Hydrocarbon Harvest

Sheets of the precious hydrocarbon harvest.

It's monsoon season, the Sonoran Desert's version of the Wet, and many people do not realize that in addition to all the fauna and flora that actively thrive and bloom this exciting time of year, it can also be time to harvest hydrocarbon from our swimming pools.

Cut and formed, ready for shipment.

The blue blooms burst out, blushing from the sunshine absorbed during the spring and summer weeks. The azure film covers the pool surface, ready to be pulled out, cut to size, processed, and converted into the myriad uses that we have all come to take for granted. But it all begins here.

Close up shows the fine cellular construction of
this versatile native material

Known under the trade name "solar blanket", the hydrocarbon sheets can be used to cover and insulate swimming pools where the sunshine is not as plentiful as blessed Baja Arizona. The versatile harvest can also be used for packaging, whether in sheets or separated into popcorn sized pieces, used in residential insulation applications, serve as pet-bed liners, and even exported to China where they grind up the prized sheets into a fine powder used to color Blue Hawaii mixes.

If left too long in their Sonoran solar habitat, the hydrocarbon sheets become over-ripe, pieces detaching and freely floating through pumps and filters where they gum up the works, so it's good to harvest them when ripe.