Pool Heater in Vancouver, BC - Winterize?

[Ubrucen]

Hi, we live on the outskirts of Vancouver, BC, the temperature is typically fairly mild but has reached lows of about 14 degrees Farenheit in the winter.

Our pool guy has always winterized our in ground salt water pool water features, up until this year where we are taking it on ourselves. We keep the filter running all year and blow out the water feature lines.

Do we need to "winterize" the heater? It's a Hayward H Series H250ED2. The pool guy simply took out the winterizing drain plug in the past (we're pretty sure anyway...) Do we need to do anything else to the heater to protect it over winter? Is it a matter of just taking out the drain plug? No idea how this works or whether the heater holds water when not in use / whether it is in any freezing danger.

I've included a couple of pictures of the heater. Thanks very much in advance!

 

[borjis]

Ya just the drain plug. I take it you have some sort of heater bypass valve so you can continue operating the pump?

We don't get heater damaging winters every year (about 300 ish miles south of you), but I learned the hard way it's best
to drain the heater before the freezing months.

I drain mine and take the pump offline, last weekend of november. Then put everything back together first weekend in march.

 

[Ubrucen]

Thanks. Yes there’s a bypass valve. Please pardon my ignorance / lack of knowledge with my clarifying questions... We also run a spa through the heater, we winterized our spa this year too. There’s a pool bypass heater valve, a spa bypass heater valve (then to and from pipes & valves between pool/spa and heat). Would we keep the bypasses valves closed over winter or does that matter?

And is taking the drain plug out enough to drain any water in the heater? or is there more steps we should take?

Thanks again