Emergency Freeze Protection For Pools
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In recent years there have been multiple occasions where sustained freezing temperatures happen in areas where it rarely, if ever, gets this cold. When this happens it can cause severe problems for swimming pools and swimming pool equipment. In cold climate areas swimming pools get closed and winterized in the fall season. In warmer geographic areas pools are never closed. In the middle are many places where it might be too cold for most people to want to swim, but not cold enough as to require closing and winterizing the pool. These pools that operate year round in cooler climates risk experiencing freeze related damage should the weather turn cold, especially for extended periods of time. So what, if anything, can you do to prevent damage to the pool? The answer to this almost certainly should be to contact a local swimming pool professional who is familiar with your local climate. This article is intended to help pool owners who want to understand the concerns for freeze damage to their pool more, or those without access to local pool industry professionals.
In summary, you have two ways to protect your pool from freeze damage during cold weather. You can either run the pump on high speed continuously for the duration of the cold weather in hopes that the moving water is enough to prevent any of your plumbing from freezing solid. Your other option would be to winterize the pool. If you do not normally winterize your swimming pool it will of course seem that the freezing weather will damage the pool, but those of us who live in freezing climates in the winter know that when you winterize a pool and the pool equipment it is able to sustain months of deep-freezes and even freeze and thaw conditions which are arguably more damaging than the deep freeze itself.
Freeze protection for swimming pool pumps - Most pool owners today have variable speed pool pumps and almost all of these will have a freeze protection mode. If you do not have this, do not worry, simply run your pump on full speed and do not turn it off. Freeze protection mode on newer variable speed pumps simply detects freezing temperatures and overrides existing schedules to run at high speed. You do not even technically need this. You can just go ahead and create a 24 hour schedule at maximum RPM and leave the pump running in advance of the cold weather actually arriving. The auto-detect feature is more useful against getting surprised with freezing temperatures. If you know it is coming then you can simply program your pump to run non-stop. It is very important to understand that this is not a silver bullet to freeze damage. This is more like minimizing your potential for damage. When the temperatures drop well into freezing for extended periods of time it will not be enough to run the pump. You likely will still experience freezing damage, and worst of all you may no longer have the option to drain and winterize the rest of the pool if the equipment and pipes are starting to ice up.
Wrapping pipes and attempting to insulate pipes above ground might buy you some time depending on how well you are able to accomplish this. For most pools unless you can trap the heat being generated by the pool pump somehow, or contain heat from an external heat source, wrapping pool equipment and pipes to protect from freezing will be minimally effective. That time might be better spent to simply winterize the pool which is the only sure way to prevent damage from freezing.
Pools are unique. They are built differently in different geographic areas, and further to this each of the different types of pools are generally built differently. Plus each contractor builds to their own standards. So something like the depth of the pool plumbing is something that can vary from pool to pool. There is no standard depth for pool plumbing. This is important as this be a major determining factor with how likely your pool is to freeze up or experience freeze damage to the buried plumbing system. The deeper the pipes are the less likely to freeze they are. Shallow pipes freeze faster and are more likely to freeze solid, even if you have your pump running. This is just one example of how it is difficult to know how much cold weather your pool can withstand without damage. Every pool is different.
Emergency winterizing for swimming pools - To close and winterize your average swimming pool, it takes a professional crew between 30 minutes to one hour. That's it. Yes, this does describe a very streamlined process but if you are dealing with the potential for tens of thousands of dollars of broken swimming pool equipment due to freezing weather then yes, definitely, winterizing the pool equipment is something you can and should do. Drain the pool about 3" to drop the water level below the mouth of the skimmer. Draining any pool is a risk but 3" is pretty reasonable for most pools to be able to handle without having a problem. Returns can be exposed on some pools by draining more, but this is riskier if you do not know anything about your pool type or ground water tables. You can use "duck plugs" which are one way plugs to winterize your returns while still underwater. You will get wet, but this allows you to winterize the skimmer and the returns while only draining 3" of water from the pool.
1) Remove drain plugs from pump, filter and heater.
2) Blow through pump through the skimmer line until the skimmer is dry.
3) Blow through main drain line until main drain bubbles, at which time you isolate with the valve to air lock the main drain.
4) Blow through each return line and duck plug until the water has been expelled.
5) Put 12" of foam backer rod into the skimmer suction line port.
6) Add 2L of pool antifreeze and install a "gizzmo" into the open threaded port.
7) Add 2L of pool antifreeze to skimmer body and stuff empty gallon bottle into the skimmer body also (lid on).
8) Blow through heater until no water comes out any ports. Open pressure switch on some models.
9) Drain filter and remove pressure gauge.
10) Leave all valves in the open position except the main drain line valve which is air locking the main drain.
These ten simple steps can be completed in under an hour easily if you have the right tools and equipment. If you want to look at each of these steps in more detail I have a detailed pool winterizing discussion which you can view here: How to winterize a pool - and in this I discuss the various different configurations for plumbing and winterizing pool equipment. A closing and winterizing service from a local pool company would certainly be worth the money but in the event of a sudden freeze the local companies simply will not be able to get to every pool. It takes closing crews weeks of 12-16 hour days to close all the pools in their service area. If there is a flash freeze coming, like this weekend, then you might just find yourself on your own to try to protect your pool from damage. Here are some further resources that will help you with this:
The 1 hour pool closing
Tools that help with winterizing pools
How to winterize a pool skimmer
How to winterize a pool heater
How to winterize a pool sand filter
How and where pools break from freeze damage
How to protect your pool from freeze damage
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Swimming Pool Steve is an award winning, second generation swimming pool and spa specialist from Ontario Canada. With over 10,000,000 views on the Swimming Pool Steve YouTube Channel, winner of the 2018 Pool & Spa Industry Leadership award and author of hundreds of pool and spa articles both online and in print Steve is committed to helping pool and spa owners as well as pool and spa industry workers learn more about the technical side of building, renovating, repairing and maintaining all types of swimming pools and spas. Follow Swimming Pool Steve on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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