The Deep End Pool Podcast
Coming to you every week with tips, tricks, and knowledge about everything from pool construction to maintenance and chemistry. Frank and Jacque Disher invite you into their world of water. Frank loves chemistry and will quickly blow your mind as he rattles off chemicals and combinations. All the while, his sidekick Jacque will keep him reigned in and on topic...most of the time. Listen in for a fantastic, fun, and educational time.
The Deep End Hosts
Frank and Jacque Disher were childhood sweethearts, and they
have a chemistry between themselves that makes them appealing
and entertaining to their listeners. They have even had a few
listeners remark that they no longer own a swimming pool, but
they still listen to the show and enjoy the banter between this
loving couple.
Frank has 29 years of experience in the pool industry and has
successfully run his business in the Dallas/Fort Worth market
since 1997. Frank transitioned his business and joined the
Poolwerx franchise group in 2017. Frank and Jacque have
received numerous industry awards, and they are the only current
two-time Poolwerx Franchise Partner of the Year recipients. Frank
has a passion for education and is always seeking to find new
and better products and information that will improve the
experience of swimming pool owners and make pool
professionals better at what they do. Frank has a teacher’s heart
and loves to educate and share his knowledge and experiences.
His southern accent, slang, and sense of humor, combined with
Jacque’s brilliance and wit, make them a joy to listen to.
Jacque has a master’s degree in theatre and has spent many
years on stage and teaching at all levels in the Dallas / Fort
Worth, Texas, area. Her pool industry experience is limited to the
administrative side of the business. Still, she brings a honed
theatrical talent to the podcast and is the perfect partner for
asking questions the novice pool owner and pool pro would ask
when seeking to understand. Her humor and natural fun
interaction with Frank create the ideal chemistry to make the
show a favorite for listeners.
The Deep End Pool Podcast
Ep157 Winter Emergency Freeze Protection. Be prepared!
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Welcome to The Deep End Pool Podcast! In this episode, Frank and Jacque discuss the critical steps every pool owner and pool professional should take to prepare for a sudden winter freeze. From water level maintenance to quick winterization tips, we share the best practices for protecting your pool equipment and preventing costly freeze damage. Whether you're facing unexpected freezing conditions or just preparing for the winter season, this episode will help ensure your pool is safe and secure through the cold months ahead.
Chapters & Timeline:
00:00 - Introduction: Winter Freeze Preparedness
02:10 - Why Evaporation and Low Water Levels Are a Big Threat
06:30 - The Importance of Filling Your Pool Before a Freeze
10:50 - Emergency Winterization Tips: Quick Actions to Protect Your Equipment
16:00 - Keeping Your Pool Flowing: Avoiding Loss of Prime
18:45 - Protecting the Pool Equipment: Drain Plugs and Unions
23:20 - Preventing Ice Damage: Ice in the Pool and Skimmers
30:00 - Winterizing Other Pool Equipment: Heat Pumps, Chlorinators, and More
33:30 - Ice-Busting Techniques and Ice Protection in Your Pool
38:10 - Final Thoughts: How to Stay Prepared
40:00 - Conclusion: Best Practices for Winter Freeze Protection
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The Deep End Pool Podcast focuses on residential pool maintenance and may not cover commercial pool requirements. Please consult the CDC and local authorities and code requirements for commercial pool maintenance.
Email us questions and show suggestions at deependfrank@gmail.com.
