Pool prep

Last multi day hard freeze, albeit no snow, I kept my equip running during the below freeze temps, covered with a tarp. I figured the heat from the pump motor was enough to keep things warm. Also kept our large plumeria plant under there and all was good.

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I’m going to cover my equipment with plywood and put a couple heat lamps on but let it run. I just don’t want snow to pack in on the pump

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When we moved in, all the equipment was concealed in shubbery. I ripped all that out and put a hard metal cover. I'm banking on that and freeze protection to get us through. I'm toying with heating up the water tomorrow going into the freeze just to dump some extra thermal energy into the system, but I'm not sure what the ROI on that would be. It may be sunny enough on Wednesday to hold off extra nastiness.

This is relatively unprecedented. I grew up with an inground pool that didn't have freeze protection, etc., and it made it through a couple of ice storms and a 2" snow fairly well. It was a simple 1-pump system.

My current equipment has 4 pumps, a heater and a brand new panel. Lots of things that could break.

(ETA: Actually made it through the multi-day freeze a year or two ago well - I'm not worried because as a cold event this doesn't look to be quite as bad.)

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Our Pool guy said everything is automated for the cold as long as we have power.

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That’s how newer pools are. Just be familiar with where the freeze plugs are in case you lose power.

Great info in this thread!

When you say “spitters”, I assume this is slang for deck jets? If so I ran my deck jets during the last freeze a few yrs back and my issue was making sure the wind didn’t blow the water all over the deck, and freeze over the jet opening. I’m thinking about taking an air compressor and blowing out water from the deck jet exhaust side ( LINK)and then covering each opening with a heavy bag of mulch or something. I’d appreciate what others are doing with similar water features.

I’m also going to do like a few others said and put a heavy blanket/tarp over equipment pad .

(I’m in South Lafayette area)

My pumps automatically cut on when the temp drops but should I also run the waterfalls ?

I heated mine to 75°… In case the power goes out for some reason.

Otherwise, it will run until the air temperature rises above 36 degrees.

Why do you even need to let it run? If you’re not blocking in lines, what’s going to bust?

I’ve read some talk of depressurizing the system, like opening everything up, as an option but not sure how good that is.

You shouldn’t have to do anything but let the freeze protection run. I’ve seen some cheap amazon motors and some aux cleaner motors only have ODP rating which may be concerning in heavy snow, but most are fully TEFC and can be left in any weather.
I had some friends that lost $$$ pumps during Yuri when the power went out but we only had a couple 45 minute planned outages here and everything was fine. The pool provided great toilet flushing water when the taps went dry.