Winter Is Not a Vacation for Your Pool

Cold weather doesn’t put a year‑round pool on pause—it rewrites the playbook. We walk through the real rules of winter care for open pools in warmer regions, showing you how to keep water clear, equipment safe, and surfaces protected when temperatures drop. From algae myths to smarter chemistry, you’ll get a practical framework you can use the same day.

First, we tackle the big misconception: cold water doesn’t kill algae, it only slows it. That’s why a steady 3–5 ppm chlorine residual still matters, especially if you fire up an attached spa for winter soaks. We explain how to prevent cloudy water and organic stains from leaves, bugs, and runoff, and we share a simple routine for skimming, vacuuming, and keeping your cleaner productive when debris spikes.

Next, we dig into chemistry that actually changes with temperature. Using the Langelier Saturation Index, we show why cooler water allows a higher pH target—often 7.8 to 8.0—to avoid corrosive conditions. You’ll learn when to dose acid lightly, how to balance alkalinity and calcium hardness, and why small adjustments protect plaster and metal components. We also cut through pump confusion: yes, you can run the system less than in summer, but not zero. A thoughtful 5–6 hour schedule maintains circulation, filtration, and cleaner coverage without wasting energy.

• definition of winterizing versus year‑round care
• why algae slows but still survives in cold water
• maintaining sanitizer for clarity and spa safety
• increased debris load and stain prevention
• adjusting pH and LSI targets in cold water
• essential pump runtime for circulation and cleaning
• practical gear tips for cold mornings
• client education and winter service value

Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. Again, go to the bottom and get your gloves there.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Winter Agenda
• 2:14 What Winterizing Really Means
• 3:59 Why Warm-Region Pools Stay Open
• 5:32 Myths About Cold Water And Algae
• 6:50 Keep Chlorine And Water Quality Up
• 8:18 Winter Brings More Debris And Dirt
• 9:44 pH, LSI, And Cold Water Balance
• 12:18 Yes, You Still Need Pump Run Time
• 13:59 Gear Tip: Cold Weather Gloves
• 15:19 Business Reality Of Winter Service
• 17:24 Seasons, Mindset, And Final Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Hi and welcome to the Pool Vic Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm gonna talk to you about winter and your pool, and specifically for those areas where we don't winterize our pools. And I'll go over real quick, briefly at the beginning, what that means, and some tips for winter pool care and things that you really can't ignore in the winter in those areas where your pool is open all season long. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. So what does it mean to winterize your pool? Well basically that's somewhere in that's that's in some certain regions, I should say, where the temperature gets freezing cold, and it's safer to winterize your pool, which means you're draining the water down past the skimmer, you're getting all of the water out of the pipes, and you're getting all the water out of the equipment, sometimes even storing the equipment in a place where it's not going to get damaged by the freezing cold weather. There's areas that are on the borderline, like parts of Texas, where there have been deep freezes that are unusual where the power goes out and then everything freezes. And there was one a few years ago where all the salt cells and filters and check valves cracked because what happens when things freeze, they start to thaw out, then they expand. And if you ever put anything in the freezer, like for instance, let's say you had a coke in a can and you put it in the freezer because you wanted to cool it off, but you forgot all about it. Get you open the freezer up the next day, and I can guarantee you that can has exploded and there's frozen soda all over the place. Same thing kind of happens with water in pool parts in those areas where it gets freezing cold, and so you have to definitely winterize the pool, cover it, and do these things to protect the pool from the harsh freezing weather. But fortunately, in Southern California, parts of Texas, Florida for sure, Arizona, Nevada, these states, we don't generally close our pools in the wintertime. Maybe there's some areas of Northern California where closing the pool is appropriate. But here, and most of the pools, of course, are kind of congregated in these areas: Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada, and we keep them open all year round. So we have what we call year-round pool service, and this means that we don't winterize the pools because it wouldn't be effective here to take a pool, cover it, and turn everything off for the winter. You'd have a pretty good swamp when you open things up again. The reason why it works back east, and in the some parts of the Midwest and the northern states, is that the water in the pool is freezing cold, sometimes even it turns to ice, and nothing really can live in that kind of cold temperature. If you do pool servers in these warmer states, you've noticed that in the wintertime, even if the pool has no chlorine in it, that the algae doesn't really form in it because algae needs warmer water to operate in, and if the water temperature is you know 10 or 20 degrees, 30 degrees, it's not gonna have algae in there. And it's one of those things where winterizing the pools in those areas does work for that reason because the water just gets extremely cold and there's really not much activity happening to that water. So let me state this kind of like with some common myths and some truths here that are part of winter pool service and winter pool care, I should say too. And one of them is it's cold, algae won't grow. And the truth is algae can still form in the cold water. And if you winterized your pool, or if you've seen these uh pools that sometimes are opened up where maybe the cover had a problem or they didn't put any closing chemicals in, they can open that pool up and it can be green as well, especially if they opened it up and it started getting warmer really fast. There's a certain temperature where algae kind of doesn't grow that fast, but you can still have algae here in Southern California in January with the water temperature's in the 50s. It's not unheard of. It's just one of those things where you don't get sometimes the algae bloom, and algae just grows slower, it just doesn't stop altogether, and it may appear like it stopped, but there are certain times where I've seen algae in the winter time. Not necessarily a full-blown green pool, but there has been algae in the winter, so it is kind of a myth that in the cold water algae won't grow, period. It still can grow, but it just grows slowly, and you may not have the algae blooms that you have in the summer. This one here is another one, and this one's I can turn down my chlorine to nothing. Well, you'd still need chlorine in the pool because as I mentioned, algae can still grow, albeit slowly, but then you can also lose your water quality where the pool gets cloudy because there's no chlorine. And besides that, if you do have an attached spa, you definitely would want to have some chlorine in it because unlike those states where they winterize their pool here in Southern California, we can still use our attached spa in the winter time, and you certainly don't want to turn on your spa and get in there with five or six people if there's no chlorine in the pool, because that's of course unsafe. Bacterian viruses have nothing killing it. So you do need to carry or keep some sanitizer in the pool. You wouldn't need the chlorine level at 10 parts per million, so to speak, but having a good residual chlorine of three to five parts per million is pretty standard in the wintertime here, and it does also prevent organic staining. Something that you have to think about is that leaf debris is gonna fall in the pool, dead bugs, dead animals will get in there, and so having a chlorine level in there also protects the surface from being stained by you know dead insects or leaf debris. Not sure if a dead animal will stain it, probably not, but the other things definitely could stain the surface temporarily, and something also that can stain the surface, and this is another one that really ties into this myth is that I don't have to clean my pool as often in the winter as I do in the summer. And the truth is in my service area, you're cleaning the pool probably more in the winter, it's kind of ironic, but in the summer, people are using their pool and the pools stay a lot cleaner in the summer. Most trees drop their debris in the wintertime or the springtime, so the summer is actually ideal and the pools stay pretty clean. In the wintertime, we have a lot of windstorms, a lot of leaf debris, a lot of rain, a lot of dirt gets washed into the pool. So, in reality, the truth of the matter in Southern California is you're doing more pool maintenance and cleaning than you are in the summer in most cases. And this is of course skimming the leaves off the top, vacuuming the leaves off the bottom of the pool, making sure that there's some chlorine in there, like I stated earlier, so that doesn't there's no staining from the leaf debris. And more importantly, is that the dirt dirt does have a lot of metals in it, and they can stain the pool. So you're gonna be vacuuming the dirt out of the pool in the winter time as well as in the summer. So it's one of those things where there's not really less maintenance or pool cleaning maintenance in the winter time, there's just as much and sometimes even more. And then here's another one as well. PH doesn't change in the winter. Now, granted, those customers or those areas I should say where they close the pool down for the winter, the water's freezing, so there really isn't a need to balance the pH in the pool because you can't really pour acid on ice and it's not going to do any good. But