The Importance of Properly Winterizing Your Pool 

When it comes to the time you invest in your beautiful backyard swimming pool, the hours spent playing, exercising, and relaxing in it are certainly more fun than those spent maintaining it. However, while swimming pool winterization involves some time and effort, both are well worth it when you consider the consequences of not properly performing the pool winterization process. Failing to prepare your pool for cold temperatures and a long period of inactivity can cause a variety of repair expenses and hassles.

 Why Winterize?

The biggest drivers behind swimming pool winterization are laws of physics and biology. Specifically: water expands as it freezes, and algae grows in untreated water. The first can cause pool equipment to crack or burst, which typically results in costly repairs. The second can lead to a pool teeming with algae when you open it in the spring and the hours you’ll need to devote to getting your pool water clean.

 Most Common Mistakes in Swimming Pool Winterization

We won’t detail the pool closing process in this post. We will, however, share the mistakes most frequently made when winterizing a swimming pool. They are:

 

• Attempting to “shortcut” the process. Closing a pool takes a little time — there’s just no way around it. In preparing to close your pool, you should plan on it taking a number of hours spread across three days. That spread is primarily to allow you to ensure that the pH, chlorine, and total alkalinity levels in the water are properly balanced.
• Too few chemicals in the water. It’s important to achieve the right chemical balance in your water as you close your pool for the winter. Too few chemicals is an invitation to algae and other organisms to set up shop.
• Too many chemicals in the water. As noted above, you want to be sure that algae can’t spend the entire winter multiplying in your pool. But, having too many chemicals in the water can result in the costly and unsightly corrosion of pipes, pool equipment, and surfaces.
• Failure to get all the water out of lines. It is important to blow the water out of lines and properly plug them. If you don’t perform this step, freezing temperatures will cause the water to expand and your lines and equipment will pay the price.

 

Don’t Let Old Man Winter Ruin Your Spring

Winterizing a pool is not difficult. You simply have to follow a procedure, completing each step properly as you move through it. The payoff is pool equipment that is ready to fire up in the spring and pool water that requires minimal maintenance to be crystal clear and read for swimmers. If you’ve got questions about how to winterize a swimming pool, reach out to us any time. We’re here to help!