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Hashtags:
#WinterFreezeProtection, #PoolEquipment, #EmergencyWinterization, #PoolCare, #FreezeProtection
Tags:
winterization, pool equipment, pool care, pool maintenance, winter freeze, emergency winterization, freeze protection, Hayward, Polaris, Pentair, pool heater, pool pump, pool filter, water flow, evaporation, pool protection, swimming pool, freeze damage, pool owners, swim university, thepoolguy, trouble free pool, swimming pool tips and tricks
Please give us a 5 star rating and a review, and contact us at deependfrank@gmail.com for questions and show ideas. Thank you
Welcome to the deep end pool podcast for pool owners and the swimming pool service professional. All of our sponsors are brands that we know, trust and use in our own business. We are brought to you by pool works for healthy pool people. That's pool works.com pool W, E, R x.com, if there isn't a pool works near you, become the pool works near you. Special thanks to blu ray XL, the best pool mineral purification. System in the industry, Blu ray all day. Fluidra and their many brands, including candy pool equipment and Polaris the most advanced automatic pool cleaners in the industry, Cyclone filter tools, save time, save water and save your back all save pool, fence nets and pool covers over 25 years of providing the best equipment to secure pool areas, saving the lives of children and pet clear comfort a patented hydroxyl based water treatment system, the future of water treatment and our friends in IPSA, independent Pool and Spa Service Association, improving the industry through community education and support. The Deep End pool podcast focuses on residential pool maintenance and may not cover commercial pool commercial pool requirements, please consult the CDC and your local authorities and code requirements for commercial pool maintenance. Now let's solve some pool problems with your host, Frank and Jackie Disher, Hey, everybody, happy new year. It's New Year in like two days, three days, bye, 2024, I did not like and they just announced all algae is dead. You're dead. Hey friends. Welcome to the deep end with Frank and Jackie, his psychic and life and on the air, we are doing our last of 2024 podcast of 2024 and maybe ever we don't know what's gonna happen? Are you three interrupting? You go, you go, I was gonna say of 2024 don't let them think that. Oh my gosh. What? No, our last podcast of 2024 because it will be 2025 when we see you. In quotation marks again next weekend. Yeah, next episode will be the first of 2025 we got a little bit of rearranging going on in sponsors and stuff like that, but I'm excited. It's gonna be a great year. Our video stuff is getting I'm putting a lot of work into it. We're getting a lot out there. If you want to check out our 44 second pool school with Frank on our YouTube channel. Awesome. That's YouTube. You can search at deep in Frank, the at sign deep in Frank, you can find us on YouTube. You can find us on Tik Tok the same way and on Instagram. It's like, just look deep in Frank. Instagram hates me. So they don't hate you. They don't know how to deal with you in Twitter, Twitter, I just throw stuff at Twitter. I don't even you know, just copied. Is it? Is it? But is a different name? What's that Twitter? Is it something? No, it's tax. No. Twitter's X, okay, yeah, I'm learning me some x and some tick tock, because I don't know anything about those so, but I'm learning those. We had a fabulous holiday Christmas. I could not even have fantasized about it being any different. We had Disher Christmas last Saturday night. Yeah and yeah, check out, go to our Tiktok. And I think I got on YouTube and everything. I did a video on the whole family at ICE, which is really cool. I was just about to say we had everybody together on Sunday morning at ICE. And when I say everybody that is all four kids, all four of their spouses, all four of our grandkids and we were, we have 14 people all together in one in the same place. Yep, I'm not sure that's ever happened. No, it's Yeah, typically somebody's not there. But no in Disher Christmas, we had everybody, except for my niece that was out of Austin area. She just had a baby. But everybody else, Bailey was visiting her mom, all the things. Yeah, it was, it was a good, busy, busy week. It was awesome. And then our littles got to stay over until Monday. So that was and then Alex, our oldest son, had his birthday on Christmas Eve. And then, of course, Santa came all the things, and then here we are, so into winter. Yes, we're getting deep in the winter. There's some talk. I keep hearing talk of a from my cup Well, you know, you never know with weather people. I mean, I always say this, you know, I was an air traffic controller, and we tell the weather guys, you. If we were as accurate as weather guys were at doing our jobs, then flying in a commercial airplane would be considered an extreme sport that only people with the Death Wish played, because they're not accurate. They're not accurate at all. I mean, it's not their fault, you know? It's it's like, Hey, let me guess what God's gonna do. Yeah, good luck with that. You never know. We've had some weather. This is gross, but they are predicted in a couple weeks. There's a possibility the South is gonna get it. We're gonna get ice, we're gonna get snow, we're gonna get all that. So I'm gonna fire up the winter stuff again, and let's talk about it. Just get it fresh on everybody's heads. Remind people, hey, don't forget to do this. Don't forget to do that. Because, trust me, y'all, if things go bad with cold weather in your pool, it's