Can I leave my pump running right now?

[ta2dwonderwoman]

I was hoping to get further into the fall before we have freezing temperatures at night but it looks like we'll be dropping down around and just below freezing several nights coming up soon. I went out today after work and pulled my swg totally cleaned it dried it off and stored it and will monitor my FC and keep it up to speed with liquid bleach going forward until I reopen in the spring. I really want to keep my pump running so that my vacuum can get any leaves as they finish falling from the trees around here but I don't want to run my pump... do you think I need to go ahead and take it inside now and just manually remove leaves or do you think it would be okay to let it run constantly until I start seeing more freezing? I do plan to put a pillow in the middle of the pool this year which I did not do last year... here is the forecast for the rest of this week...

 

[Teald024]

If all your plumbing is still hooked up and water is at the proper level, then yes you can and should run your pump overnight while near freezing. Leave the pump off during the day if you want to conserve energy.

With those air temps, your water should be cold enough to close the pool for the season.

I plan on closing mine next weekend because it will be a bit warmer than this weekend.

 

[ta2dwonderwoman]

My water temperature is definitely down to 60 right now but when it gets up into the seventies and eighties during the day which it does occasionally in November in Kansas it rises above that 60 degrees so I'm not super ready to completely close it down yet... my main reasoning for wanting to continue running my pump and filter is because I'm still getting a lot of bugs and leaves are still falling and it's very hard on me because of my medical situation to manually clean the pool so the longer I can keep the pump and vacuum running and doing their jobs the better but at the same time I don't want to ruin them

 

[Teald024]

You won't ruin the pump by using it.
If/ when you decide to close, you would use a solid winter cover, right? That cover should keep the leaves and most of the bugs out of the pool.
A warm day or three between now and winter won't really harm anything. The water temp won't go up much and there will still be residual chlorine in the pool to keep it sanitized.
Wait to close if you want, but it's nearly the end.

 

[ta2dwonderwoman]

Last year was the first time I left my pool up and filled over the winter and I did not cover it at all and it seem to be perfectly fine.

- - - Updated - - -

It will likely only be a few more weeks with the leaves will be falling, and the trees are pretty far away so I don't get that many leaves to start with, the leaves I get or picked up by my Intex robot or if it misses them at least blows them all so that I can get to them easier

 

[LFrankow]

I run mine to the bitter end as well, usually until the leaves stop falling.
If facing a threat of frost I make sure my pump runs at least from 4 AM until 10 AM minimum, prevents damage from frost.