A first-time father, Eric reflects on this new chapter in his life, updates the audience on WU classes and the Service education track, and gives a 15-min taste of the 8-hour water chemistry course, Service 2211: Essential Water Chemistry.
[00:00] - Intro
[01:43] - New Baby and 2026 Goals
[05:44] - Service 2211 has been recorded, and will soon be online
[07:48] - 2026: A Building Year for Watershape U
[09:01] - Watershape U = Education + Reinforcement and Networking
[12:10] - The new WU Service Track
[13:33] - Upcoming WU Classes at Shows
[20:20] - Closing
[21:27] - Service 2211: Essential Water Chemistry - Unit A, Part 1
[24:49] - Learning Outcomes and Introduction
[27:13] - A.1 Hydrolysis, Saturation and Solubility
[31:51] - A.2 Water Chemistry Ranges
180. Dad Mode: Unlocked
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Eric Knight: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host, Eric Knight, and this is episode 180. It's kind of hard to believe that we've gone this far with this podcast. If I go back to 2019 when we were first discussing creating the Rule Your Pool podcast, I was talking with Jarred, my former co-host. By the way, I got to get Jarred back on here. He never calls me anymore. It's like he never needs anything. Anyway, he didn't really want to do it. He didn't want to do the show because he was like, you know, once you read through all the blogs, that I was creating at Orenda at the time, what then?
And I agreed with him, to be honest with you. I thought this was just going to be a great way to get some audio content out there, get it transcribed. And it did help the website, don't get me wrong. But I got to tell you, it took on a life of its own because of you. You the listeners, you the viewers on YouTube, all the people that just messaged us through Facebook, social media, emails. Now that the email, by the way is ruleyourpool@gmail.com, if you have any questions or comments for the show. And I've had so many people reach out about being guests on the show and questions about things that we talked about in the episode, and it kind of took on a life of its own. And it was an awesome experience. And this became one of the most fun and enjoyable things in my career.
And that that's more so than developing the Orenda app and writing all the blogs. And I love teaching in front of crowds. I love teaching at shows and private events as well. But there's something about this podcast that's my chance to sit down, slow down, and catch up with you directly. And without a doubt, in the past few weeks, the single biggest change in my life has occurred and I could not be happier about it.
[00:01:43] New Baby, and 2026 Goals
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Eric Knight: sorry it's taken a while. I try to be regular every week or every other week with this. Obviously that has not happened in the past several weeks, and that's because our lovely baby girl arrived four weeks early. She was due in February, and that's why I had planned to not go to the NESPA show, just because you never know. The doctors advised, you don't want to be traveling because it could happen any day. We were not expecting four weeks early. But lo and behold, we're still within that four weeks now. We're still not to her due date when I record this. And today is the last day of the NESPA show, I did not make it there. And I know a lot of you that listen to this show were there. And I know the bad weather may have made it difficult to get there, but from all accounts it sounds like it was a great show.
And you know, timing being what it is, I got to tell you. Becoming a father has been one of the most rewarding things. And everybody on here who's a parent, you know. But I didn't know. I didn't know until it happened. And the tsunami of responsibility that takes over when it becomes real, it's just an amazing feeling. So I'm not sleeping a lot, so if I'm slurring my speech a bit, that's probably why.
Anyway, I wanted to update you and then give you a little bit of a roadmap of where we're going here. Because now that I have a baby, I'm working in like 90 minute increments. And we've got some shows coming up, so I'm going to get you a little bit updated there. And we're going to start a series where I'm going to start showing you, or, and I guess most of you listen to this show, you'll start listening to little snippets and clips from some of our classes.
And the reason I want to do this is because a lot of the questions that we get why on earth would I take a full day class or a two day class or God forbid, a three day construction class? And what I've learned is the people who are questioning that, once they take the class, they immediately get it. Because it's not like a class you can just sit in as a seminar. It's a real school and we are trying to build a trade school here at Watershape University. And to that same end, I was trying to do something very similar when I was with Orenda. And I do want to thank HASA and Orenda for allowing this podcast to continue. Technically, this is their podcast and we worked out an agreement that I can still continue to do it and still communicate directly with you and help you out. And they care about education just like they did when I was there, and that's awesome.
