How to Winterize the In Ground Pool

hey guys Todd from Great Escape farm here in the middle of September here on one of the sad days on the homestead and it said this time every year when I have to cover up the pool and winterize it so what winterizing is going to entail here I actually give you a rundown of everything that I'm going to do real quick and then I'll tell you the next step as far as what I'm gonna do but and then I'll break in the video and get to it so I need to remove the solar cover here and fold it up dry it out fold it up and put it away I need to remove the ladders coming up I need to cover the pool with a dark cover I don't want any sunlight getting in otherwise I'll grow algae before I cover it I need to shock it real quick just make sure there's enough chlorine in it I also need to blow air into all of the pipes and then I will put pool antifreeze in all of the pipes and I'll block those off so the water won't get in reason being is I don't want the pipes to freeze in the winter the reason I'm going to cover the pool is again to keep the sunlight out as well as keep all the leaves and everything out so this is zone 7 pretty much zone 7 zone 8a this whole area mostly is deciduous trees and deciduous means that all of these green leaves up in the trees are gonna be falling into the pool or on to the ground which would be into the pool if it wasn't covered so what I'm gonna have to do the steps that I'm gonna do first the first thing I'm going to do is take all of the pool furniture and move it in that direction or this direction or off to the side and then I'm gonna grab a blower and I'll blow off this deck here and get as clean as possible and then I will drag the solar cover up onto the deck dry it out fold it up and after it's folded up I will grab all of the tools that I'll need for the rest of this process lay it out here and I'll explain to you what I'm doing with the tools at that point okay guys I have the hearts in front of me here as you can see as I pan across I removed all the furniture and removed the solar cover right here it is back there I'll run you back there a little while the Roll thing I don't know what the heck you call it that rolls up the solar cover was moved to the back I had to remove one set of steps which is right here to get pull the solar cover off I will remove that one over there I'll actually do a video of that showing you how to do that when I moved in here the guy who owned the place before me was removing the jump board or diving board what he just left it there and I was like well if you're just gonna leave it out why remove it so I've left it on since I've taken over it's been 12 years now and it's done just fine so I don't mess with that at all it just kind of stays there as far as the tools I have already used the blower I had to blow off the deck to clear off all the crap so it didn't stick to the solar cover and same thing when I put the main cover on here I want it clean so if I get a bunch of leaf fall I will blow it off again right here is just normal shock I do a normal shock some people do a super shock which is like double or triple the amount of shock I just do a regular shock and that seems to work fine for me this is pool antifreeze and once I I will use this shop vac to either suck or blow the water out of the lines and I do end up doing both so I'll show you how I do that and once they're blown out then I you put the antifreeze in I clog up the end of the pipes and I'll show you in a minute the plungers that I clogged those off with and I put the antifreeze in the duct tape you know what is a project without duct tape so that is used for helping with the shop back here to blow or suck the water out and down here I have a half inch wrench that's used for removing the steps and this plumbers wrench here I don't know it's not an adjustable wrench so I don't know this wrench right here I use for some of the plastic pipe fittings they're supposed to be hand fittings but mine get rather tight so I have been using this for several years now this is the pool cover it's kind of like a tarp but it has these things on it which allows you to weight them down and hold it and you'll see that later on this white tube right here is specially used and I only use it during the winter time to hook up to the pipes to help blow air out or suck water out to help winterize it these I remove the Jets themselves and I put these plungers in their rubber and when you tighten them actually that one's broken when you tighten them it tightens up in there so what I do is I blow air into where the Jets go using the shopvac you use the reverse setting so instead of sucking I blow it with the duct tape below all the water out of the Jets I plug it up with this and then I fill that void with antifreeze so that way there's not constant water pressure in there there is pressure it equalizes but on the other side of this is antifreeze so that will keep my pipes from freezing up there this kind of Tupperware thing right here is used to go over the skimmer to prevent water from going in there and the skimmer I will suck water out I'll show you that when I get to it down here called pillows they're basically weights open this one up so it these two things up here by my fingers you fill them up with water and it creates a big weight and it sets in these holes are here to wait the tarp down so the wind doesn't blow the tarp the strings right here I use the strings on the solar cover here and I've already used it for this year so the other ones and there are extras and tied it up it's all rolled up folded up I have it over here in the shade you don't want to leave your solar cover in the Sun because it will get it could get so hot that it actually melts it and causes it to definitely causes it to degrade much much quicker one other thing I did is I just went through and I did a quick vacuum on the pool and I didn't do a super great job I just got all the main leaves and stuff like that out just so that it won't stain the side over the winter so shock will somewhat bleach it out but I just didn't want anything sitting in there I'm sure leaves and other stuff will blow in around it and this way is just less stuff to stain up my cover so that's it for now what I'm going to do now let's see I'm gonna go ahead and get some of the plumbing stuff ready I'll set up on the tripod over by the ladder over there and show you how to remove that and show you how to actually winterize and put antifreeze in the plumbing parts here okay so what I'm gonna do is go ahead and remove the steps here and this works for mine and actually that goes for everything on this boiler mine works one way this is put in in the mid-eighties yours may work totally different so you'll have to experiment and see exactly how that goes come on you lift these up they set off to the side you have one screw down here you turn it counterclockwise the screw will or the bolt will not come up if it does come off so it's good to pack it down because what it is is a wedge that wedges up against here so you don't really want the bolt to come up you just want it to loosen the wedge and the wedge will go down so I've actually already loosened these so I'm not wasting too much time lift these up and then you lift it straight up out and you lay it here and what you want to do is get all the water out which actually I won't be able to do minor clogged up your stuff from sitting down in the hole so I will have to catch that neck a little bit later on off video so that's how you remove the steps since my last update I've also gone ahead and I've shocked the pool so I'm gonna let it circulate around for a little while and cover this up here in the a half hour or hour - okay so I'm shocked it about