SWG During Winter

[Riles_J]

I live in TN, with some freezing temps in winter, and I have never closed my pool. I do have a freeze timer that kicks on when temps get cold to protect the pipes, but I was just curious if anyone removes their SWG over the winter? Seems a bit overkill, but being it is out of the ground it is much more susceptible to freezing. I guess it is one thing to break a pipe if something goes wrong, but I would hate to ruin my new SWG. It does have unions on either side that would make it fairly easy to remove. Just curious what others are doing.

Riles

 

[jblizzle]

As you know, the SWG software will stop production when the water temp gets down to around 50 degrees. So there would be no problem removing the cell if you so choose. Most unions are proprietary so you would have to buy a dummy pipe with unions to put in its place. Other people save old cells and reinstall them when they remove the good cell so that you can maintain water flow.

All that said, if you have freeze protection (either automatically or manually turning on the pump during freezing weather), then there should not be anything to worry about ... unless of course you loose power as well. If you lose power, then you should quickly open up the filter and pump and let the water drain out of the pipes. Covering the equipment with a tarp can help retain heat and remove the impact of wind chill as well.

 

[Citizen]

The only danger I could see happening is if the pipes froze but your freeze protect allays those fears. To be on the safe side I would remove it from the pipe just in case.

Most homeowners in cold climates use a pass-through cell during the winter months. As jbizzle said in his post, the union threads are proprietary so the particular dummy cell needs to be matched to the model of SWG.

 

[Chuckiechan]

I've considered a bypass just to allow me to unplug the SWG so no current at all goes through it. IE the "ON" diode is "OFF". And I often go to Florida in the winter for a month or two and I have nightmares that someone might steal my cell. That's an easy few bucks on an internet auction site.

The supplier of your system may have a bypass pipe, BTW.

 

[mas985]

Going on my 10th year on the same cell and I have never used a bypass during the winter so I can tell you from first hand experience that it is not required even with freezing temps.