Pool capstone

Most auto cover rails attach at the coping. It might be hard to remove the coping without damaging the cover rails. The best practice would be to have the cover all the way rolled up as to not allow damage to the cover when they are replacing the coping. A good crew should be able to replace the coping with minimal debris in the pool anyway. A good bit of the time you may also want to look into replacing the tile as well. They should be able to do this without draining the pool completely as well.

Using your $10,000 auto cover as a protective tarp is not a good idea. Better find another solution for that. Also, the cover rails are attached to the coping most likely and will need to be removed and re-installed which essentially is a full auto-cover installation at that point. Be sure to budget time and money for this. Unless you have a unique coping forming system for concrete, or some very careful and diligent masons setting your coping stone, this will result in damage to the tile band. If you are pouring a new deck and coping at this stage then you are assuming risk for this - there are no two ways to say it. Good luck - hopefully you can get your project completed without any issues.