We live in Texas and dont close our pools like the people up north. We are getting ready for a light to moderate cold front soon. Temps may get in the high 20's low 30's for a few hours. Normally we wrap our pipes to keep them from freezing. Do we need to wrap the PVC pipes to the pumps when the weather gets cold enough to freeze? I run my pumps during the day and they are off at night. What do people do with their pools during the occasional cold front? It will be warm again next week!
Light freeze
- Thread starter gregg123
- Start date
It's never a bad idea to wrap the pipes just in case your motor were to fail, but you'd be safer running the pump during the colder hours, especially at night. Keeping the water moving will prevent it from freezing in the pipes, just be sure all your valves are open so it's flowing throughout the system.
Gregg,
I live in El Paso, I had my pool for 3 winters now, NO pipes wrapped, weather is occasional freezes, down to 25, I have a thermostat on my timer, its adjustable from 32-45 degrees, I keep it on 32, when the outside temp hits 32 it turns on my pump, not sure what kind of setup you have, but if you need to do something asap then, just before you go to bed turn your pump on, and when you wake up turn it off, this will prevent any busted pipes. If you just have a timer then reprogram it to turn on during the coldest parts of the nigh, I have mine set to run from 2 am to 6 am, when its coldest, plus I have the thermostat.
Rob
I live in El Paso, I had my pool for 3 winters now, NO pipes wrapped, weather is occasional freezes, down to 25, I have a thermostat on my timer, its adjustable from 32-45 degrees, I keep it on 32, when the outside temp hits 32 it turns on my pump, not sure what kind of setup you have, but if you need to do something asap then, just before you go to bed turn your pump on, and when you wake up turn it off, this will prevent any busted pipes. If you just have a timer then reprogram it to turn on during the coldest parts of the nigh, I have mine set to run from 2 am to 6 am, when its coldest, plus I have the thermostat.
Rob
Gregg, we changed our single-speed to a two-speed and run it 24/7 now. Our single-speed was running us about $75-80/mo for a 10-hr day. Our two-speed, running 24/7 only runs us about $30/mo. I wrapped our pipes, but haven't done anything with filter or pump yet. We're in the process of building the wall around the equipment, since it catches the north wind and sits on an open acre. But like you said, it'll be warm again by next week 
This is our first winter with a buried on-ground pool and I'm watching it closely and still trying to research to make sure we're doing everything right!
This is our first winter with a buried on-ground pool and I'm watching it closely and still trying to research to make sure we're doing everything right!
AV8TOR
0
Why not change your filter cycle to the night to pump/filter during the coldest part of the day? I am in Fort Worth and that's what some people do here.
We are northeast of Dallas, and have the timer/thermostat set up as well. We are just northeast enough of the concrete of DFW that we run 5-10 degrees cooler in the winter, so we have a freeze about 2 nights a week. At first we had the timer set to run during the day a few hours, and the thermostat to come on when the temps froze at night. We finally figured out we were better off setting the timer to come on every night during the normal freezing hours (early morning actually). Sometimes the weather freezes earlier and the thermostat kicks it on. We have not wrapped our pipes yet or put a shelter over the pump and filter yet, but intend to put a shelter as soon as we get some time. Our set up is on the south side of the pool, but we can get some really cold southwinds too. Our thermostat/timer is an Intermatic model- good solid built item and worth the money. We tried the "remember to turn the pool on at bedtime and off in the morning" method for about a week before deciding the timer/thermostat was a good purchase.