guide from Great Valley Pool and Seasonal Outdoor on Lancaster Avenue in Frazer. 

By August, Main Line backyards are running at full capacity. Kids are in the water from morning until dinner. Parents are camped out on the deck with a cold drink or a paperback book. The pool that got cleaned and balanced back in May is finally earning its keep. It's also the stretch of summer when sun exposure adds up fastest — and, according to the team at Great Valley Pool Service, the point in the season when most families underestimate exactly what they're dealing with. 

"People think about sun exposure at the pool the same way they think about it anywhere else — put on sunscreen, reapply, keep an eye on the clock," is the standard advice Great Valley's staff hear repeated back to them at the water testing counter. The trouble is that a pool deck doesn't behave like the rest of the yard. 

Why a Pool Deck Is a Different Kind of Sun Exposure 

Water reflects ultraviolet radiation back upward, rather than simply absorbing it. A pool surface in direct August sunlight creates real additional UV exposure for anyone sitting on the deck nearby — arriving not just from overhead, but bouncing back off the water in front of them. Light-colored concrete decking compounds the effect further, reflecting both light and heat from below. For a child sitting at the pool's edge on a Chester County afternoon, UV is effectively arriving from three directions at once: the sky, the water, and the deck itself. 

A standard market umbrella addresses the overhead component and stops there. It does nothing about the reflected exposure coming up off the water or the radiant heat rising from the deck surface beneath it. Heat builds the same way UV does — dark composite or stone decking can get uncomfortable to stand on by early afternoon, which tends to send kids back into the water to cool off rather than taking an actual shade break. 

Children carry the greatest long-term risk from cumulative sun exposure, in part because the effects aren't visible in real time. A child who spends several summers of afternoons in unrestricted direct sun on an unshaded pool deck is accumulating exposure that registers later — often much later. Anyone spending extended time poolside, not just swimming, is in the same boat: time at a poolside table, watching younger kids from a deck chair, all of it counts toward the day's total. 

Sunscreen still matters, and none of this is an argument against it. But poolside application runs into predictable problems — kids resist stopping mid-swim to reapply, common coverage gaps like the tops of feet and the backs of necks get missed, and water and sweat degrade protection faster than most people expect. The practical fix isn't replacing sunscreen. It's pairing it with shade, so the total UV load coming at a family in the first place is lower before sunscreen even enters the picture. 

Where the Awning Comes In 

That's the gap Great Valley Pool and Seasonal Outdoor helps their customers solve. A retractable awning positioned over the patio or deck area adjacent to the pool gives a family shade on demand, extending when the afternoon sun is at its most intense and retracting on overcast days or cool evenings when the space can be enjoyed fully open. Great Valley Awning, an authorized Sunesta dealer since 1998, with installation experience across Main Line communities including Malvern, Paoli, Wayne, Villanova, Bryn Mawr, and Ardmore, designs retractable awnings to the exact measurements of a given outdoor area. Retractable awnings are available with motorized or manual operation, and in a wide range of fabric options. For larger pool decks or spots where a wall-mounted awning isn't practical, free-standing retractable shade structures, stationary awnings, Funbrellas and horizontal shades offer a variety of sun exposure control options. 

The practical logic is that shade able to deploy and retract as conditions change gets used far more consistently than a fixed umbrella that has to be dragged, tilted, or given up on entirely once the sun moves. A motorized awning with a remote means adding coverage the moment the afternoon sun moves overhead, creating a cooler, more comfortable outdoor living space exactly when you need it most. 

Maintaining Your Pool’s Chemistry 

Sun protection at the pool isn't only about skin. It also changes what's happening in the water itself. Free chlorine — the chemical actually doing the sanitizing — breaks down under UV exposure, and on a sunny day in Pennsylvania, that breakdown can be significant. Combined with heavier swimmer traffic, the draw on a pool's chlorine level can leave water under-sanitized faster than a homeowner testing only once a week might expect. 

Cyanuric acid, sometimes called CYA or pool stabilizer, is the piece of the chemistry puzzle that protects chlorine from burning off in direct sun. Getting the level right is a balancing act: too low, and chlorine disappears quickly; too high, and its sanitizing power drops. It's one of the more nuanced adjustments in summer pool chemistry, and one of the reasons a basic test strip at home often doesn't tell the whole story of what a pool needs. Heat compounds all of it — warmer water encourages algae growth and speeds up the chemical reactions that consume sanitizer, so a pool that needed light attention in June can need considerably more in August. 

Great Valley Pool and Seasonal Outdoor, which has been testing water and servicing pools throughout Chester County and the Main Line since 1991, treats mid-summer as the point in the

season when accurate, complete water testing matters most — not just a pH strip, but a full read on chlorine, alkalinity, cyanuric acid, and the rest of the panel. 

Optimize Your Outdoor Living 

The advice for a Main Line backyard comes down to a short list. Position shade — whether a retractable awning or another shade structure — over the section of deck where the family spends the most time out of the water, typically the west or southwest-facing side that takes the worst of the afternoon sun. Give kids a shaded place to sit between swims, since a shaded table nearby means more real breaks from direct exposure rather than a retreat straight back into the pool to cool off. And get water tested regularly through the hottest stretch of summer — heat, UV, and swimmer load all stress a pool's chemistry at the same time, and a quick test catches problems before they turn into a cloudy pool or an algae bloom. 

Great Valley Pool and Seasonal Outdoor is located at 446 Lancaster Avenue in Frazer, PA, 19355. Free walk-in water testing is available in the store, and the awning team is available to talk through shade options for a specific pool deck or patio. Visit the store to take advantage of weekly sales and special offers.  

Where the 

Great Valley Pool Service & Great Valley Awning | 446 Lancaster Avenue, Frazer, PA 19355 | Pool Service: (610) 889-0711 | Awning: (610) 889-3104 | greatvalleypool.com | greatvalleyawning.com | Serving Chester County, Delaware County, New Castle County and surrounding areas.