So we're all recognizing a need in this industry that we need to elevate ourselves if we are to be considered one of the major trades. It's hard for us to recruit out of high school because this doesn't seem like a desirable trade. Or it's just, even if it's not a desirable trade, it's just not a trade that people think about. And I think a lot of that has to do with when a homeowner sees a pool service pro or a maintenance repair tech, when they see them coming into the backyard, the work that they see, like say, emptying a skimmer basket, or netting the pool for leaves, or testing water chemistry, it doesn't look that hard.
Because they don't really see the intricacies and the amount of knowledge it takes to do that well. And I'm not talking about netting leaves. Anybody can net leaves. But to test chemistry and make chemistry decisions? As you've learned from this show, not the easiest thing to do. And if it's any consolation to you. Over half of our listeners are homeowners because they're frustrated. Because the advice they're getting from pool stores is not working for them. So they come to this show, and hundreds of you have reached out to me, by the way. Thank you for that. And I happen to believe that that's because Jarred is not on this show as much. Nah I'm just kidding, everybody wants Jarred back. Don't tell him I said that. Jarred doesn't listen to the podcast, so we're going to be fine.
[00:05:44] Service 2211 has been recorded, and will soon be online
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Eric Knight: Anyway, here's my update for you. Number one, while I have been on paternity leave, I have taken this opportunity, because I'm home, right? I'm not at the shows, to edit the recorded eight hour chemistry class that we did in Phoenix. That is Service 2211: Essential Water Chemistry.
A lot of people have said an eight hour water chemistry class? I mean, gosh, water chemistry doesn't take eight hours. It could have been a 16 hour class. And a lot of the people that take that class are like, man, how much more is there? And I always come back to them and say. A lot. There's a lot more. But this class is going to be available online on demand, so you can watch it whenever it is.
It's a big investment. It's an eight hour accredited class. That's an $800 course at the time of recording this. The price may go up over time with inflation, but it's eight hours. And if you don't get that value out of it, I'd be very surprised. If you are a pool pro who manages water chemistry, you will understand when you take this class why it costs what it does. There was a lot that went into it. There's a ton of research in it. But it is going to load you up with valuable information so that you can go and make predictable water. Because predictable water is profitable water. Unpredictable water, when you're fighting against it and you're putting it in a box, and you're trying to get water to behave the way you want it to? It doesn't really work out. And you probably already know this if you've been doing this for any length of time. The pH doesn't stay where it needs to, the alkalinity tends to bounce. You get scale issues, you get etching issues, plaster issues of all kinds, stains, all sorts of stuff.
That class is going to demystify those things. So anyways, that class is going to be available online and at the end of this episode, I'm going to put in a few minutes of a clip from that class so you can watch it if you're on YouTube, or you can listen to it while you're driving or whatever it is you're doing, so you can get a taste of what it is. And I may do, you know, a few segments like that from each chapter. And again, it's eight hours, so I have a lot to pull from. So that you can kind of get a grasp of what that class is all about.
Um, let's see here. I actually made show notes, so I'm going to keep reading here.
[00:07:48] 2026: A Building Year for Watershape U
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Eric Knight: 2026. This is a building year at Watershape University. We are not the establishment. We do not have unlimited resources. We do not have unlimited people. We are tight on bandwidth, and that's because we're trying to do a lot of things all at once. There's so many good ideas. And as a result of that, what I'm learning is it's very easy to have things slip through the cracks. So in 2026, I am simplifying the amount of things we're trying to do and trying to take on the bigger tasks and just get them in place. Some of those things are on the backend so that our student dashboard is a lot more effective, so that you can get your transcripts easier. Registering for classes, getting your student evaluations, getting your certifications when you're done. All of that is to be automated.