expensive, right? It's very and you may think, Oh, I wanna I this. I don't even need to listen to this, but listen to me clearly, we have a greater need to be reminded than informed. Yes, because we have forgotten more things than we've ever learned. Well, we all got comfortable there for several years, and we had Snowmageddon come through Texas, and Texas sucked all the pool equipment out of the United States, oh my gosh. And you traveled. I went everywhere I could go to get full equipment, because the amount of damage that was in Texas was incredible. It's ridiculous, and it ain't like, you know, I'm sure some guys made money and all that. But we were out there quoting equipment and doing everything we could to get it, but by the time we would get it and get it installed, the price of that equipment went up two or three times. And some people just told people, I got people to pay for it. You're gonna pay two or three times or, you know, because my price went up. But some of us, I mean, I had a lot of people crying in their backyards, yes, and it was the most stressful term in my professional life, as dealing with all these issues and all the stress, and then didn't make any more money than I would have on a normal year. We were on the back end of COVID. And then, yeah, it was rough. It was rough. It was so today's episode is things that I feel like everybody needs to be reminded of on being prepared for the cold. Yeah, okay, and I want to start with, people don't expect it. Some people do if they've been through a few hard winters, but people don't expect the amount of evaporation that we get when the air is extremely cold and dry and it is super dry, and the amount of wind and all that that's blowing through, typically with these northerns, how much evaporation happens, And people aren't ready for it. And here's the thing you know, like in the south, if you, if we're, if you're in a region that does not winter rise their pools, then you basically just keep your pool running, and we just pray that we keep electricity. Right now, a lot of people have backup electricity, and eventually I want to get that too, you know, my personal home, but a lot of people got that. But even that can fail, and other reasons can cause you to lose flow in your pool, not just loss of electricity. If your water level gets low and your skimmers suck air in, your pump loses prime, that pump is going to stop moving water, even though there's still a ton of water trapped in your equipment at your equipment pad. So if it cannot move water because it can't draw water, that water sitting in there will freeze, it will expand, freeze and damage all your equipment and your above ground plumbing. So you need to make sure that going in to a hard freeze when it's predicted, you make dang sure you fill your pull up as high as you can to the bottom of the overflow, as high as you as you would ever fill it for just maintenance filling. Take it to the very top of that, because you're going to have increased evaporation. And it ain't like when there is 15 degrees outside. It ain't like you can just go screw on your water hose and run it out there and start pumping water into the pool when it's 15 degrees outside, because there's a really good chance your water spigots are frozen and you cannot add water to your pool the way you normally do it, there's a good chance your sprinkler valves are shut off because you don't want to damage all your sprinklers. So your sprinkler guy is gone and shut off your sprinkler system. And if you fill your swimming pool. From your sprinkler system, then you you can no longer do that, so you have to come up with Plan B. And what I always recommend is that you keep a dry water hose that's empty, you know, with no water in it, in your garage or somewhere in a shed or somewhere where it won't freeze. And then if you have to get water in your pool, there's a few things you can do. Sometimes people's water heaters, like out in their garage or whatever, it will have a spigot on that you don't want to pump the hot water. I mean, that's just wasteful. You want to grab the inlet side where the cold water is coming into the water heater. Sometimes they have a spigot there. You can connect to that spigot and run water to the pool from your water heater, or you can take your washing machine. It's the same size spigot that they use outside on the outdoor water spigots. It's the same size spigot that feeds your washing machine. So you can pull your washing machine out a little bit. You can connect your water hose to that spigot, which is not going to be frozen, and run it through your house, out a window or out through a crack door or whatever, and fill your pool that way. All of this is just, it's preventing extremely expensive damage, because when water starts expanding, it can break dang near anything, you know, I'm sure you've seen videos and stuff where ice has crushed ships, you know, big O iron ships. It will destroy a ship. It can dang sure destroy your tile, it can destroy your pump, it can destroy your filter, your heater. So the number one thing that is make sure you have access to water and make sure you have or you have monitored and you have prepared your pool to fill it as high as you can when this hard freeze hits. Okay, so that that gets you a long way. All right. The next thing, before we go to break I want to talk about is winterization. Winterizing your swimming pool equipment now up north, and this is not a complete winterization up north, they blow all the water out of their plumbing lines. They plug them at the pool. They plug them in the skimmer. They put antifreeze in the