in cold water, the pH does the call, I should say it like this the acid demand or the need to add pH to the pool in cold water goes down significantly because if you use the LSI and if you go on the red app, you can see this firsthand that as the water temperature drops, the amount of the pH does not need to be down to 7.6 but say when the water temperatures in the 40s or 50s, because then you can have corrosive water. The pH can easily be at 7.8 or even 8.0 in a lot of cases in the winter. Because of the cold temperature, you really don't need to add a lot of muriac acid to lower down the pH. You're not going to be keeping all your pools at 7.4 in the winter because that could cause the water to be corrosive. So the cold water or the water temperature is a big factor in the LSI. And the LSI is primarily just for the pool surface. Is it scale form? Is the balance of the water, the chemistry balance, scale forming or corrosive? And in really cold water, the water can, the acid in there can make the water very corrosive. This, however, doesn't mean you shouldn't add murianic acid in the wintertime. In fact, you still have to check the pH and make small, slight adjustments when needed in the wintertime. Other states, maybe like Florida, where it doesn't really get that cold, the water doesn't get to like 50 degrees or 40 in the 40 degree mark. You still have to maintain a pretty good balance with the murific acid so that it's not scale forming. But again, the cold water can make adding too much acid to the pool very corrosive. So pH doesn't change much in the winter, true, but also true is that there is slight adjustments that do need to be made, and the pH does need to be watched in the winter as well as in the summer, of course. And here's one that I've heard before I don't have to run my pool pump in the winter time. And the truth is you do have to run your pool pump in the wintertime, just like the summer, but you won't run it as much, so you can't just turn the pump off, that's not gonna work. And I've had I had this customer one time, I think I don't know where they came from, somewhere back east, I think, and they moved to California, and they told me that back there they cover the pool the winter and they leave everything off. So they they actually bought this cover for the pool. I didn't I don't know how they were gonna put it on, but they bought this cover like the cover you have back east with the little hooks and everything. There was no way to put it on, and they were kind of wondering why there is no attachment in California for it. So I had to explain to them again, we keep the pools open all year round, and we have to keep the pump running a certain amount of time, and they were pretty flabbergasted by this. But it's the reality is you can run your pool less, of course, but you can't run your pool zero. So basically, if you're running your pool 12 hours in the summer, easily you can go to six hours. I don't have any problem with that. But the circulation is also important for cleanliness cleanliness of the pool. And if you run the pool for from 12 hours down to two hours, you're gonna have a lot of problems with debris going to the bottom. The cleaner's not gonna run long enough in the pool, and you may have you know really poor water quality, even with the cold water. So you're running the pool not just for circulating the water, circulating the chemicals, but you're also running the pool for cleanliness in the winter time. So keep that in mind that going from 12 hours down to say five or six hours in the winter is going to make the pool a little more messy because the automatic cleaner is not running as much, the skimmer's not running as much, and there's probably a higher debris load in most areas in the winter time. A brief little side note here if you go to my website and scroll down to the very bottom of the webpage, you're gonna see pool guide gear. And I suggest you go here and you get my cold weather gloves, they're gonna be yellow, they're Atlas Nitrite gloves. Just click on the Amazon link and you'll see them here. And these are gloves that I wear in the winter that are 26 inches long, they go all the way up to your armpits basically. And you could also get the large size and put if you have if you're kind of a medium build like me, I'm 145 pounds, 5'7. You can actually put cloth gloves and on your hands, and I put these Atlas gloves over them because in those early morning, the first few pools, it's freezing cold, and touching your pool pole and touching the water, your hands feel like they're gonna, you know, fall off, your fingers are gonna fall off. But truthfully, these gloves are gonna save you out there. You can empty out skimmer baskets, you can vacuum pools, you can skim with them. And it sounds like I'm selling these things, you know. And if you order now, you get a free Ginsu knife thrown in. But I'm not really selling them, I just think they're great as far as protection from the cold water. And you definitely want to get a pair of these if you do any kind of pool service in the winter. Again, website swimming poollearning.com. At the very bottom, there's pool guy gear. Click on the gloves, and you're gonna really be thankful to have these in the winter time. Now, back to our scheduled program. Anyway, uh basically, winter pool care is much different than summer pool care. This is in the time of year, also where the pool service companies recoup a lot of their summer expenses, so it really is not good and it hurts our feelings, I guess I should say, but it's bad for business when a customer is like, well, you know, it's winter time now and I think I'm gonna just cancel my service and do it myself, and I'll call you back in the summer. I don't do that. If the customer doesn't really want winter pool service, I don't keep that customer. I'll just tell them, well, you know, this is a year-round pool service, and I explained to them nicely that you know, in the summertime we're dealing with a lot of algae and chemical issues, and we're we're using a lot more resources on maintaining the pool. And in the wintertime, we kind of recoup on our chemical costs because we're not using as many chemicals. And if the reason why I can charge this monthly rate is because I'm counting summer and winter together as one whole year, and it's important they know that that you know the wintertime is when you kind of recoup some of your cost from the chemical usage, and truthfully, you you recoup some of your mental capacity because in the summer you're fighting so many different things. The heat, the you know, the chemical usage, I should say again, the allergy outbreaks here and there, that in the wintertime you're just skimming leaves basically and trying to keep your hands hands warm, and so it's a different mindset. You're kind of switching from summer to winter mode. I prefer winter over summer, honestly. I don't mind cleaning pools, I don't mind the cold as much. I'd rather be cold than hot. But then, of course, when it's like in the morning, 40 degrees out or 45 degrees out, my hands are freezing. I'm always thinking, man, I wish it was 80 degrees out or 90 degrees out. So it's only human nature to wish for the opposite season when it's happening. But winter pool care is definitely a different beast, and it's something that you have to be prepared for in this kind of service outdoor service industry. If you're new to the business and you're starting out and you've just gotten through a really brutal hot summer, winter's coming, and in some areas it can be extremely cold and really no fun out there. So you're dealing with seasons, you know, in the winter we get rain, we get the wind, in the summer we get the heat. And it's one of those things that take it or leave it, you know, you're gonna either love pool service being outdoors or not. But the wintertime definitely has its challenges, and it does have some advantages, in my opinion, as well. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swingprolearning.com. Again, go to the bottom and get your gloves there, and you can find them by clicking on the podcast icon on the banner, and there's a drop down menu of close to 1800 podcasts there for you. If you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have the rest of your week. God bless.