Setting the Table for Spring
There’s a seasonal rhythm to pool service in the Northeast, an annual awakening and slumber that defines the business. For Long Island’s Julie Kazdin, winterizing 300-plus pools is a long, carefully choreographed process, one that defines the annual ebb and flow. As she explains here, the process begins long before the first pool is closed and ends with the first successful openings of spring.
By Julie Kazdin
We start talking about closing when we send out our opening contracts. That might sound early, but for most of our customers, the entire season is planned before the season even begins. In February, some people will give us their opening date and their closing date right up front. We won’t hear from them again for the rest of the year. Their whole season packet is already completed, their pricing is set, and we know what they want.
For everybody else, we start talking about closing again in early August. That’s when we send out our first reminders: If you haven’t submitted your closing date, it’s time to do that. We don’t give people a date. They choose it. We ask a simple question: What is the last day you want to use your pool? If they say, for example, Thursday two weeks from now. We’ll schedule the closing for the following Sunday or the week after that, so they get the full use of their pool.
That’s important because there really isn’t a standard closing date on Long Island. The closing season is much longer than the opening season. We can start closing pools around the third week of August and continue all the way into December. Spas sometimes stay open until January or February.
Most of the work, though, runs from mid-August through just after Thanksgiving. Much of that has to do with how people use their homes. Someone who lives on the property year-round may want to keep the pool open much later because an open pool is nicer to look at than a closed one. Some people want to swim on Thanksgiving. Others rent their homes for Thanksgiving and need the pool heated and ready for their guests.
Labor Day, Columbus Day and the Jewish holidays are important dates in the Northeast because schools and colleges give people additional time off. Fall weddings can push a closing date out, too. So, the question isn’t simply when the weather turns cold, but how does that particular customer use that particular body of water?
Nothing Gets Taken Away
One of the interesting things about closing season is that we don’t stop doing everything else. Weekly service continues. Some customers are still using their pools for several more months. So we can’t shift our entire focus to winterizing. Closing simply gets added to the pile.
Then other things get added to that pile, too. We have to get covers repaired, send them to the safety-cover people, get estimates back, and make sure everything is ready to go. We’re doing all of that while continuing regular service.
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that the way you close a pool has a direct effect on how you open it. If the cover is in bad shape, opening is going to be harder. If the pool wasn’t balanced properly when it was closed, we’re going to have problems in the spring.
We bring the water as close to swimming balance as we can while preparing it for colder temperatures. Calcium behaves differently in cold water, so we balance calcium to a higher number. We use closing chemicals that are designed to last longer in cold temperatures. We’re trying to help ourselves six months down the road.
We also have a program we call Winter Watch. About a third of our customers are on it. From November through March, we go back to those pools for additional checks, including rebalancing and checking levels. Those pools usually look better when we open them.
There is an additional cost for Winter Watch, but it can save money compared with dealing with problems during an opening. More importantly, we’re keeping an eye on something that may otherwise sit unattended for months.
Preparing for the Freeze
Every pool is a little different. That’s really the theme of winterizing. There are guidelines, but you have to look at the individual property and think about what is going to happen to it while nobody is there. I always recommend that somebody check a pool at least every couple of weeks during the winter.
For us, winterizing comes with a warranty and a guarantee. If something freezes because water isn’t properly evacuated, we cover that at the opening. That means pipes, skimmers and other parts of the system must be properly cleared of water.
We also lower the pool to the appropriate level for the winter cover. The cover manufacturer generally wants to see the water about 18 inches below the coping. But even that isn’t an absolute number.
If we’re closing a property in October and nobody is going to be back until May or June, we know the water level can rise. With a mesh cover, rain and snowmelt can pass through and add water to the pool. That’s why there are times when I will have the crew lower the pool a little farther. Maybe I’ll say, let’s take it down to 22 inches so we have enough capacity to make sure the pool doesn’t overflow during the winter.
The reality is that some of these homes are empty for months.
Don’t Chintz on Winterizing
We use winterizing gizmos, plugs, threaded plugs, rubber plugs and specialty winter chemicals. We use high-quality products because winter is not the time to save a few dollars on materials.
A gizmo, for example, is designed to protect the skimmer when it freezes. As the water freezes, the gizmo can compress and absorb some of that pressure. They are intentionally designed to break, so we replace them every year. Plugs and caps can be reused, but we don’t like to use O-rings because they can deteriorate underwater. We use threaded plugs with Teflon tape and hand-thread them.
