DO NOT DRAIN ANY WATER OUT OF THE POOL!
Whatever you do, don’t drain your pool before, during or after a big storm. If the ground becomes extremely saturated, it could displace, or “pop-out” an empty in-ground pool. So, keep your pool full as normal.
Uncover Your Pool
High winds could rip your cover off or send debris flying into it and damage it. Rain and debris will throw your water balance off, but that’s easier (and cheaper) than a damaged cover.
Turn Off:
Pool Equipment including pump, filter, heater and lighting. For addition safety turn the circuit breaker off. You can cover your electronic pool equipment if you can attached it securely.
Balance Your Chemicals
24 hours before the storm arrives triple shock and give it a dose of algaecide to your pool water. It will be easier to balance afterward. Power might be off for a few days and this will help your water from turning green.
Store removeable lids – skimmers, auto levelers anything that might become a projectile in high winds.
Store, or restrain, patio furniture, pool equipment, toys and grills safely. If you have no place indoors to store them at least turn tables upside down and against the house.
Freezing Weather
It’s that time of year again where the temperatures are going to start dropping. We wanted to pass along information to give you confidence in how to manage freezing temperatures as a pool owner. Different scenarios will call for different actions so please read each one to determine the best course of action for your possible situations.
It's going to freeze, but we still have power!
If you have pool automation (Control panel and an app), you have freeze protection built into your system. If you have power, then you have nothing to fear. Go outside and ensure that the pump is still running. It might be quieter than usual. If you have any water feature pumps, check that those are running too.
If you do not have automation, you’ll need to set your pool and any other pumps to run automatically overnight. If water continues to move, it will not freeze. Just go to your pump control panel (on top of the pump), and press button number 1. This will put the pool into manual mode, at max speed (if you haven’t changed the programming for button #1). It’s advisable to lower that speed to about 1200rpms by pressing the up arrow, then pressing down until the number reads the desired level, then pressing save.
For Customers with Intelliflo3 Pumps (2023 and onward) use your Pentair Home app and change your schedule to a 24 hour cycle, and set the speed to 30gpm.
It's freezing outside and I’ve lost power!
So we’ve lost power. The first thing we’re going to do is to shut off all the breakers to the pool pad. The last thing we want is a system to turn itself back on without our knowledge. After shutting off the breakers, go to any place you can open, (pump lid, leaf canister, plug on bottom of the filter, plugs on bottom of the pump chlorinator, air relief valve, and, most importantly, there’s a small drain plug on the heater below where the water flows into the heater.) By opening these, we create space for the water to expand into if it does freeze, so we want to create as much space as possible for water to expand into.
Still worried? Call your pool school instructor for further advice.
