The temperature is dropping, and it’s starting to feel colder outside.  Unfortunately, those two things mean that pool closing season is approaching.  With pool closings soon, we would like to take this time to discuss winter closing kits and why it’s a good idea to utilize them.

Why is using a winter closing kit important?

Living in the Midwest, especially Minnesota, the use of a winter closing kit when closing your swimming pool in the fall is undeniably an excellent choice to make.  Although people living in cold climate areas, don’t always use a winter closing kit, it can have an enormous effect on the clarity and condition of the pool water when opening in the spring.  Winter closing kits are specifically designed to keep your pool fresh and free of algae during those winter months that the pool is not being filtered or circulated by the pump.

What is included in a winter closing kit? 

While there are many different brands and formulations of winter closing kits, winter closing kits typically include two products: a formulation of shock and an algaecide.  Over at Dolphin Pool & Spa, we suggest BioGuard’s Arctic Blue Winter Kit (available in two sizes: 12,000 gallons and 24,000 gallons).  BioGuard’s Arctic Blue Winter Kit includes Arctic Blue Shock and Arctic Blue Algae Protector.  In this two-step product, it becomes a convenient way to treat your pool before you close it down for the off-season.  The first step, the Arctic Blue Shock, is formulated to oxidize and clarify throughout the winter months, while the second step, Arctic Blue Algae Protector, is used to prevent algae growth.  The combination of using these two chemicals will aid in opening to a clearer, cleaner pool in the spring. 

Why do I want to use a winter closing kit?

Along with helping customers open to a clearer, cleaner pool in the spring, the use of winter closing kit will save you considerable amounts of money in the spring on chlorine and other pool clearing chemicals.  In the springtime when opening their pool, our customers spend a significant amount of money restoring the residual of chlorine that was lost during the winter months and in clearing the water.  We have noticed that the customers who use the Arctic Blue Winter Kit will spend considerably less money on chlorine in Spring start-up, than the customers who admit they didn’t use a winter closing kit.  Why?  Because they don’t have algae and other contaminants using up the chlorine before it can build a residual, therefore using less chlorine and spending less money. 

As pool and spa owners we rely on our filters to keep our water crystal clear. But that can become a daunting task especially as our filter media begins to age. You see depending on your type of filter you will eventually get a build up of scale, oils or both. And no matter what your filter type you should chemically clean your filter at least once a year.

Scale

Scale buildup comes from high calcium hardness. When you have too much calcium in the water, it will begin to drop out of solution. As the calcium falls out of solution it will start to form scale, the two places this will happen first are your heater and your filter.

Scale forms first in your heat exchanger or on your heating element because unlike most other chemicals calcium is less soluble in warm water than in cold, so when as the water is being warmed the calcium is precipitating out of solution. As it does so, it forms tiny jagged platelets that hook onto any rough surface. As the scale begins to develop it creates an even more ideal place for new scale platelets to grab hold.

The next most common place to see scale build up in your filter. One side effect of too much calcium hardness is cloudy water because all those nearly microscopic platelets are floating around; as this cloudy water is passing through your filter, some of those platelets get caught in your filter allowing, even more, to get caught. While it is good that your water is getting clearer, over time the efficiency of your filter is reduced because it is full of calcium. Adding a sequestrant to your water speeds up the process of clearing your water but also add to the clogging of your filter.

The fix for this is to clean your filter with a product like BioGuard’s Kleen-It.  Using this product at least once a year will ensure that you have an efficient and free-flowing filter.

Oils

Oils in your pool water come primarily from your swimmers. Hair products, makeup, lotions and even body oils all come off in the water. In hot tubs, one sign that your filter is overloaded with oils is when the water begins to foam. The other thing that you will note if your filter needs to be cleaned is a dirty scum line along the water line.

Thankfully BioGuard has a product for this type of cleaning as well, Strip-Kwik. Again it is recommended that this process is done at least once a year to ensure your filter is working at it utmost capacity.

Just like your mood, your pool is affected by the weather. Well ok…not just like your mood.

