Now that the fall season is here, which will end in a flash, it’s time to bring out the winter woollies and start preparing your home for the chilly nights. It’s time to keep a check on the leaky pipes, window coverings, heating systems, insulated pipes, and other important things.
While these things are always on the priority list when winterizing homes, one thing that is often left out is making your pool ready for the winters. After all, winters not only call for closing windows and ducts, but it also about keeping the splash memories protected for the next year.
Why Your Pool Need Special Care In Winters?
If you live in the area with mild winters, you might not consider the need to winterize your home, but if you live in a location where season change means deep cold, frost, and snow, preparing your swimming pool from chilling ravages becomes an essential thing.
Further, in winters, you will not be using your pool, which means you might have coagulated pipes, skims and lots of debris. These things call for serious work in the next season.
Here’s how you can protect your pool from harsh winter weather:
Hands On To All Pool Closing Supplies:
Gather all the pool closing supplies like water tubs, skimmer plugs, pool chemicals (alkalinity Increaser, calcium hardness Increaser, pool shock, algaecide and more). Also check to ensure the plugs are not cracked. Don’t forget the water bags and pool air pillow to protect your pool.
Give Your Pool One Last Cleaning:
Cleaning the pool doesn’t just mean draining water and putting chemical in. Instead, it’s about vacuuming the entire pool, brushing the walls and skimming the surface. Backwash the filter thoroughly and drain the filter tanks. Also, unplug the filter drain and make sure that the valve has no water remaining and remove all the pump drain plugs.
Unscrew And Lose Everything To Drain The Pool:
Make sure that the pool fittings and pipes don’t have any sitting water. As any water in the pool pipes can freeze, expand and eventially crack. To check this, loosen or unscrew pool fittings or unions in the filter system.
Add Winterizing Chemicals:
Things like winter closing kits, maintaining the pH of the pool, balancing the acidity and more will protect your pool from harsh winters. Further, don’t forget to add some alkalinity Increaser or sodium bicarbonate before knocking out the pool water.
Also, hard water deposits calcium in the pool leads to a crusty build up on the walls. However, to protect them, add some calcium hardness.
Lower Down The Pool Water:
Do not completely drain out water when winterizing your pool. Instead, lower the water level a foot or two below the skimmer. Draining out the pool completely can dry out the vinyl, thereby damaging it.
Install Pool Pillow:
The pool air pillow also called an ice compensator would compensate the pressure of the ice and protect the sides of the walls from damages. So, even if your area doesn’t have cold season, you may still want to cover the pool, you can use air pillows to protect the swimming pool from debris.
Cover Your Swimming Pool:
Covering the pool will protect it from the debris and will also keep it safe from animals and people from falling in. Just make sure that the covered pool is throughly clean and vacuumed. Also, do check that the pool cover is tight and secured.
Your pool is cleaner, your water is balanced, the hardware is safe, and your swimming pool is snuggling with a blanket and pillow. Congratulations! You are ready to enjoy more sunny days in the next spring. But as of now, stay relaxed knowing that your swimming pool is ready for the worst winter weathers.