an hour and a half two hours ago so this had a little time to sink you know put the little Tupperware lid if you will on the skimmer here I pulled the little basket out and the thermometer that we keep in here so it's just open so at this point when I start the motor it's gonna suck all of the water out or most of the water out and I will go ahead and start it here and it's not so at this point we come back over here and we have next to nothing for water make sure I don't actually have some leaking in here no that was just residual so there's a little bit left in there and that I will get out with a shop-vac and then what I will do is I will pour some antifreeze in there and then I will put this in and what this is designed to do is stop up the pipe so nothing else can get into the pipe and also it's flexible xvc so if this if water gets into the skimmer area and it freezes it will bend this instead of breaking the outer rim of the skimmer area I'll also put some antifreeze in here but this is just an extra precaution here and then all of this stuff will go into my shed area until next summer go ahead and put some antifreeze in and suck this out okay so I use this mechanism right here that I have duct-taped on my shop vac and I sucked the water out of here there was a little residual water now what I'm gonna do is pull a pour a full gallon in here and just let it go in and fill up that tube and I for about half a gallon ends here that way if it mixes with water it's okay it can be diluted and it will still work that's a little bit and now what I do is I go to the other end and I'll set up over there and show you what I'm gonna do at that end this is actually good to go what I will do is hover this up and this part is done right here okay so I poured the remaining half gallon here by the way let me give you a close-up of this so just swimming pool antifreeze I picked this up from the pool store I know Walmart has similar stuff for RVs and all should be good there just make sure you read the directions make sure that it is good for pools so I dumped a half gallon in here that will protect the motor impeller all the working parts of that and I will go ahead and put the top on here and I'll put that down just to minimize the water then what I did before I was sucking water out and I had on the input side here where I was sucking in now I move the hose over to the output side so I'm blowing air out of this and I hoped it up to where the Jets are gonna go so that will force air out of the Jets and I will go over to where the Jets are here and there and I'll cap those up and then I'll come back here and I will add antifreeze in this line right here which will protect it also I don't can't remember if I mentioned earlier before I shut the filter system down I back washed everything try to get as much as the the de out as possible and I have my external line here which goes off and back of the yard that's open so the filter system itself is totally drained here so let me go set up let me turn this shot back on and go over there and set up and it will take it sometimes takes up to a minute to actually build up enough pressure to pull push all the air out but I'll set up over there and you can watch what I'm doing okay as you can see the water or the air is blowing out here I remove the Jets earlier just to point out one thing that there's a fall there's an outside cap and an inside one you'll make sure that you remove the inside one actually move the whole assembly including the inside otherwise your little stopper so what I do is I put the stopper in this end right now the other end is not blowing air at all as soon as I put it in this one then it will blow air or blow the water out of the rest of the system and I will get air coming out of my own definitely something that's easier to do in the warmer weather rather than as cold I've done this is late is the end of October early November before and that just freezes my arm ball so the other one still is not blowing air just yet if we're okay now it's blowing some air so it's blowing all the water out it that way I'll go and do that one and then I will go and I will put antifreeze in the system okay so I blown all the air out I have the other ends capped off now as fast as I can because water will leak in there I want to force some antifreeze up that way so now that the pressure is off it starts leaking in so what I do is I hold this up high and I just dump it right in the hose and it flows right down into and I will put a full gallon in there and so far these mixtures work for me everybody's pool is gonna be custom designed as far as how long their pipes are so you'll have to adjust how much antifreeze you add based on how long your pipes are but the mixtures I've given you here work for mine again just figure it out what will work your for you I've been here 12 years now 11 12 years something like that and everything's work fine I we've been down below zero 6 below I think is the lowest we've gone and I haven't had any issues doing it this way so what I'll do now is I'll remove this tape right here I will connect back up and make it tight so that no water will get in from this way no rainwater or anything and that's it as far as the plumbing part pull it towards you a little bit a little bit more grab this good enough so the last video here is to showing that it is fully covered up I actually have the tarp on now I have the weights down and filled up with water so these are kind of rubbery almost and that allows them to freeze and expand and contract without bursting so I lose maybe two of these a year I have about a dozen and a half on so they they kind of hold their own here they definitely hold the way down the only thing I'm missing is right in the center I need a pillow hey I believe that the actual name is called pillow it is basically something like this if this material is very soft but it's huge it's like four foot by four foot around and it's filled with air and what it does is it kind of breaks up the water on top which will turn to ice when we get really really cold and that way it doesn't the ice doesn't expand out and burst the walls on the pool it actually cracks and breaks the ice in the middle because it's a break so it's not one great big ice cube so I the one that I had before broke or popped whatever you want to call it and I need to grab it grab a new one and put it in so I'll catch that tomorrow one other little nugget of information I want to show you I well I'm sorry a real quick I need to move all the furniture back here and once I do that we are winterized one other little nugget of information I won't show you is all my rafts and stuff here what I do they make these little air nozzle things so that they hold the air in and it's less chance of them popping out and losing air on you which makes it a pain to get the air the air out of them in the winter so what I have here or what I do is I just put a little stick in here and I open up the end and kind of just shoved a little stick in and in about an hour and a half two hours it ends up totally flat all the air is out of it it gravity kind of takes care of itself here and gets everything out so it is a wonderful little thing for me so tomorrow morning when I come out here these will be all fixed up go so that's it please consider us please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel and also check out our blog posts at Great Escape Farms calm thank you very much for tuning in and I'll see you on the next episode you

Channel: Great Escape Farms

Views: 99,488

Rating: 4.4408603 out of 5

Keywords: Closing The Inground Pool, Great Escape Farms, Winterizing the In Ground Pool

Id: FQyVgZbgb6E

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2016