# Pool Furniture Before a Hurricane

> Tossing patio furniture in the pool before a storm is the advice that turns a repair into a resurface. What UF/IFAS says to do instead, and why it matters.

[Home](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/) / [Insights](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/blog/) / Naples and Collier County Insights · Naples and Collier County

# What to Do With Pool Furniture Before a Storm, and What It Costs You
A storm is named, the lanai is full, and you have hours rather than days. The instruction is shorter than the argument around it, and the reason it runs against the popular advice has nothing to do with the furniture.
**Clayton Waggoner**, Owner and Managing Member · Published August 13, 2026 · 17 min read

In this article
Do not put the furniture in the pool. University of Florida IFAS Extension is explicit that you should never place patio furniture and outdoor accessories into the pool to keep them from blowing away, because the water and chemicals will cause corrosion of the furniture and chemical reactions will leave permanent staining in the pool finish (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). Bring inside whatever fits through a door. Lay the rest flat on the deck and tie it down.
The short version
I. The most upvoted storm advice in Florida pool groups is to toss the furniture in the pool. University of Florida IFAS Extension says never to put it in at all, and the reason it gives is the pool finish rather than the furniture.
II. The Florida Swimming Pool Association, an undated trade association position rather than a code, permits it only as a fallback and words it carefully: you may gently place it in the pool, avoiding scratching the pool finish, and noting that pool chemicals may cause damage.
III. The distance between tossing it in and gently placing it in is the distance between a mark that comes off and a mark that has gone into the finish. Both published sources agree on the first choice, which is indoors.
IV. A stain that sits in the finish rather than on it is a surface job rather than a spot repair, and that scope change is what this page means by what it costs you.
V. The pool has two real pre-storm jobs and neither one involves the furniture: shock it before the storm arrives, and keep the pump running for as long as the power holds.
VI. The water level is a separate decision with its own answer. The settled half is that you do not drain and do not partially drain, and the rest of it belongs on the hub page rather than here.

I.

## Everyone online says put the furniture in the pool. Is that actually right?
Three positions exist and they are not the same instruction. The most upvoted community answer is to toss the furniture in the pool. The Florida Swimming Pool Association, a trade association, permits gently placing it there as a fallback. University of Florida IFAS Extension, a land grant university extension service, says never to put it in at all. Only one of the three is a university.
The popular advice is everywhere for a reason. A lanai chair is a projectile, the pool is right there, and water is heavy. In a storm week thread the answer that rises to the top is almost always some version of toss it in the pool, and it is offered in good faith by people who have sat through more storms than most contractors have. It solves the problem in front of you in about ninety seconds, which is exactly why it wins the vote.
The published guidance from a land grant university says the opposite in one sentence. UF/IFAS Extension in Indian River County published Pools and Hurricanes on 14 May 2024, and the instruction is not hedged: never place patio furniture and outdoor accessories into the pool to keep them from blowing away, because the water and chemicals will cause corrosion of the furniture and chemical reactions will leave permanent staining in the pool finish (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). Never is the word the source uses.
The Florida Swimming Pool Association lands between the two, and its wording repays reading slowly. Its hurricane preparedness page carries no publication date, so it is a standing trade association position rather than news, and it is not code. What it says is: move furniture, toys, etc. indoors, and if patio furniture cannot be stored inside, you may gently place it in the pool (avoid scratching the pool finish and note pool chemicals may cause damage) [2](#ref-2).
Set the community version and the association version next to each other and the distance between them is not a matter of tone. Toss it in is an action. Gently place it in the pool while avoiding scratching the finish is a procedure with a warning attached, offered only after indoors has been ruled out, by a body that represents the people who repair pools. The association is not endorsing the popular advice. It is describing a fallback and naming what the fallback risks.
Where two published positions disagree it is worth saying which one this page treats as governing, and why. UF/IFAS Extension is the research and outreach arm of a land grant university, it publishes with a date on it, and it represents no members. The Florida Swimming Pool Association is a trade body, and trade guidance tends to be written to be usable by people who are going to do the thing anyway. Both are worth reading. Only one of them is a university.
The point they agree on is the one that decides most lanais. Both put indoors first. The association opens with move furniture, toys, etc. indoors [2](#ref-2), and the extension service names the same first step [1](#ref-1). The disagreement is entirely about the pieces that will not fit through a door, which on a typical Southwest Florida lanai is two or three heavy items rather than the whole set.
The window in which any of this matters is open now. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, and the peak is September 10, with most activity occurring between mid-August and mid-October (NOAA National Hurricane Center, retrieved 2026) [5](#ref-5). This is a Florida wide question rather than a county one, and the guidance quoted here is written by a Florida university for Florida pool owners.
Three positions on the same question, side by side
Source What it says about furniture in the pool What kind of source it is
UF/IFAS Extension, 14 May 2024 Never place patio furniture and outdoor accessories into the pool Land grant university extension service, published with a date
Florida Swimming Pool Association, undated Move it indoors. If it cannot be stored inside, you may gently place it in the pool, avoiding scratching the finish Trade association position, no date shown on the page, not a code
Top voted community advice Toss it in the pool Owner to owner advice, no source cited for any part of it