skimmers. It's a special antifreeze. Y'all don't just go dump an antifreeze into your pool, but they have all the all these things that they do to winterize a pool. We're not talking that's what we're doing here. We're talking emergency winterization, something you can go out and do in five or 10 minutes, because you woke up it's 40 degrees in the house. You look outside, ice is already forming on your pool, so you have to save your pool equipment if you lose a little bit of plumbing here and there. Okay, you lost a little bit of plumbing. You know what? You can go to Home Depot and get plumbing all day, every day in the week. So we're not worried that much about some plumbing getting cracked, because that's that's inexpensive compared to a new pump is well over $2,000 a new filter is right around$2,000 a new heater is right around$5,000 you know, and then Chlorinators and valves and stuff like that, you want to get as much water out of your pool equipment as you can. Even when we had Snowmageddon here in Texas, it got down to zero degrees. Y'all. There was not a degree left in the state of Texas. Nobody knew what to do. We don't do zero. We don't know. No we we did not know how to act with no temperature. We did not so, but it was freaking cold, but you got to keep the water moving in the equipment. If you have a valve shut off the end, you have plumbing trapped in that valve. It's going to possibly freeze that plumbing and break that plumbing. Okay, if you're like, Okay, well, I'll sacrifice that. But what if it breaks it at the valve? Now, the water that's on the other side of the valve can escape, and then you lose a lot of water, and then you lose prime and then everything freezes anyway. But what I was going to say is, even when it was zero degrees outside here in Texas, our frost, they call it a frost level. Our frost level is like two or three inches. It's very, very shallow. We just don't get that cold, and so the ground stays warm, but we lost no plumbing underground. Everything we lost was above ground. And so if your pool equipment is sitting higher than your pool, you open everything up and let all that water drain down. It's going to drain down to pull. Level, and you're going to get it all the water out of the plumbing, out of the equipment, and if you can just get it an inch below the the surface of the ground here in North Texas, you're fine. Now, if you're in a little bit colder place where y'all got a little bit, you know, deeper frost line, then you know, all right, maybe you need do something a little different or just deal with it, but the main thing you're trying to protect is your pool equipment, because PVC is cheap. PVC can be fairly easily fixed. You don't want to break and destroy the expensive stuff. So just one quick tip, this is important, familiarize yourself with where all your drain plugs are. Now know where they are, be familiar with them. Have the tools handy and set aside so you can grab your little bundle of tools that you're going to need to pull all the drain plugs on your pool equipment right? You can just grab it, get out there. You know where they're at. Go right to them. Pull them out. Put all your plugs that you pull out. Put them in your pump basket so they don't get lost. And you can get this done quickly. Because, trust me, y'all, if you're not familiar and there's six inches of snow on the ground, that's not the time to go meet them and have a party. It's 10 degrees outside, and you're out there digging through snow, trying to find where your drain plugs are. Yeah, that sucks that I bet if you looked up super sucks in the dictionary. It's going to have a picture of a guy digging around a pump trying to find his dream plug. So get yourself familiar now. Have the tools ready. Know exactly what tools you need. Hopefully you'll never need them, but if you do need them, you're going to be glad that you did not have to spend an extra 30 minutes out there or in your garage trying to find the right tool. And if you're like most old men, and you got some age on you, you don't want to be throwing tools because you can't find the ones you need. You know, I remember my dad. I don't know how to work on cars, because you don't get around my dad, when he was working on cars, tools were flying. So if you just protect yourself, protect your state of mind. Know this going into the freeze. Don't try to figure it out during the freeze. So we're gonna go to break and when we come back, we got a few other things we're gonna talk about. The drowning prevention is a number one concern for pool owners with children and pets. A proper barrier on or round of pool is an excellent solution for reducing these drowning risks. For over 25 years, all safe has been providing quality equipment to secure pool areas, saving the lives of children and pets. All safe pool fences, nets and pool covers are the number one choice of satisfied customers nationwide. Our network of local installers and consultants will work with you honestly and fairly to determine the best safety solution for your pool. All safe pool fence and covers is your trusted source for ASTM compliant products. We are ready to help you ensure your pool is safe, secure and covered for years to come visit all safe pool.com for more information and make your pool safe for years to come. That's all safe pool.com blu ray XL is the power of minerals working for you reduce your overall chemical costs and labor up to 50% guaranteed, whether you have 20 accounts or 20,000 blu ray XL, direct pricing and free shipping to the pool trade. Have you covered? Improving pool professionals profit and work life balance is