A lot of that's already done by now. And we have an awesome team. We have an incredible developer that's working on that, so he's going to go at his pace. I don't want to rush him. He's doing things really, really detailed, very, very well. So please be patient with us. If there is an issue, reach out and let me know. Because I can't see every single thing. There's a lot of things going on, but please be patient with us. It is a building year. There's so much to do, but we got an amazing team to do it.
[00:09:01] Watershape U = Education + Reinforcement and Networking
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Eric Knight: I guess from a Watershape perspective, I want you to realize that there are other education options out there. You already know this. I don't want to be like the other ones in one main sense. I never want Watershape education to be transactional. I don't want it to feel like, well, if I just pay and take this class, then I'm good. And I'm all set. I want this to be an ongoing experience. This is a reinforcement cycle. So we don't charge you twice for the same class.
We want you to come back and take it again. We want you to take it online afterwards. We want you to refresh. We want you to communicate with other students who have gone through it and reinforce each other. Build up this network where people are talking about the best practices, and you get into that habit and you sort of, um, reinforce it on your own without us. We will give you the information. We will share it as openly as we can, as clearly as we can. That's what I'm working on, and then it's up to you to reinforce and continue to come back to it. There's this great book, if you've never read it, it's called You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a seminar.
And just the title of the book summarizes my philosophy on education. You just can't get it all in a class. And in all my years at Orenda of teaching these classes, whether they were, you know, an hour, 90 minutes, whatever at these shows, boy, I'd have so much momentum you could see it, you know, in the eyes of the students that were taking these classes. It was just amazing the epiphanies that you were seeing. I love that. I mean, it was really, really awesome. But without fail, a few months later, some of those students would call me asking me questions that were clearly covered in that class. But they didn't remember what it was. That's just how we learn. is because you can't just learn it once and if you don't put it into practice, you're not going to remember it.
Whereas the students who took those notes and went home and tried it, and tried it on their pools and, and got into the season and really worked at it. They didn't have those issues. So by reinforcing amongst yourselves, that's a really good thing. And Watershape is that type of education. It is not transactional. It's not. Take this, you get that certification, move on, get out of our way. Absolutely not. You take those classes, we would love to have you come back, okay? We charge you once for the class. Now, if you fail your exam, that's different. But if you pass the exam, come back. We want you back. We want to help our class get better and we are constantly trying to improve our material. And you're going to probably pick up things the second time around, especially if we have a different instructor. Because they teach a little bit differently. And you're going to gain more and more value every single time. So just keep that in mind.
Watershape is kind of like a networking group of people who are striving for mastery. And you're going to want to be associated with people who are trying to be the best that they can be. And if you have people who are like, no, I've been doing this 20 years, I'm good. Hmm. Well, then you're probably going to gravitate towards the comfort path rather than challenging yourself and getting better. And that's fine if that's you, but that's not WU. We want the people who are really striving to be the best that they could possibly be in whatever they're trying to do. Whether it's a builder or a designer or a business person. We got you. We want to help you out.
[00:12:10] The new WU Service Track
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Eric Knight: All next note. I'm glad I have show notes. I've been thinking about this for a long time. And with a baby, I just like write down notes while I think about it, because I'm still bottle feeding or something. I just don't want to forget. Next thing, I'm still working on the service track. I think I've got it completely mapped out, but it's a matter of feasibility and finding out the instructors of who can teach what, and then we've got to record a whole bunch of them. But we should have that service pathway released in the next few months so that you can take most of it online. And some of it needs to be in person. But again, most of it's going to be online at your convenience so that you can learn, you know, whenever, whatever hours of the day you want. And I want to make sure that every class that you take from us is high value and worth taking. I don't want you to waste a single minute with Watershape. When you're in that class, you're going to gain knowledge that's going to help you out.
So that service path is going to be a lot. The reason why it's so many classes is because the bigger picture here, I'm trying to get this to be a trade school, and in order to get to that level of accreditation, we have to have a certain number of hours.
And there just hasn't been that in our industry before. We're working very hard to create that. That's what's taking so long. I wanted to release it at the end of last year. We just didn't quite have the time. And quite frankly, Phoenix was a huge success, but it wiped us out. So we needed some time to recover, and then you had the holidays.
