Location Indiana - Close or keep it open

[JLayer01]

Hey everyone,

New to owning a pool. Just had it installed close to a month ago. I've been following all the steps here to maintain the correct chemistry and feel that I have it pretty dialed in.

So on to my next worry, Closing! Here in Indiana, we do get below freezing temps. Sometimes it could be a couple of days, weeks, or sometimes a month long. Our pool has a heat pump installed with a freeze protect. We also have a automatic pool cover. My question is, can we keep the pool open during the winter here? From reading it seems as long as I have the pump running (high) and the heat pump running, we could keep it open. However, I'm questing the heat pump as if we run into a month long below freezing temp, is it enough to keep the water from freezing? Do we take the chance of possiblity freezing and busting our pipes or just close it.

Closing it would consist of what? We have 2 skimmers, 2 return jets and a main drain. I'm not sure on what needs to be done. This is as much as confusing as it was when trying to figure out the chemistry thing.

Can someone give me a definite yes that we can keep it open during the winter (which seems easier), then closing it?

Thanks for the help,
Jake

 

[mknauss]

Pool School - Closing an In Ground Pool

I have no idea on your area - so others will chime in.

Below freezing!!! Brrrrrrr - not were I live!!

Take care.

 

[Donldson]

No, you can't. Heat pumps take the heat from the air and put it in to the pool, the less heat in the air the less efficiently they work. So, if the air is freezing they don't work at all. Keeping a pool open is only an option in areas where sub-freezing temperatures rarely last more than overnight. You will need to close your pool.

 

[wjr75]

We are up here in the Chicago western suburbs and it looks like you have similar winter weather. Your going to need to winterize that bad boy. We have an auto cover but when we close the first week of October we open the auto cover and have a Loop Loc winter cover and the water of the pool is drained down about 2 1/2 feet. Some people claim they winterize using the auto cover but you need to keep the water level up and need to somehow pump water off in the winter. Not sure how that works. We keep our hot tub open until early December but then winterize that also since all the pumps need to run all of the time so the water doesn't freeze.