not closing pool during winter

[jims]

I'm still fairly new at pools, but here goes. I'm thinking about leaving pool on over winter, just as is except will cover it, so pump,heater,filter all running over winter. Am thinking warm,moving water should prevent freezing problems.
We do get winter here, some snow, a few days below freezing, I would not call it severe by any means.
Any thoughts?
(cost of heating, pump etc not relevant here)
Thanks
Jims

[Teapot1]

Outside of your cost to heat not relevant, which I dont understand there is no compulsion to winterise it depends on your climate. Running a pool pump when temp is 10 or below helps circulate chlorine but alage wont tend to grow. Running the pump during the coldest period of night 2am to 5am does help prevent the pump freezing also worth putting some trace heating tape around the pipes as the is low power self regulating and keeps the pipes about 5C so you dont kill your pump.

[mknmike]

What happens if you have an ice storm and lose power (that heats that heating tape and runs the pool pump)?

Remember what happened in Texas recently when they had that freak deep freeze and nobody knew what to do when they lost power?

Is it worth the risk?

[Teapot1]

Then drain the pump and filter, I did say depends on your climate, we on here cannot possibly know the atmospheric conditions so local knowledge will always take precedence.

[mknmike]

Then drain the pump and filter, I did say depends on your climate, we on here cannot possibly know the atmospheric conditions so local knowledge will always take precedence.

Right. He better have a plan and not be a snowbird that heads south in the winter assuming the pool will take care of itself while gone.

If you didn’t winterize, and lose power during a freezing event, you basically need to winterize ASAP…

1) know how to drain and blow out your pool equipment. This could be tricky depending on the temperature. If it’s really cold, might the water freeze before all the water can drain out?

Hopefully your pool equipment is sheltered. Mine is in my garage, which is not currently heated, but I’m planning on installing a wood burning stove. In my case, if it’s cold enough to freeze inside by garage, I’d have an ice slick on my garage floor heading to my garage floor drain.

2) Know how to blow out your pipes. If you’ve got above ground pipes (most likely to freeze), hopefully they will blow out easily, settling at the level of your pool at the time.

3) get some anti-freeze into the places most likely to freeze:
- skimmer basket
- maybe pour antifreeze into the pipes.

Then, at this point you’ve basically got yourself a half-a$$ed winterization. Right?

When the power goes out in the winter, I like to focus on building a fire and getting cozy. I couldn’t think of many things that would suck more than playing with near freezing water. I’d probably opt for a backup generator to power the pool equipment instead of wanting to deal with an emergency winterization. I ran a natural gas line to my detached garage where the pool equipment is located, and should be able to burn natural gas even in a freezing event, keeping my garage above freezing, and maybe a small pool heater would be ideal for a scenario like this. I bet it would be more expensive to run the pool all winter with power and chemicals than it would be to just close it. We have freezes here (Northern Delaware, near Philadelphia) that will burst pipes almost every year if there’s no heat. I’ve had pipes in unheated crawlspaces freeze, but generally that takes a few days of the temperature not getting above freezing for that to happen. Pretty much every year we get a period like that though. And generally nobody is hot enough for a swim from October to March. A local YMCA used to heat their outdoor pool into November. I can’t remember when they opened. Maybe a bit further south would make sense to try and keep a pool open all year.

I was at a New Years Party in NYC over a decade ago where they had a heated rooftop pool. People were swimming. It was a pretty special place though. Apparently it was used for a Sex and the City episode, not like your average NYC flat. If you’ve got the money and wherewithal, you can keep a pool open year-round nearly anywhere.


Edit: I forgot to mention that I bought a ~$1300 20x32 Party tent on the Walmart website that’s pretty sturdy. While I was trying to decide whether to buy it or not, I noticed that it would be about the perfect size to put over top of our ~16x28’ rectangular pool, and was then sold on the idea. I haven’t tried building it over top of the pool but could envision a lot of winter benefits of having it over the pool if we were trying to keep it open beyond late September / early October. Just the leaves alone are reason to close the pool.