It’s easy to cover our pool in the fall and forget about it until the spring. If you are like most pool owners, however, you are longing for the day when you can open your pool again and the last thing you want are delays. Perhaps the only good thing about 2020 was a somewhat mild winter, although heading into the second half of the season it looks like we cannot escape the snowfall after all.
A blanket of pristine snow might look like a beautiful postcard picture, but even a layer of light, fluffy snow can weigh several hundred pounds. Allowing snow to accumulate to a foot deep will get quite a bit heavier when it warms up and starts to melt and could weigh up to several thousand pounds. This could cause costly damage to your pool cover and to the pool itself, depending on the type of pool that you have.
How to Remove Snow From Your Pool Cover
The walls of an above ground pool are not built to hold the added weight of wet snow. Allowing snow to accumulate on your above ground pool cover could cause the pool walls themselves to cave in. While an inground pool will not experience caved in walls, heavy snow can rip a winter pool cover, can rip out pool cover anchors or the coping around the edges. Damage to any of this pool equipment will add up to costly repairs in the spring.
The best thing to do is to use a long handled, soft-thistled broom to gently push the snow off of the pool cover. Whatever you do, make sure you do not use a shovel or anything with sharp edges or you can easily put a hole right through a cover that may be brittle and frozen.
The Swimming Pool Store is patiently awaiting the spring when we can plan our pool openings. Until then, keep an eye on the snow accumulation on your pool cover and plan to sweep it off they forgets to happy. Contact us with any questions, pool repairs or renovations and be sure to check out our list of pool services including openings and maintenance to prepare for spring.