When Shawn Unger faced his most challenging installation, he discovered his competitive advantage: his father-in-law.
Unger is the vice president of Pool Cover Pros in Chebanse, Ill. His wife, Nora, is the president. And her father, Carl Brazelton, is the firm’s secret weapon.
Brazelton is a machinist, a skill that’s come in handy as Pool Cover Pros established itself as the go-to company for tricky pool cover configurations.
Pool Cover ProsUnger credits one project in particular that really put the firm’s skills to the test. It was an inground spa with walls that formed a 90-degree angle at one end and a sweeping 12-foot arch at the other. This pie-shaped spa presented a real problem: Unger foresaw that the fabric would not roll evenly over the cover drum as the leading edge swept from one side of the spa to the other, like a window wiper. When rolled, the fabric would be too bulky at one end. Unger admits to being stumped. That’s when he recruited his father-in-law.
Brazelton devised a smart solution: To accommodate the fan-shaped material, he made a cover drum out of hand-rolled aluminum that tapered from 8 inches on one end to 2½ inches on the other, like an oversized baseball bat. This distributed the fabric evenly across the drum.
“Figuring that part out was all my father-in-law,” Unger says. “I will give him full credit for that.”
Brazelton’s knack for fabrication has also been used in other ways. “I’ve had him make parts that are obsolete now,” Unger adds.
Pool Cover Pros’ outside-the-box approach has saved several ill-advised installations attempted by others. Unger and company recently came to the rescue when a builder botched a job that included a diving rock. It stuck out about a foot from the coping, preventing the cover from closing completely. The builder feared that the only solution was to tear out a chunk of the pool and deck. But such drastic measures weren’t required. Unger created a custom leading edge with a low profile that slid under the decorative stone.
Says Unger: “This builder just committed himself to buying all of his covers from us and having us install them, mainly because of that job.”
