I am wondering if anyone in this area leaves their pump running over the winter instead of closing down and winterizing? It seems to me that it would be feasible to do this but wanted to hear what others in this area are doing. Last year I shut down and drained the equipment but found that the problems were many keeping the water off the cover, trash off the cover, etc. My winter cover is not a very high quality one and is certainly not good enough that the rain water doesnt get through the cover and therefore let trash into the pool water. Any fellow area pool owners care to comment on their experiences and have suggestions?

My pool stays open year round as do many others in North Carolina. It's a trade-off in workload but you should try leaving it open one season and see if it suits you.

I am seriously considering it. The only consideration I had was that I know we can get some excess cold weather on occasion and was wondering if we got some zero degree cold for a day or two would the flow of water through the pipes keep the system from freezing. Have you ever encountered such a cold smap here? Did it present problems?

I guess keeping the pool open in the winter is just like in the summer? Or are there other considerations you may point me to for the winter operations?

I am in south carolina, and we keep ours open year round and have for the past 8 years with no problems. Still follow same procedures for balancing but lots less work since lower temps.

I am located in Newton NC. I close my pool only because of massive amounts of leaves. It does not get cold enough here to cause any freezing problems. It may not be warm enough to swim in the winter but our temps are still too warm to keep our pool closed all winter.

I'm watching this thread with a lot of interest since I am in Charlotte NC area and have a similar climate.

This site may be useful:
http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/uni ... -carolina/

The advice I have gotten has ranged from "Do a full closing" (another TFP member in Charlotte) to "drain the pump and filter and cover the pool but don't blow out lines etc." to "cover and run the pump when below freezing". Frankly I'm totally confused at this point but reading threads like this one trying to understand what questions to ask to help make up my mind about what to do.

SaltyPool - I have a massive amount of leaves also but by winter time the leaves are all gone and that does not seem to be an issue here for me. When the leaves are an issue is all the other times. Right now when we have a thunderstorm the skimmer will fill up every night to the point of being almost completely clogged. We have a net that attaches to the edge of the pool that catches a lot of them but not all by far. This is an issue when we have to go out of town for a week or more.
wish I could find some technology to deal with this leaf problem. Anyone recommend anyone reliable that can be employed to care for the pool on occasions when you are out of town?

We don't have leaf issues. Just keep pool open, And test as usual. We end up being able to cut our pump run time in half as well as chlorine use. My kids swim in cold water as early as march and go through October. They are crazy.... So we just keep it up.


This site may be useful:
http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/uni ... -carolina/

The advice I have gotten has ranged from "Do a full closing" (another TFP member in Charlotte) to "drain the pump and filter and cover the pool but don't blow out lines etc." to "cover and run the pump when below freezing". Frankly I'm totally confused at this point but reading threads like this one trying to understand what questions to ask to help make up my mind about what to do.[/quote]

For those of us that have leaf problems I found this old thread on the site that may just offer us some relief... low-cost-leaf-blocker-t28778.html

My main concern with not closing a pool in a region that may have freezing temps would be what happens in an extended power outage? No power = no circulating the water which could lead to equipment and plumbing damage

We're located in Mebane, NC and had our pool installed last October. I kept it open and uncovered all winter. There were a few weeks of lots of leaves but once that was over there wasn't much to do. I put a couple of chlorine tabs (which I don't use during the swimming months) in the two baskets and balanced the water. I vacuumed when I thought it was needed. I ran the pump at night when the temperature was going below 36 and would have also run it all day when below this temp - which never happened last winter!

The reason I kept it open is that I'm 67 years old and my daughter & I thought we'd have a hard time putting a cover on and taking it off, blowing out the lines, etc. Plus we'd still have to contend with leaves on the cover as well as water. It was nice to look out the window and see the uncovered pool during the winter months. I'm going to do it again this year.

My pool store put me on EZ-Pool for the winter and I knew I had to find another way to take care of my water and still be able to afford to run the pool. EZ-Pool is VERY expensive. I found TFP and have been on BBB all summer. When I had a bit of a cloudy condition, the TFP folks walked my through shocking the pool. What a terrific forum!

Hope this helps!

Following this also. Live on the Outer Banks and we almost never get a hard freeze. Impossible to cover because of wind.

My question is if algae is a problem when the water is at, say, 40-50 degrees? We usually snowbird in our RV so it would be left unattended for several months.

I have a SWG but I recall that it doesn't work below 60 degrees or so? If that is true I could put in a dummy cell and just use chlorine.

What type of chlorine could you use that would last while you were snowbird'ing?

I could have a friend dump some in and I see that some folks hang a container with pucks in the pool. From other reading, it would seem to not be a big deal if the water stays in the 50-60 deg area?