II.

## What does pool water actually do to metal patio furniture?
It corrodes it. University of Florida IFAS Extension states that the water and chemicals will cause corrosion of the furniture, and a pool is not neutral storage. It is chlorinated, frequently salted, chemically buffered and held at a controlled pH. Fasteners, welds and cushion fabric come out of a day in that water in worse condition than they went in.
Take the corrosion half of the extension service sentence on its own. The water and chemicals will cause corrosion of the furniture (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). That is the half owners tend to shrug at, because a patio chair is not a precision instrument and a little dulling is survivable. The problem is that corrosion in a pool does not spread itself evenly across a chair. It concentrates where the metal is already weakest.
A pool is a managed chemical environment rather than a tank of water. It carries a sanitizer residual, it is buffered so the pH holds, and on a salt system it carries dissolved salt as well, which is what the chlorine generator makes chlorine from. Submerging a powder coated aluminum frame with steel screws in that for a day is a small immersion test, and immersion tests are how corrosion engineers deliberately accelerate failure.
The mechanism has a name and it is documented well outside the pool trade. NASA Kennedy Space Center's corrosion laboratory states that pitting is most likely to occur in the presence of chloride ions, combined with such depolarizers as oxygen or oxidizing salts (NASA Kennedy Space Center Corrosion Technology Laboratory, undated) [3](#ref-3). Chloride is what a salt pool is made of and what a chlorinated pool accumulates. Pitting is localized attack rather than general dulling, which is why it shows up as small craters at a weld or under a washer.
Stainless hardware is not the exemption people assume it is. The same laboratory states that whether or not stainless steels are free of pit nuclei, they are always susceptible to crevice corrosion because a nucleus is not necessary, and names cleanliness, the proper use of sealants and protective coatings as the effective controls [3](#ref-3). A crevice is exactly what a furniture joint is: a screw head against a frame, a hinge, a stacked chair leg. Those are the places that come out of the water changed.
In practice the list is short and predictable. Fasteners go first, because a small steel part in contact with a larger aluminum one is a galvanic pair sitting in an electrolyte. Welds follow. Powder coat that was already chipped lets water sit against bare metal for a day. Cushions absorb pool water and hold it, and sling fabric holds it in the seams where you cannot see it, which is where mildew starts a week later.
None of that makes the furniture unusable, and that is the honest framing. It makes the furniture worse, sometimes visibly and sometimes at the fasteners, where you find out a season later. If the furniture were the only thing at risk, the trade might be defensible. It is not, and the reason is the surface the furniture is sitting on.
III.