what they do. Blu ray XL, the real mineral purifier. Visit them at blu ray xl.com, Blu ray all day. Do you want to stop the cycle of metal staining and keep your pool and spa stain free all year long? Do you want happy customers while saving time and money introducing periodic products? See you later, metal eliminator and stain preventer, your answer for metal free and stain free pools, sequestering agents only temporarily suspend metals. See you later, removes and eliminates all stain causing metals like iron, copper, cobalt and manganese and it changes color to identify the metals removed. Visit, see you later.com. That's C, U, L, A, T, O, r.com, and use code Deep End 44 for a special discount. It's not magic, it's science. Hey Jack, hey Frank. Have you ever wondered how you can clean between all those pesky. Filter pleats on a cartridge filter. Yeah, I lose sleep over it. I mean, it's so tedious and it takes forever, I could never seem to get them all clean. Well, here's a pro tip. Try the cyclone filter cleaner. It uses water pressure from your garden hose to spin the filter as you clean it. This allows all the filter pleats to get thoroughly cleaned out. And the best part is it is fast and doesn't hurt your back. Wow. The cyclone filter cleaner. You got it? The cyclone filter cleaner, you can thank me later. Thank and what I love about their filter cleaner is they have this wand. It's the best filter cleaning spray device I've ever used. We've tried many, many different ones. They got a short version now and they got a long version. But I love using those things. Even on our de filters, we use their wands. And do we have a code? We have a special discount code. If you go to cyclone filter tools.com and use code deep end, you'll save 10% on your order so you can buy direct from them, great stuff. I'm glad I found it. We got one on every truck. My guys love it. Guys, don't miss out on this. This is the best filter cleaning system out there, renowned worldwide for quality and reliability fluid road the industry, leading global manufacturer of commercial and residential swimming pool equipment and connected pool Solutions has a long history of innovation and excellence dating back more than 100 years. Their extensive portfolio of brands include some of the most trusted product lines in the industry, like Polaris Jandy, zodiac, cover pools, grand effects, nature two CMP, Dell Taylor and I Aqua link, so from the pool pad to the pool deck and everything in between. Luidra has all your pool needs covered. How much acid, how much glory. Hey, friends, welcome back to the deep end. We are in a what I'm gonna call a Boy Scout, Girl Scout episode for winter. Be prepared. So this is the winter season. Be prepared. Be prepared. There are things that you can do. I love that you were like, know where this is and know where that is beforehand. Because when you're in the middle of it, you have no idea and no clue, and you get frustrated. I don't know how many times I've had people call me late at night. They lost power. It's freaking cold outside, and they're out there in their freaking long johns, in their boots, in a coat, asking me on a filming, yeah, well, on a FaceTime, asking me, oh, what do I do now? What do I do now? And they're freaking out. Show me the this. I mean, like, what if I want to answer? What if I had my phone turned off? You know who they gonna call in? Ghostbusters. Yeah, boy. So, so, all right, so there's a there's a few other things that I did I do want to talk about. And one of them is, if you have a flooded system, a flooded system is where your pool equipment is lower than your pool Okay, so that kind of screws you, because you cannot drain your pool equipment with just simply drain your pool equipment and everything drained down below ground level because the water in the pool was higher than the equipment. So you need to figure out how you can shut flow off to your equipment, pull your plugs where it won't drain out of your equipment, and if you don't have valves, and maybe get some valves, and then wrap all that plumbing that has water trapped in it that you cannot evacuate, wrap it and cover it best you can and hope for the best. I would recommend using like mylar blankets, as well as like wool blankets and anything to try to trap any heat coming up from the ground. Do not put heat sources around your plumbing or your pull equipment. Why is that? I've seen a lot of people damaged things. They would have got away scot free. The huge horse they put out there did not melt something. I had a guy melt a hole through his filter, and because of that, he never lost power, but he melted a hole through his filter. He was in the house filter, spray of water everywhere. A pool goes down about a foot. Pull pump loses prime, everything, all this equipment froze anyway. Oh, because he couldn't move water, yeah, because he put a heat source out there next to his pull equipment. Do not do that if you're going to be able to keep your pump running and keep water moving, you don't need to cover it, you don't need to wrap it. You don't need to do all that other stuff. And here's the thing, y'all, if you're going to lose power, chances are any heat source you put out there is going to lose power too, and it's not going to do you any good anyhow. So just be careful or learn your equipment. If you've got questions, find a local person. Pro that can come tell you, Okay, this is what you need to do. I know I offer a video where I'll go out and I do a video of what they need to do to winterize their pool that way. They always have that video. And it's like, hey, it's supposed to get