[00:13:33] Upcoming WU Classes at Shows
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Eric Knight: Okay, last thing before we get into a clip from the Essential Water Chemistry class. Upcoming shows. The Northeast Show just ended, and by all accounts, it was a huge success. I'm sorry I wasn't there. It sounded like a bunch of you came to my classes expecting to see me. Thank you to Miguel Chavez and Shaun Mulhall for stepping in and teaching my short classes. I know they taught essential chemical safety, and pool startups for each type of pool, which is awesome. Thank you guys. Of course, they know the material. We've worked together for several years and they're great instructors.
The next show is going to be the Western Show in Long Beach. That is February 11th through the 14th. I don't think I'll be able to be at this one. Again, I've got a preemie newborn at home. But, uh, if I can, I'll try to get out there for a day. So we have Design 2131. This is part of the IWI Track. Essential SketchUp Modeling Workshop for beginners.
If you're going for your CWD, which is your Certified Watershape Designer, or anything past that. So, that's your Certified Watershape Professional or the IWI, you need this class. That is a one day class. We also have the Advanced Fluid Engineering Workshop. So rather than just Essential Fluid Engineering, which is like pressure systems, learning how to size pipe, you know, it's basically the physics of water and how to move it. This is going to be more advanced in that it's about gravity systems. Like vanishing edge troughs that don't have a pump, but you have to return water to the pump and you have to pitch the pipes correctly and size the catch basins and all that stuff. So it's an extension onto Essential Fluid Engineering, but it's Advanced. That's a two day class. We're going to be offering that there.
Now, I know at the Western Show, most of the attendees are service companies. That's awesome. That's not necessarily a class that a service pro needs to take. In fact, unless you're building pools and designing them, you really don't need to take the Advanced. It'd be good for you to take the Essential one, so that you understand water and pumps and how to size them and stuff. But Advanced is really for designers and builders, especially those who are doing anything with vanishing edges or sheer descents, or catch basins, overflows, anything with gravity fed systems. I strongly recommend you take this because we only offer it like once or twice a year. And speaking of scarcity because it's hard to get these classes put on. That Essential SketchUp class is also put on like once or twice a year. Or sometimes, like last year we didn't teach it at all. So it's just hard. We have to get instructors, we got to fly them in. We have to have enough demand and know where people want to take it. So we're taking a chance and putting it at the Western show because it's in Southern California. So hopefully you take advantage of this. If you are a builder on anywhere on the West Coast or anywhere in the country, really, if you need Advanced Fluid Engineering, it's going to be there.
Now we have another class that's hasn't been taught in like two or three years. That is C 2344, which is the Pool Plumbing Installation workshop. This is great for service Pros. This is going to go through not just how to plumb a pad, but like the fundamentals of plumbing, like deburring pipes and how you glue and why you glue it that way, and how you space things out, that kind of thing. Speaking of which, there is also a short class called C 1341. Which is Equipment Pads built for Ease of Service. So it's strategies for how you can lay out if you're either installing a new pad, or renovating a pool and you're replacing equipment. Think about the serviceability of how you configure where the filter is, where the pump is, where the pipes go so that you can reach everything. I've been to a lot of pools where I see plumbing pads that are just spaghetti. And you can't access things very easily. And because there was no forethought. This class is going to teach you how to think ahead and to map it out before you do it. And there are some hard systems that you can put in place that are going to make that a lot easier. I don't want to give it all away though.
We have a pool cover installation and repair workshop taught by Mizu, the cover company. So that's going to be, I believe, a four hour class. That's going to be awesome if you do anything with pool covers, that's going to be there in Long Beach. And then we've got some short classes, like how to avoid litigation, structural repairs of pools, how to write a service contract complete with a template that you can download from Watershape University only for our students. So you'd have to have a Watershape account, take the class, we're going to give you a template so you can download it, you can configure it however you want. And another class of How to Level Up Your Career to go from a service pro to a specialist. Jeff went from a longtime service pro into a very good tile installer. And you can change the direction of your career if you're willing to specialize. So that's the Western show.