Everything is calculated. Each skimmer gets a gizmo. Each return gets a threaded plug. Each line gets the appropriate amount of antifreeze, usually about a half-gallon unless it is an unusually long run.
When you’re closing 300 pools, those numbers become important. We know how many skimmers we have, how many returns we have and approximately how much chemical we’re going to need. That lets us order pretty accurately and avoid having a lot of leftover material.
Matching the Technician to the Pool
Not every pool should be closed by the same technician. We divide our people into beginner, intermediate and experienced levels. A basic 20-by-40 pool with a filter and pump and no heater is a very different closing from a pool with an attached spa, automation and multiple water features. We schedule accordingly.
You’re not going to send your highest-level technician to close a simple 16-by-32 pool with no automation. At the same time, you’re not going to send a beginner into a complicated system with an attached spa and shared plumbing.
There’s another benefit to doing it this way. The technicians want to be challenged. Someone starts with simpler pools. Then they move into intermediate systems. Eventually, they work with an experienced technician on more complicated closings. If somebody wants to move up, we tell them what they need to learn.
Maybe they’ve been closing mostly beginner pools. To move to the next level, they’re going to spend part of the season training with an intermediate or advanced technician. In that way, closing season becomes a training tool.
The Equipment Comes Inside
In the Northeast, we remove the pumps completely.
Every pump we install is on unions, so we can disconnect it and take it off the system. Ideally, we store it at the customer’s property in a shed, garage or basement. If there isn’t a suitable place, we bring it back to our building and store it for the winter at no charge.
We don’t want pumps sitting outside in snow for months. Last winter, we had feet of snow on the ground for long periods. That’s going to eat up equipment very quickly.
Cartridges are cleaned. Depending on the storage space, we’ll either leave them out or put them back in the filter. The goal is to protect the equipment from the elements and, just as importantly, make sure nobody can accidentally turn a system on during the winter.
Winter Chemistry Is Different
We use additional algaecides, scale inhibitors and metal removers during the winter.
Long Island gets some very dirty rain. The rain has traveled across the country before it reaches us, and it carries things with it. Metals are one concern. Carbon is another. Rainwater can also neutralize chlorine fairly quickly.
We actually capture rainwater and test it so we have a general idea of its pH and metal content. Where that rain has traveled can make a difference. If the weather system has moved through Pennsylvania, for example, we may see some metal content. If it has come from farther south and moved across the ocean toward us, we may see something different.
Long Island is surrounded by water on three sides, so our weather can be unpredictable. It really does feel like we’re sitting out in the middle of the ocean sometimes. We can’t do a whole lot with a pool once it is closed, but we can prepare for what we’re likely to encounter.
That’s always better than being surprised in the spring.
Spas Are a Different Animal
A spa is affected much more by the people using it than by the environment around it. By contrast, a pool is constantly being affected by leaves, rain, wind, and everything else happening around it. Your neighbor spraying trees three houses away can affect your pool. Every leaf that lands in the water changes the equation.
A spa is different. The primary influence is the people getting in and out of it.
For customers who stay in residence during the winter, I tell them that winter is actually the best time to use their spa. We do typically recommend shutting them down during January and February, though. That’s when we tend to see power outages.
If a spa loses power during subzero temperatures, you don’t have much time to empty it before freeze damage occurs. The bigger problem is knowing that the power is out. If the property is two blocks away in East Hampton and we’re an hour from the office, we may not even know there has been an outage. We carry generators on all of our trucks during the winter. If we arrive at a house with no power, we can still do the work we need to do.
The problem is knowing that we need to go. If nobody is home, and everyone is at work all day, there may be nobody there to tell us. That’s why we recommend shutting the spas down completely for those couple of months. Empty them, close them and remove that risk. It’s the safest thing from a cover-your-ass standpoint.
Documentation Matters
Closing is a checklist job. Every closing work order in our scheduling system has a built-in checklist. Our crews also take specific photographs. We want pictures of the covers, pictures of the equipment, before pictures and after pictures.
We do extensive training, too. We have a half-day closing training where we actually go to a pool and close it together. Usually, it’s my dad’s pool or a friends-and-family customer who doesn’t mind having a large group there.
We’ll bring the whole staff together and walk through the closing process so everybody understands exactly what we’re looking for. Then, once we’ve closed about 80 percent of the pools, our two service managers and general manager go back out.
They physically step onto every property. They walk around. They look at the pool, the equipment and the surrounding property. They take pictures and make notes about anything that looks unusual.