## Will patio furniture really stain a pool finish?
Yes, and the stain is the part that costs you rather than the scratch. University of Florida IFAS Extension states that chemical reactions leave permanent staining in the pool finish, and that most of these stains require expensive resurfacing of the pool to remove them. A mark on the finish can often be polished out. A mark in the finish is a surface job.
The mechanism is not mysterious. Metal sits in contact with a cement based surface in chlorinated water, an oxidation reaction runs at the contact point, and the product of that reaction migrates into the pores of the finish rather than sitting on top of it. Plaster, quartz and pebble surfaces are all porous. That is why the mark does not brush off, and it is why the extension service reaches for the word permanent (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1).
The distinction that decides the scope is whether the mark is on the finish or in it. A smear of oxide on the surface comes off with a brush or a stain treatment. A deposit that has migrated into the pore structure is now part of the finish layer, and the only complete removal is taking the finish off and putting a new one on. That is the whole of what this page means by what it costs you, and it is a scope change rather than a number.
A chip you can feel with a fingernail and a stain you can see under water are two different jobs. One is a spot repair on a surface that is otherwise sound. The other is the reason [a stain that has gone into the finish is a resurfacing job](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-resurfacing-naples/). The word expensive in the extension service's own sentence is doing real work there, and this page is not going to put a figure next to it.
Not every finish takes a mark the same way either. Smooth white plaster shows a rust stain immediately, and shows it against the brightest possible background. Quartz and pebble hide a small mark better and hold it harder, because there is more texture and more surface area for a deposit to sit in. If you want that in full, [how plaster, quartz and pebble each take a mark](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/blog/pebble-plaster-quartz-pool-interior-naples/) works through the three finishes side by side.
The scratch half of the association wording is not a throwaway. Its instruction to avoid scratching the pool finish [2](#ref-2) is aimed at the real failure mode, which is not a chair sitting still on the floor of the pool. It is the furniture going in, shifting during the storm, and coming out again. A chair leg dragged up a plaster step under load takes a line out of the finish, and that line is where staining starts.
Until that line is answered, what stands here is what the published sources support. The extension service names the consequence and calls the resurfacing expensive. The trade association names the same finish and chemical risks in its own parentheses, and permits the fallback anyway. Those two facts belong next to each other rather than blended into one confident paragraph.

A mark on the finish comes off. A mark in the finish is the whole surface. IV.

## What goes where, and in what order, when the clock is short?
Indoors first, for anything that fits through a door and anything made of glass. Then the heavy pieces, laid flat and tied down on the deck away from glazing. Then the pool itself: shock it before the storm arrives and keep the pump running while the power holds, which University of Florida IFAS Extension recommends in that order.
Start with the door rather than with the pool. Anything that fits inside goes inside: cushions, umbrellas, side tables, planters, toys, and every piece of glass on the lanai, because a glass table top is the item that turns a survivable afternoon into an injury. The association instruction is the plain one, move furniture, toys and the rest indoors [2](#ref-2), and it is the first choice in both of the published sources this page uses.
What is left is the two or three pieces that will not go through a door. Lay them flat. A chaise on its back has almost no sail area and a low center of gravity, while the same chaise upright is a wing. Group them, tie them to something that is part of the structure rather than to each other, and put them where they are not pointing at a slider or a cage panel. Flat and tied beats standing and heavy.
If there are three hours, all of that happens. If there is one hour, the order is the expertise: glass indoors, cushions indoors, everything else flat on the deck, pool chemistry last. Nothing on that list is furniture in the pool. The item that gets dropped when the time runs out is tying down the flat pieces, and it is never moving the glass.
Then the pool. You may shock your pool before the storm arrives, which helps stave off some of the algae and bacteria if your area does flood, and the pool will probably need another shock treatment after the area is deemed safe, all debris is removed and the power comes back on (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). You are treating water that is about to sit unfiltered for several days.
Keep it moving while you can. As long as the power is still on, keep the pump running for as long as possible to keep the water circulating through the filter (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). That is the last filtration the pool gets before the outage, so [running the pump right up to the outage](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-pump-replacement-naples/) is the correct use of a pump that is working.
Two flood details belong in the same hour, because a large share of coastal Collier County sits in a mapped flood hazard area. Florida flood guidance says ready to use pool chemicals should be stored above the base flood elevation plus freeboard, and counts chemical feeders as pool equipment (Florida Division of Emergency Management, 2024) [4](#ref-4). The same guidance expects equipment sitting below that elevation to be anchored to prevent flotation [4](#ref-4). A shock bucket on the floor of a flooding equipment closet is its own event.
One closing line from the extension service, which people laugh at until it happens to them. Beware of unexpected wildlife when doing your after storm clean up, because alligators, turtles, crabs, birds, rabbits, frogs, snakes and bears can all get confused by the extra water and downed trees and will show up in the strangest places (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). Look in the pool before you reach into it.