Now unfortunately, in our industry, things overlap. We've got Carecraft going on at a similar time. We also have the Southwest Show in San Antonio that starts February 15th through 19th, so they're right back to back. And at that show we've got our two day plaster class, which is bilingual. And that's going to feature wand washing this time, not just the Tempool brush wash and pool wash method of exposure. We've brought on a new instructor, Willie Sedberry, and he's going to show wand washing, which is pretty awesome. We also have our inspections class. And I think those are the only two main classes going on.
We've got some short classes as well. If you have a chance to go to San Antonio for the Southwest Show, we only offer the plaster class twice a year. We already did it in Phoenix, so this is going to be your chance to get that class. And then of course there's the Florida Show in Orlando that is March 3rd through 7th. I guess I should back up. If you're listening to this, if you have not taken Watershape University classes, they are usually a few days before the expo opens. They're called pre-conference classes because they're all day. We don't want you to miss the expo, so you need to come a day or two before.
We've got our three day construction school. And that is also going to be bilingual, so thank you Robert Abinuman for that. We've got Essential Pool Inspections again, B 2121. We've got Jason Brownlee's Advanced Principles of Design Workshop. That's D 4211. That's a advanced level. So you need to take the prerequisite of Essential Principles of Design Workshop, which we just taught in Phoenix, actually, or Jason did.
I will be teaching the eight hour chemistry class. That will be bilingual, thank you to Miguel Chavez for being in there so that if you want to get that class in Spanish, I'm in the process of trying to get the book in Spanish. That's a bigger lift than I thought. But we're going to see if we can get it done by then.
And then we've got a two day Essential Electrical Workshop. And then we've got a whole bunch of short classes, chemical safety, startups, and uh, Jason Brownlee has a new class called Designing and Selling the Outdoor Living Experience.
So that said, a lot of education coming up at those shows. If you are able to get there, you need to go and register through the show's website. You can't register on the Watershape website. You can see the schedule and stuff. But you need to register through the shows and we hope to see you there. It's a great opportunity to get these classes in person.
[00:20:20] Closing
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Eric Knight: Now that we've done all that housekeeping and I have unlocked Dad mode. So before I get back to change my baby and feed her a bottle, I'm going to drop in a section of the Essential Water Chemistry class so that you can listen to it while you drive to get a taste of what this class is all about. And I may do this for a few episodes. I've got a few guests lined up in the future. It's just a function of finding time to get people on this thing. I greatly appreciate you listening to this.
If you have any questions or you want to talk more, ruleyourpool@gmail.com. And I need to apologize to a few people who have emailed that and I just haven't checked it in the last four weeks because of everything going on basically since Phoenix. Sorry about that. It's not one of the primary five emails that I check. It is now, so I will be checking it a lot more. Thanks again to Hasa and Orenda for allowing me to continue this silly show of mine and I hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions, reach out. Take care everybody. This has been episode 180 of The Rule Your Pool podcast. See you.
[00:21:27] Service 2211: Essential Water Chemistry - Unit A, Part 1
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Eric Knight: Welcome everybody. This is the eight hour chemistry class, this is called Service 2211. When I first created this class in 2024, it took about eight months to make this because life gets busy, we're doing a lot of work. And over time I started realizing, just as I peeled back the onion deeper into chemistry, I realized there's a lot of connecting tissue between concepts that you cannot get in a two hour seminar.
So when I was teaching for eight years at Orenda, I would teach at trade shows and I would teach privately. I would go to companies, I'd go all over the country, and I would teach basically seven or eight of the same classes. I would teach LSI, Startup, Algae Control, you name it. And there's a lot of connecting tissue that we don't think about. There's a lot of things that are actually going on. And in this class I want to explain the physics of water itself. And I think when you understand water's nature and you take mankind out of it, you're going to understand what you're dealing with as the lifeblood of your business.