really cold tomorrow, and maybe some eyes. Hey, let's watch that video and be prepared, and let's get the tools together and all that. And there are a lot of companies that will scramble last minute going around emergency winterizing people's equipment. But boy, it's if, if you don't want to worry about it, schedule that ahead of time. Sure you know not the day of the freeze. Have them do it two or three days before the freeze and then come back two or three days after the freeze and get you back up and going pool companies, you know, this time of year, you know, a lot of us are, you know, looking for stuff for guys to do. So hopefully they can get to you if you need them. But don't count on it. So try to go and get it scheduled if they're saying, hey, next Saturday, it's supposed to get really freaking cold and we may get some ice. Maybe go ahead and make that phone call say, hey, John's pool service, or hey, pull work Sarasota, or hey, pull works Charlotte or whatever. Come on out here and winterize my pool equipment so I don't have to worry about it. And you don't have to have those people coming. After, yeah, after, yeah, yeah. The roofer kind of mean that sounds bad about roof first. I don't mean that. I just mean people that come after the fact, yeah, kind of may not, yeah, yeah. Well, you're gonna be so much better off. Just if you do that's just prevent the damage instead of Yeah, because there, there are, I know when that happened in Texas, we had guys coming in from every state union coming down here with trailers, load of trailer, loads of equipment. And yeah, screwing some people and a lot of guys that weren't qualified. It was really bad. Yeah, all right. Something else I want to talk about on pull equipment is watch your clothes lines again, like if you have a ozone system or something like that, where you because now they have these AOP systems, have UV and ozone. Don't forget to pull the plugs on those things and drain those if you need to drain them, if you are winterizing, if there's if there's a piece of equipment that you cannot find the drain plug, or it doesn't have a drain plug, but it has unions. Go ahead and undo the unions and let the water come out of the system. Like heat pumps, I see a lot of heat pumps that do not have a drain plug, so you have to undo the unions. A lot of Chlorinators do not have drain plugs. Some of them do, but a lot of them do not. So just undo the unions your salt cell. Take your salt cell out of line, and just put it in a big old freezer baggy, set it down there. Let the freeze happen. And I'm talking if you're emergency winterizing, let the freeze happen, then put it back together. Make sure you lube all your O rings. Make sure you get all your O rings. When you're pulling things apart, you get all those O rings and put everything together so they don't get lost. Make sure you lube them up. Real good when you put them back. All right. Another couple tips I want to talk about on freeze damage is actually in the pull. If it's a really, really hard, long cold spell, you can get thick sheets of ice build up on the surface of the pool, and ice expanding has can create incredible forces on the outer edges where it's expanding, and it can just grind tile and plaster and just bust it all the pieces. So you don't want that ice to build up in big, thick sheets, so you want to break it up. Now, what I I've got a mall for all my guys. A mall is like a big sledge hammer, except it's got a sharp end. And I give all my guys malls, and they can go around, and they can bust ice up in these poles when they're there, but they can't be there three times a day. You know? They'll break it up somewhat. But if you're using a big, heavy tool like that to break your ice, you're not building a railroad. Okay? You're not trying to go on mine. You just want to break the ice. So don't swing it like you're trying to drive a spike in the ground. Take, just take the weight of the head and drop it straight up and down and bust the ice from the top. You know, I see a lot of people, though, damage their coping, and they damage their tile, swinging these big sledge hammers trying to break ice. And they hit their tower, hit their coping, and they break that. Wow. They might have got away without any damage, but now they get the fixed tile. So keep that in mind. Don't, Don't unnecessarily break things that weren't going to get broke anyway. All right, and your skimmers, all right, we don't want our skimmers to freeze solid across Right, right? Because that they are plastic, and they can fairly easily crack if they get thick. I. Ice in them. So what I recommend on skimmers is you take half empty water bottles, you pour half the water out, or drink it or pour it in your pole. You got to fill your pool up anyway, and float those half empty so they'll be partially in the water, partially out of the water. Float those in your skimmers, so you can do one two in each skimmer. All right, what that does is, when that ice is building and creating outward pressure, well, now some of that pressure can go inwards and crush that bottle, versus push out and crack the skimmer, so that that takes some that force away. And if you have a hole in the ice from where that bottle was, if you need to break that up because it's getting thick, you have a fault point. So put using the sledge hammer, dropping the sledge hammer on that straight up and down, it's much more likely to break easily than you really having to use some force and to break it up. So I love doing the water bottles and the skimmers. I think it's very helpful. It's a trick. I don't even remember who taught who taught me that