What will not fit through a door goes flat on the deck and gets tied to something structural. V.

## Should you lower the pool water level too?
No, and that is the one thing in storm week that must not be got wrong. University of Florida IFAS Extension instructs owners not to drain or partially drain a pool before a storm, because saturated ground presses on the outside of an emptied shell. How much to lower, if at all, is a separate question and it has its own page.
The instruction is one sentence: do not drain or partially drain your pool before a storm (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). The mechanism is the next one. When many inches of rain are expected the ground surrounding a pool becomes saturated, and all that extra water on the outside of even a partially drained pool could cause the pool to crack under the weight of water (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). Partial draining is named alongside full draining, in the same breath.
A full pool is the loaded condition the shell was built for. The same source states that if the storm does hit, the pool is made to hold water and can handle being filled to overflowing (UF/IFAS Extension, 2024) [1](#ref-1). Overflow is a deck and landscape drainage question. What an emptied shell in saturated ground risks is [cracking in the shell itself](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-crack-shell-repair-naples/), which is a structural problem rather than a drainage one, and trading the second for the first is a poor trade.
This page stops there on purpose. How many inches, if any, is a genuinely contested question with real disagreement in it, and answering it in a paragraph at the bottom of an article about furniture would be answering it badly. It has its own page, which separates what is sourced from what is folklore: [how much to lower your pool before a hurricane in Collier County](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/blog/lower-pool-water-before-hurricane-collier-county/).
Declining to over answer is worth saying out loud, because the pattern on this subject runs the other way. Most storm prep pages hand the reader a confident figure for the water level and no source for it. The useful question when you meet one is not whether the number sounds sensible. It is which published document the writer took it from.
The furniture decision and the water level decision get made in the same hour, which is why they end up tangled. They are not the same kind of decision. One is about where objects go for a day. The other is about what is holding your pool in the ground, and the answer to that one is to leave the water alone until the ground around the deck has drained.

"The distance between tossing it in and gently placing it in is the distance between a repair and a resurface."

Ask Clayton

## Questions this article usually prompts
Tap a question. Clayton replies himself, here and on the phone.

** **Clayton Waggoner** *Owner and Managing Member · Splash Pools* Online
Tap a question to ask

[Not covered here? Call 239-450-5933, it reaches Clayton, not a call center](tel:+1-239-450-5933)

If this is the situation you are in
[Pool resurfacing in Naples, including the part everyone skips →](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-resurfacing-naples/)[Structural crack repair, starting with what is causing it →](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-crack-shell-repair-naples/)[Pool repair in Naples, diagnosed before it is quoted →](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-repair-naples/)[Pool pump replacement in Naples, programmed not just installed →](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/pool-pump-replacement-naples/)
References

- [University of Florida IFAS Extension, Indian River County. Pools and Hurricanes. 14 May 2024](https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/indianriverco/2024/05/14/pools-and-hurricanes/)
- [Florida Swimming Pool Association. Hurricane Preparedness. Trade association guidance, no publication date shown on the page](https://www.fspa.com/hurricane-preparedness/)
- [NASA Kennedy Space Center Corrosion Technology Laboratory. Forms of Corrosion. Page carries no publication date](https://public.ksc.nasa.gov/corrosion/forms-of-corrosion/)
- [Florida Division of Emergency Management, Office of Floodplain Management. Guidance for Swimming Pools, Spas, and Similar Water Features in Flood Hazard Areas. January 2024](https://www.floridadisaster.org/globalassets/fdem-ofm-guidance_swimming-pools_1-2024.pdf)
- [NOAA National Hurricane Center. Tropical Cyclone Climatology. Retrieved 13 August 2026](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/)
[All articles →](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/blog/)

## The article is general. Your pool is specific.

Tell us what the pool is doing, a sentence or two is enough. The person who wrote this is
the person who calls back.

[Call 239-450-5933](tel:+1-239-450-5933) [Book a consultation](https://www.splashpoolsllc.com/booking/)