If you have looked in your pool during the off season and noticed that there are white flakes at the bottom of your pool, you might make the mistake of thinking that it is calcium scaling. While winter dust is considered a form of calcium scaling, it isn’t treated the same way. You need to understand what causes winter dust before you can work to solve the problem. Metropolitan Pools is here to talk about winter dust and how it differs from calcium scaling as well as what you need to do to prevent it.

What Causes Winter Dust?

Before you quickly jump to the conclusion that you have calcium scaling in your pool, you need to know that winter dust is different. It isn’t caused by high calcium levels in your pool. When you close the pool for the winter, you probably have low calcium levels if you have winter dust in your pool. You will make the problem worse if you treat winter dust like you would calcium scaling in an effort to solve the problem.

Looking Under Your Pool Cover to Uncover Winter Dust

You need to first take a look at what is happening beneath the pool cover of your pool to understand where the winter dust is coming from.
– As the temperature drops, your LSI levels do too. Which leaves you with corrosion.
– The water will start to eat away at the pool surfaces and increases calcium in your pool.
– With higher calcium levels, the LSI starts to come back to a neutral level.
– Weather warms a bit and brings the temp of the water back up and now it already has calcium in it as well as high LSI numbers.
– In an effort to balance things back out, your water will try to balance itself back out by precipitating the calcium from the water and leaving winter dust all over your pool.
– When you go to open your pool there will be white winter dust everywhere.

How to Prevent Winter Dust

There are measures that homeowners can take to help minimize winter dust in their pool during the off season.
– Take into consideration the coldest temps that you are likely to experience during the winter months.
– You also need to know what the temperature of your water will be when you close your pool.
– Know what the weather will most likely look like when you open your pool in the spring.
– With these three numbers, you should be able to balance your LSI to be between -.30 and +.30.

Vinyl Pool Installation, Repair, Maintenance & More in Sandusky, Lorain, Elyria, Medina, Parma, Mentor, Akron & Greater Cleveland, Ohio

If you are worried about issues like winter dust in your pool this winter, you can turn your pool maintenance needs over to Metropolitan Pools to take care of all of it for you. We have extensive experience in caring for and maintaining pools so that yours is protected from problems like winter dust. Call us today!