To those who close in North Texas....antifreeze?

[concretegardenstx]

So the motor went out on my pool pump, and I just don't have the means to have it fixed at the moment. So I am going to be closing the pool for the winter. I have been reading on how to close the pool, and my question is, being in north Texas, is the antifreeze necessary? My main concern is we have this freeze coming up tomorrow night (yes I know, way to wait until the last minute!) I wasn't sure if it really got cold enough here.

My pool temps have been in the 60s, I'd almost think that the pool could ride out this freeze, but I don't want to risk it. Especially with the above ground equipment (pipes, filter, heater, pump, etc)

I am in Kaufman, about an hour SE of Dallas.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[257WbyMag]

I think that as long as the water is out of the aboveground pipes, filter, pump and skimmer basket, you'll probably be okay on the rest. Just make sure you drain those things.

This will be a freeze, but a mild one compared to what we will probably get later in the season. The past few days temps have been fairly warm and so the pool water and the surrounding ground has pretty much no chance of freezing and causing problems with buried pipes. After this bout of weather passes though, you better get your pump problems solved as soon as you can.

 

[mas985]

+1

I can't speak to North Texas but here in North CA, we only get below 32 for a few hours during the night and I have never had a freezing issue even without freeze protection. It really depends on how cold it gets and for how long. In general, if it only dips below freezing for a several hours a night, then I would say you probably don't need anti-freeze.

However, the pipes above ground will freeze first and the pipes below ground will be somewhat protected so as mentioned above, one thing you could do for sure is drain the above ground plumbing. If the pad is above water level, then you should be fairly well protected and it would take several days of below zero weather before the below ground pipes would even start to freeze.

 

[Txmat]

Several years ago when we had a hard freeze coming and I did not have a clue about how to drain the pipes, filter, etc. I put a 100 watt lamp next to the pump pad and covered everything with a tarp and some blankets. The heat from the lamp kept it toasty. I would not want to rely on this for those times we get below freezing for several days, but the occasional two or three hours this will work.