years ago, but it works really good. And then you can do the same thing in your pool and your hot tub. You can take, like, half empty milk jugs or any floating container that will float, you know, submerged two or three inches, and have two or three inches above the water level. Well, just put those things in there, and the ice will build up around those, but it won't build through those. So you have these big spots that can be compressed on versus so the ice doesn't only have to push out, it can push inward on that also, and again, it makes it much more easy to break the ice when you have holes in the ice. So watch your tanning ledges and stuff like that. Those are typically, you know, any place that you don't have good water movement. You want to make sure that, you know, you keep the ice broke up on those. Because I see a lot of people, they got really shallow tanning ledges, and then if their water level got low, and then they got a solid sheet of ice across that tanning ledge. It just grinds it to nothing, yeah, and then it breaks the tile. And on your returns, y'all, I know the water is cold, and this goes against everything I've always preach to you about, you know, we want our return jets down and around. This is the only time that it's okay to, in my opinion, to go ahead and bring those jets to the surface and point them at skimmers that will help keep the ice from clogging up skimmers because the water broke with the boiling water on the top is not going to freeze. It's only going to freeze in areas that are calm. So if you're blowing right at the throat of a skimmer, you're the ice is not going to build up there. And you'll have a lot of areas in the pool. So you don't get these solid sheets. You have all these broken areas just because of the turbulence of the water doesn't freeze. You know, you look at these rivers and these beer commercials, they got these rivers, man, it's freaking cold there, but you know what? The water's still running and where the water's moving fast and boiling a lot, and turbulent, it doesn't freeze there. It only freezes on the edges where it was calm, and it would eventually work its way out, and I guess it could completely freeze across, but you're still going to have areas where the moving water did not freeze. So because one of the problems we have, and you know, we talk about water level, something you need to be keen on, is ice clogging up the throat of the skimmer and blocking water flow into the skimmer, and then the skimmer sucks dry, not because your water level was low, but because, you know, water could get to the skimmer, so the water that was in the skimmer got sucked out. Pump, lost prime, could not fill back up. Pump runs dry for a day or two. You burn up your pump. You freeze everything else. Your pump cracks anyway, your filter cracks, your heater cracks. So try to keep those skimmer throats clear, or just pull from the bottom drain if that situation arises, if you can valve your pull equipment to where you're only pulling from the floor drain, then pull from that if you that situation rises. But I don't want you to just do that if you, if you can keep flow to your skimmer, because that helps keep the skimmer from freezing, because the water's moving right, right. So all right. But that was just a few points I wanted to bring up on you guys, or bring up with you guys, because I don't want to hear about anybody getting hurt and losing a lot of money, because, and we don't know what the weather is going to be like. Yeah, we have no idea couple weeks here, but it may be we've gotten snow and ice in February and March. That's what snow beginning was. And, you know, a little bit north in Oklahoma. I mean, they Oklahoma just gets beat up. They do. And so I just, I feel like, and we have a lot of listeners in Oklahoma, and so, well, most of Oklahoma winterizes. They fall out winterize, yeah, and this time of year is just so precarious. It's just hard to know and prepare. But it's better to be like I said, a boy scout or a Girl Scout, and be prepared. Do the Girl Scouts say be prepared? Is that part? But I didn't want to leave anybody out. Oh yeah, you know. I just want to say Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Y'all, they're probably laughing at me right now. We didn't mean to misgender you scouts. That's not what I was saying. I was just saying, No girl I was a Girl Scout. I don't know what the motto was. I'm so sorry all you Girl Scout people out there. I was not a boy scout. My family didn't do that kind of thing. So we just did not. We went in the woods, but we'd never, we didn't wear fancy uniforms to do it so. But all right, hey, thank you all our sponsors. Thank you. Pull works. I'm looking forward to a great another great year. Man, Blu Ray, Excel, all safe fence and pull covers. We got See you later. We got cyclone filter tools, fluidra, IPSA. And I think I taught and I think I said, pull works. So thank you. Thank you to all you guys for a great 2024 and we're looking for even better 2025 Hey, y'all make sure you go to our videos everywhere you just search at deep in Frank you can find us. And we got some really good videos out on this winterization and everything else. Check out our 44 second pool schools. Great tips for the pool beginner, but we will see y'all next week. We'll see you next year. Go next year. The answers for you keeps you water blue, make you pull like new. So take your diamond to the deep end. The Deep End, if you don't mind a dead joke, the deep end, you can fix what's broke. The Deep End there. End. They're really good folks. 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