That’s especially important because once we’re into October or November, there may not be another reason for somebody from our company to be at that property until June. That’s a long time.
So we want one final safety check while there is still enough time to correct something. If we discover that a skimmer doesn’t have antifreeze, for example, we have an opportunity to blow it out again, install a new gizmo and add fresh antifreeze.
We want to find that problem while we still have time to fix it.
The Property Doesn’t Go to Sleep
Because some of these properties are empty for months, we’re often the only people seeing what is happening there. A tree falls. A window breaks. A door gets left unlocked. A storm comes through. We take pictures and contact the homeowner.
We had a freak storm on July 4 that was almost like a tornado in parts of Southampton. At one property, patio furniture and debris had blown across the entire yard. The pool next door was perfectly clean. You never know what you’re going to find.
Communication becomes a big part of the job. We email. We text. Sometimes we just call and say, “Hey, there’s a tree down in your yard. Here’s a picture. Here are some vendors we recommend.”
We’re taking care of the pool, but we’re also looking after the property as best we can while we’re there.
You Learn a Lot in the Spring
One of the funny things about closing is that you don’t always know immediately whether you did a great job. You find out in the spring. If you open a pool and there isn’t much freeze damage, that’s a pretty good indication that you closed it properly.
There is another measure of success that has nothing to do with equipment. Can everyone get through the season working together? Closing season involves a lot of multiple-person jobs. People are tired. The schedule is demanding. Everybody is doing a lot of work in a short period of time.
If we get through the season without employees fighting with each other, that’s a huge sign of success. It means everybody is working together. They’re working as a team. They have one goal.
I also love finishing a season knowing we’ve trained at least one, and hopefully two, new people to close pools. They may not be closing pools every day yet, but they’re moving up the ladder. To me, that’s what the season is about. We need to keep training quality people to do quality work.
Built For Service
One of the biggest differences I see is between pools we know and pools we don’t know. If we’ve built a pool, or if it’s a system built by another company whose work we know well, a beginner or intermediate technician may be able to close it. If we’re looking at something built by a company we don’t know, I want an experienced technician there.
A lot of that comes down to how the system was built. For example, some builders use elaborate manifolds and plumbing arrangements to reduce bubbles and friction in certain parts of the system. Those designs can have benefits, but they can also create more places where water can become trapped.
When you’re winterizing, trapped water is the enemy. You need to know where the water is, how to get it out and how to make sure there isn’t enough left behind to freeze and crack a pipe or manifold.
I have pictures of every system we service. So if I know the builder, I usually know what I’m going to find and what level of technician I need to send. That is why I think builders should think about serviceability from the beginning. You’re creating something that somebody is going to have to maintain, repair, open and close for years.
There are some pools we won’t take on as-is. If the equipment needs to be upgraded, the automation doesn’t work or there are other serious problems, we’ll tell the customer what needs to be fixed before we can take over the service. Sometimes we tell them what they need to do for us to work with them the following season.
We don’t just say, “Sorry, we can’t help you.” We give them choices. Do you want to upgrade the pump? Do you want the automation to work? Or do you want to operate the system manually?
We’re not the right pool company for everybody, and that’s okay. But the customer has to want to care about their pool before they can expect somebody else to care about it. That’s really what we’re trying to reflect back to people.
Closing Is the Beginning
Winterizing 300 pools is a big operation, but after you’ve done it for years, much of it becomes very calculated.
You know how many gizmos you need. You know how many plugs you need. You know how much antifreeze you’re going to use. You know which technicians belong on which pools. You know which properties need another visit.
But the numbers and procedures are only part of it. The real job is thinking ahead. What is going to happen to this pool when nobody is here? What is going to happen when it rains? When it snows? When the power goes out? When the water level rises? When a tree falls? When nobody sees the problem for six months?
Every closing is an attempt to answer those questions before they become problems. That’s why I think about closing as setting the table for spring. If we’ve done everything right, the pool goes to sleep in good condition. The equipment is protected. The water is prepared. The property is secure. The homeowner knows what we’ve seen.
And then, months later, when we come back to open it, we’re hoping the pool tells us we did our job well.
Julie Kazdin is vice president/partner for Kazdin Pools and Spas, a full-service design, construction, retail and service firm based in Southampton, NY. An industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience, she is also vice president of operations for Watershape University, and serves on the board of directors for the Northeast Spa & Pool Association.