Winterizing Your Home Pool

If you own an in-ground swimming pool and live in a climate where freezing temperatures are normal, you'll need to winterize your pool to protect it during cold-weather months. This will protect it from damage due to freezing water and keep it as clean as possible for the next season.

Check Your Chemistry

The first step in the winterization procedure is to make sure your water chemistry is balanced, including the pool's pH, total alkalinity, and calcium hardness. Doing this will protect the edge of the pool from staining and etching. Adding a winterizing chemical kit to your water will help keep it blue and clear for the next season. Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions for the kit. Do not use a floater that contains a strong oxidizer (chlorine or bromine) because the floater may stick against the pool wall and stain or bleach it.

Protect the Skimmer

When water freezes, it expands. This can cause great damage to your pool, pool plumbing, and its filter system. To avoid this, lower the water below the mouth of your skimmer(s). This will get the water out of the throat of the skimmer which can be easily damaged if water were to freeze there.

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Clean & Repair Rain Gutters

As fall approaches, leaves fall and begin to gather on roofs and in gutters.  One of the best ways to prevent water entering your home is to make sure your gutters are offering proper drainage for your home.  Wet leaves left on the roof can cause mold and a number of other damaging issues.  If you have a really tall house or a steeply angled roof, it might be best to hire a professional to help you out!

Repair Cracks in Concrete

Various temperatures create different stresses on a number of elements in your home.  Your concrete, like garage floor, foundation, or even house walls can begin to show signs of wear.  In the summer, the heat forces the stone to slightly expand, while the stone contracts in the colder months.  While it’s normal and expected, over time the fluctuations can be too much for the concrete.  Cracks in your concrete are typically not too hard to repair (unless it’s in the foundation) but are necessary in maintaining the integrity of your home.  If water seeps up from the foundation, it can ruin your floors, walls, and anything else the water may touch.  It’s best to take care of these repairs quickly and they can be as easy as using a caulk gun and doing it yourself!  

Replace or Seal Old Wood

Old window and door frames can be a huge culprit in allowing water into your home.  If you own an older home, the sealant on wood can begin to wear down and expose the material to air and water.  The elements can begin to break down the integrity of the wood, sometimes allowing water into your home.  Sometimes, the fix is as easy as resealing the material, while other times it may take a full removal and re-install process.  Your best bet is to ask a professional to inspect the wood to make sure it won’t cause you future problems.

Update Door and Window Seals

When we say ‘seals’, we don’t mean the wood trim and frame around the windows and doors.  We’re talking about the rubbery material that creates an airtight seal around your windows and door.  As most plastics and rubbers, they will wear down over time.  The rubber can shrink and become stiff, hard, and holy, exposing holes in the seal.  With these holes, water, air, and sometimes little insects can get into your home.  Just like a windshield wiper loses its effectiveness over time, these guys should also be looked at if you’re having leakage around your windows or doors.

Check the Basement

Basements are typically the most common thing to flood in a home.  There are many things that can contribute to basement flooding like cracked concrete, leaky washer & dryer intake, or old basement windows.  Make the effort to check out your basement from time to time to make sure everything is properly sealed to keep everything dry!

Water Damage: Seen & Unseen

Water Damage?  Dry Rot?  Drywall damage?

If you’ve had any sort of flooding or water leak, it’s important to keep an eye on your drywall for any areas that might be sagging, collapsing, wrinkling, bulging, or falling.  Drywall makes up a large majority of the walls and ceilings in your home, unless your home was built before the 1950’s, then it most likely has plaster instead.  Drywall is fairly inexpensive to replace comparatively, and can even look like it with the application of plaster over the drywall.  

Wet drywall can compromise the integrity of the wall itself.  When the material gets wet, it swells and can break away from the fasteners, and could be structurally unstable even after drying.  If left unnoticed, the life of the wall or ceiling will be drastically reduced.  While water damage should be pretty obvious, there’s a myriad of issues that a flood or leak can cause BEHIND the drywall.  

Mold Growth

It only takes between 24-48 hours for mold to begin growing in an area that has been exposed to water.  Once the mold begins to grow, the drywall offers the perfect environment for quicker growth to occur.  The material itself holds water, which mold (a fungus) needs to activate new spores, while the external paper of the wall is cellulose-rich and feeds the growing mold.  This growth can be exacerbated even further when insulation inside the wall also retains water.  Different molds will grow on different surfaces, are found in all colors from green to black to pink, and can be toxic in large quantities.  Severe mold growths can cause serious upper respiratory issues and skin irritations for humans and animals alike.  

The best way to combat mold growth is to locate the source of the moisture, remove the affected areas, construct a dehumidification process to remove any leftover water, and replace the damaged materials.  Many services offer “mold treatment” sprays and similar processes, but the only guarantee is to fully remove the material and dry everything out.  Mold will not survive without moisture.  

Dry Rot

Another type of fungal mold growth is Dry Rot.  This is a mold that directly affects the wood in your home and is also known as “brown rot.”  This happens most frequently when water damage has not been addressed and wood stays wet for an extended period of time.  Other times, dry rot can be caused by improperly dried and cured wood used in construction or decorating.  Like drywall, wood provides an excellent food source for the mold.  As long as water, oxygen, food (wood), and warm temperatures are available, the fungus will continue to grow.  You know you have dry rot when the wood begins to become frail, flakes into chunks, develops a cotton-like or even a flat yellow growth on top.  If left untreated, the wood will practically disintegrate.

To treat dry rot, there are several options.  Some will fill the affected wood with epoxy to seal the rot into the wood and reinforce the strength of the wood.  The best option to eliminate mold presence is to remove the rotted pieces, thoroughly dry out the area and fix leaks, treat the remaining healthy wood with a copper compound, and replace with new wood.  To prevent future issues, check for leaks in siding, roofing, plumbing, ventilation, and anything else that may allow unwanted moisture in your home.