Winter and Christmas for my Northern hemisphere friends will be here soon, and it’s almost time to close down your pool to get it ready for the next season. My Southern pool buddies can ignore this in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, Georgia and To ensure your swimming pool equipment remains in good shape, here are some important steps to take. Remove accessories like the skimmer baskets, cleaners, ladders, steps, etc., from the pool. Clean everything and store them for the winter. Clean the pool and adjust the chemicals. Start by draining the filter pump and pipes that might freeze and then make sure to remove any water from the heater that could freeze and damage the heat exchanger. A wet vacuum or leaf blower helps with that. Put as much equipment inside as you can. Don’t move heat pumps as they are designed to be outside all year if properly drained. Plug lines so they don’t fill with water. Putting some pool grade antifreeze in the lines and equipment is a good idea too. Put your winter chemicals in the pool. Some people depending on location drain some water from the pool until it is below the skimmer and use a winter cover on the pool too. That is for inground pools. There are a few extra steps for above ground pools with hoses. Read your manual or talk to your pool guy or gal to be safe on anything that I said as I am more if a heater / heatpump guy than a pool guy. 🙂 Watch some YouTube videos on pool closing for your area to get up to speed faster too. There are some great local pool techs out there that know what’s best for your climate. Use them if this seems like too much of a pain.
Taking these steps will help you avoid any costly repairs come springtime. Stay ahead of the game and get your pool ready for winter today! I have a lot of my customers waiting for the last minute to close the pool too because they have my cold weather heatpumps In Washington State and Long Island New York last year we had pools at 86 degrees F in late October. Nothing beats a ghoulish tropical swim at Halloween in a cold weather state. If you are really a hardcore swimmer. I have geothermal heat pumps to get you through a winter in a cold weather state. The easiest way to use geothermal on your pool is to have a well that will pump 15 gallons per minute for a 5 ton heat pump. If you can’t do that you can bury HDPE coils and pump antifreeze through the lines. There are lots of YouTube videos on how to lay pipe. For some brands of heat pumps for January deliveries I can have your warranty start next May so you won’t lose any time, will get this years price and can start swimming as soon as the weather gets nice again and you won’t have to stress about finding an electrician or have to wait for a delivery.
PS BTW that is a Raypak / Ruud /Rheem gas heater courtesy of Raypak. That is one of my favorite brands of gas heaters if you absolutely can’t use a heat pump.
This is a photo that one of my aquaculture buddies took of his Koi pond at a high elevation in Northern California. He is using one of my cold weather heat pumps to keep the fish warm all year so that they keep active, eating and healthy. He doesn’t want the little guys to just drop to the deepest point in the pond with their fins shivering waiting for spring for the water to warm up. Potential customers in California love to ask me for references in the Golden State of happy customers who are using my aquaculture and swimming pool heat pumps. I sometimes give the phone number of a few home owners with pool heaters and even my Koi buddy with an Agricultural heat pump to show an extreme example of a heat pump working in cold weather. It hasn’t seemed to impress potential buyers much though. They want someone in their neighborhood most of the time. I then show the math comparing the cost of propane, natural gas, oil to electricity to document the cost saving of using a heat pump; plus the added bonus that a heat pump can also cool the water too. Sometimes that helps. Home owners with photo voltaic (PV) panels who generate their own free electricity make it a no brainer to use an Aquaculture or swimming pool heat pump. Twenty plus California communities have banned new gas installations, so the state is slowly moving in the direction of heat pumps both Geothermal and air to water. I have never had anyone from California disappointed that they received a swimming pool heat pump from me. I want people to have comfortable water maintained at the lowest cost with the most reliable efficient equipment with the longest warranty. My friends with ponds of pet fish find caring for and watching them relaxing. If the fish hide because they are cold then that doesn’t benefit anyone. My pool heater customers relax by swimming or soaking in warm water. If it costs too much to heat or cool the water then they don’t use it enough. If I can help the country de-stress a bit then I have done my job.
Keep warm or cool out there. Whatever makes you happy.
Best,
Marcus
