Auto Fill During Freezes

atxjmy512 said:

Yes, i feel a little dumb but i was just playing with it and i can isolate just the RPZ. and successfully drained it at as test.

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The RPZ is a valid concern. I had my irrigation RPZ break in '11 and a PVC elbow crack going to it in '21. I was able to fix it and added two drain valves in the end.

Now, I keep extra PVC end caps and fittings. It was difficult to find PVC parts for a couple of weeks.

atxjmy512 said:

There are definitely some areas where my supply line is not 10" below the surface. But I did what i could when landscaping after construction to add a few inches of top soil, and another few inches of gravel with weed control fabric - so hopefully that's enough.

Where would i put this anti freeze and backer rod? In the Supply line itself? In the AF bucket?

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Cool. If it were possible to get backer rod into a supply line, it would be protected, but of course with valves that's very unlikely. Blowing them out works. Or displace/dilute water in the line with antifreeze.

I have a PoolMizer. 2" backer rod takes up most of the space in the fill chamber. 5/8" pieces go as far down the overflow drain as possible and in the top foot or so of the intake line from the pool. It doesn't fit tight enough to seal. The overflow still works unless it rains _really_ hard. Then it's easy enough to pull those out until the sun shines. The fill is on the same city water feed as the lawn irrigation. That needs to be blown out every November anyway. Seems that's good enough as we're in our third winter, and so far, so good.

Hope it all goes well.

mas985 said:

Remember what happened last year in TX? Too many relied on running pumps to prevent freeze damage and then proceeded to lose power. When the weather gets really cold, IMHO you are far better off with draining the equipment.

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It was brutal and will remember this for a long time. We didn't have the power outages like they did in TX so we "lucked out" in keeping the equipment running. We are having yet another round of freaking-too-cold weather this week (4 good days of below freezing) with some wicked winds at the coldest point. I have decided to go ahead and keep everything running, but the "drain immediately!" plan has been rehearsed and ready to implement if necessary.