Joe Puccio:
That is one of the biggest problems during the winter is the leaves will fall in the pool. They’ll get into the skimmer.
Hello, I’m Joe Puccio with Clean and Clear Pools. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how to take care of your pool during the winter. I know, during the winter, you don’t come out to your backyard and swim very much unless you have a spa, so these are the things you need to take care of. One, you need to make sure that you’re skimming your pool. You don’t want your filters to be clogged, so you want to catch all the leaves that are falling. The next thing you want to do is you want to come over to your skimmer basket, and you need to do this twice a week. If you have a maintenance guy, he will do it for you once, and then you need to come out and do it again.
If you notice you have a lot of leaves that are in here, you’ll pull the basket out and clean this out so you have good flow to your pumps. That is one of the biggest problems during the winter is the leaves will fall in the pool, they’ll get into the skimmer, and it doesn’t allow your pump to circulate.
One of the most important parts of taking care of your pool during the winter is taking a look at your equipment, making sure you don’t have any leaks, making sure you have good flow, and that means checking the gauge and make sure the pressure’s not too high. It should never get above 30. Also, with the DE filter, you want to backwash about every 10 days, once about every 10 days. And then, make sure after you get through back washing that you add DE, and don’t add too much because that can be a problem as well.
When you come over to the filters, you need to make sure that the baskets are clear because when you clean a basket at your pool, a little bit of the leaves will flow through the system and go right into this basket right here. With your freeze protection, if you have an automated system, then you’re protected as long as you don’t lose power. If you lose power, then what you need to do is drain your system.