Cool & Rainy

Rain is going to affect your pool water in a myriad of ways. First, rain typically has a pH of about 5.0 quite a bit lower than the ideal 7.4 to 7.6, so if you get a lot of rain especially over a number of days, your pH is going to need some attention. Although rain will lower your pH, this is not the biggest reason your pool water is affected. The most significant reason is when it rains as those raindrops are falling through the air they are collecting algae, soot, dust and who knows what else and dropping it right into your water.

A little rain shower is not going to affect the pool water much, and if you have been maintaining proper water chemistry before the rain, you will likely not notice any change at all. But a substantial rainfall of more than an inch is going to require some attention. You may have to drain some water from your pool, and you should check your pH, calcium and sanitizer levels. You will also be well served by adding an extra dose of maintenance algicide to your water to deal with all the new algae that came into your pool with the rain.

Hot & Sunny

Hot and sunny weather is the best time to be a pool owner.  Nothing beats sitting by the water, listening to music, enjoying your beverage of choice and taking the occasional dip in the water to cool off. But the chlorine level in your pool is taking a hit while you soak up the sun. When chlorine combines with water it forms hypochlorous acid, this is the killing agent that reacts with the lipids in cell walls rupturing them and destroying algae, bacteria and other pathogens. But when a ray of sunshine hits this hypochlorite ion, it breaks it apart, allowing the chlorine to “off-gas” into the atmosphere. In fact, on a bright sunny day, as much as 90 percent of the free chlorine in a pool can be lost in just two hours! Because chlorine is so prone to leaving your pool you need two things: a constant source of new chlorine and a stabilizing agent to protect your existing chorine. New chlorine is added via tabs, a  chlorine feeder or the like and you can give your chlorine it’s very own sunscreen by adding cyanuric acid also known as a stabilizer to your water.

The other reason the hot weather is hard on your pool is that the bather load is likely higher. And those bathers are also likely sweater and oilier than they were in the spring. Sweatier, because they are hotter and oilier because they are using more sunscreen. All these nitrates and things put additional strains on your chlorine level. It is a good idea to routinely check your chlorine level and to do maintenance shocking weekly, but you should almost certainly shock your pool after a party to break apart combined chlorine and to help boost what will be a lowered total chlorine level.

Warmer water also uses more chlorine, not directly but because bacteria and algae grow faster in warmer water; which means you are using more free chlorine to kill these new “swimmers.”

If you live in Minnesota, you are most likely familiar with hard water stains left on sinks and faucets.  The same water conditions that those pesky stains can come from can also cause big problems with your pool’s water chemistry.  Water hardness, or calcium hardness, is the amount of dissolved calcium and magnesium in your pool water, usually measured in parts per million (ppm). 

Hard water (water that measures around 400 ppm) can create stains, or scale, on the walls and fixtures of your pool.  But water that is too soft, or “aggressive,” can also create problems.  It can lead to premature failure of a liner, pull calcium out of the pool’s plaster, or destroy the metal from ladders and handrails of your pool.  Understanding what water hardness affects and how to manage the high levels of calcium hardness in your swimming pool, will help you better maintain your pool’s equipment and the quality of the water.

In our region of the world hard water is a part of life.  Minnesota is notorious for hard water because of the geographic location and the minerals in the soil.  While the ideal level of water hardness is 180-220 ppm (parts per million) in a swimming pool, Minnesota’s calcium hardness level is generally over 400 ppm.  That is quite the difference.  There are several things you can do to treat the effects of hard water, or products to add to soft water to achieve the ideal hardness. 

If your water is too hard, there are bonding or sequestering products, such as BioGuard’s Scale Inhibitor, which can be added to your pool water.  These products require an initial dose, along with a suggested weekly maintenance application, but can protect the pool equipment and surfaces from scaling and corrosion.  Also, maintaining a low pH and Alkalinity with high calcium hardness levels can help with water clarity.  On the other side of the spectrum is water that is too soft.  To harden your pool’s water, it’s a good idea to add a calcium chloride product; we suggest BioGuard’s Balance Pak 300.  There are also calcium-based shocks (calcium hypochlorite) or oxidizers, that will supplement with calcium along with shocking, we recommend BioGuard’s Burnout 3.

Want to learn more what water hardness is? Watch Dolphin Pool & Spa’s YouTube video on Water Hardness here: