Buried Doughboy - Frozen!

[Cherie]

OK, so we're in Texas, where it (almost) NEVER gets cold enough to worry about winterizing our pool. About 13 years ago, we installed a 32x16 Doughboy with 7' deep end, buried with about one foot remaining above ground, and a large deck/railing surrounding the pool. We never close it for winters and run the pump 24/7 on LOW. We've never had a problem with freezing until NOW! Months after the initial install, we decided to add another return and couldn't get two pipes at the filter to match up, so used a "rubberized pipe" section to connect two pipes.

Assuming that running the pump on low was the reason for 1" ice forming in the pool, I changed the pump to high (which it has never been put on until now). It took the pump a few seconds to kick back on, which concerned me. Well, the rubberized pipe section clamp popped off overnight and water spewed out all over the filter unit and insulated above-ground piping, creating a rather beautiful icicle creation! That drained the pool to below the skimmer and the pump was not happy this morning when we rushed out to turn it off! The ice is too thick on the equipment to do anything with it at this point. I broke up the thin ice in the pool in several places and tossed four of our foam float boards on top of the open water. I expect the filter already froze during the night.

We will finally get above freezing, up to 34, tomorrow and upward into the 50-60's (thank goodness!) from there. Should we just leave things as they are at this point or attempt to remove the filter plug, if we can get through the ice? I assume when we hit 34 tomorrow, maybe we will have enough thawed that we might be able to pull the water hose out and fill the pool back up and hopefully turn everything back on. How soon should we be able to tell if our zeolite filter is damaged inside, as well as the pump? And how will we know if the buried pipe to the far return has cracked? I don't recall how deep we buried it, but it's at least 12-18".

So I guess we need to rethink things this summer and make some changes to our pool setup to avoid this ever happening again....that once-every-fifty-years real winter!

Thanks!

 

[CrystalRiver]

Don't touch anything until it's warm again. Not just 34 degrees, but fully thawed. Don't touch the ice on the surface - it can be sharp enough to slice your liner. That goes for refilling, too - refilling will move the ice around.

Standard Fernco couplings are only rated for 4.3 psi. They are meant for sewer (non-pressurized) couplings, not for pool use. You'll want to replace that and make the plumbing connection with either rigid or flexible PVC/ABS, so you don't have a repeat fountain.

You can pop the top off the filter and visually check the upright. Once you do bring everything on line again, look to see if zeolite is ending up in the pool. That would indicate cracked laterals in the filter.

 

[Cherie]

Thank you, CR. I'm not a snowbird, so didn't relish going back out into several inches of snow! There is only a small amount of water still in the skimmer, maybe 1/4" above the pipe hole, but it was already freezing. The thin layer of ice I broke up was out from the return, toward the middle of the pool. I did that at both returns, then placed the foam floats within each opening. The ice was so thin where I broke it up, since it hadn't had time to freeze thick like the rest of the water had, that there wasn't much ice left. Hopefully, all will be well by this weekend. We already had to replace the liner due to damage from that grapefruit-sized hail from 4/11/2016. We sure don't want to have to go through liner replacement again! The equipment replacement would be as big a deal.