If you don't understand what you're treating, you have a very hard time treating it. Would you agree? How many in here, hands up, how many in here service pools? In terms of like chemistry and cleaning? Okay. Now, of you who have done this, in your entire career, without chemical automation and without an auto cover, how many of you have ever come back to a pool and the pH is where you wanted it after a week?
One? Did you have chemical automation?
No.
Did you have an auto cover? Did you have a trichlor feeder?
No.
Where was the pH? Did you want the pH high? I guess I should have prefaced it that way. Where's the pH normally after a week on a salt water pool? It's pretty high, right? What about a liquid chlorine pool? Yeah, it's pretty high. So I ask this question to a lot of people. If water wanted to be at a pH of 7.4 to 7.6, it would be. Because water will always return to its natural state. And its natural state does not necessarily align with what we want it to be.
Think about natural water. What does a pond look like? Is it crystal clear and disinfected? And if you see it on Instagram, it's because it's glacier water and it's like 37 degrees. What can't grow in 37 degree water? Algae, or anything really, Right? So that's why it's crystal clear. But realistically, in your experience, let's say you were to abandon a pool for a month. You cut it off July 1st, and you come back August 1st. Just sitting, no power, no circulation, nothing. What's it going to look like? It's going to look like a swamp. It's going to look like a pond. All that is, is nature reclaiming that water. Nature wants that water back. Because it doesn't realize it was a manmade vessel, it's just water, right?
And that's just how nature works. Because nature doesn't care if the water's clean or if it's green. Nature cares if it's balanced. So if you were to go to a pond, yeah, of course it's not sanitized or anything, but if it was sanitized, there'd be no life in it. You wouldn't have fish, and you wouldn't have this stuff called phytoplankton, and algae. And we're going to get into this in Unit C, where we start talking about disinfection. And I want to break this down by saying there are two sides to water chemistry as we get into this. There is water balance, and there is water quality. They are two completely different things.
[00:24:49] Learning Outcomes and Introduction
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Eric Knight: So what we're going to go through today, we're going to define each of the tested chemistry parameters. The things that they say that you need to test for. We're going to explain briefly what those things are. Ask questions. This class is here for you to ask questions.
We're going to define water balance, which is one of the two halves, right? Water balance. And we're going to understand the laws of physics that actually govern water. Because guess what? We don't. Mankind cannot change water's nature. NASA hasn't figured it out, Elon hasn't figured it out. Physics is physics. We have to understand these physics, we have to embrace them. I don't have to agree with gravity, but I still have to deal with it. So do you, right?
Define water quality in terms of chlorination, disinfection, and oxidation. This is what we can do. Water quality is manmade. And we're going to learn how to troubleshoot and prevent the most common chemistry issues.
A little bit about me. I got into this industry not as a pool guy, I was a competitive swimmer. I got very sick swimming indoors. That's what brought me into this industry. And I was committed to fixing the indoor air quality problem. And when I started doing that for many years, started realizing there's a lot of chemistry problems that I'm hearing about, and I didn't even know how to use a test kit. And I was CPO certified. I didn't know how to use a test kit. Okay. Because nobody taught you that. They told you what to test for, but nobody coached me on the test kit itself. Thankfully, some of these test kits have instructions on what to do, but you know, it takes practice. Even if you're using the test kit, you better make sure that you're dropping it correctly or you're calibrating the electronic or whatever you're using. No one ever told me how to do that. And yet I was going to pools that had things like 19 parts per million total chlorine, indoors. Only 1.0 free, only one part per million free chlorine. What do you think the air was in there? It was toxic. That's what got me sick. That's what got me into the industry.
And so I realized I have to learn more than just the mechanical HVAC side of things, because that's my first language. I know how to move air. I got into the water chemistry because I was seeing people operate these pools and it was hurting people. It was hurting people like me, swimmers. And there's a lot of people that swim indoors. So I came to Orenda after that job. We built the app. We built Rule Your Pool podcast and all this other stuff. And recently I've been named the Executive director of Watershape U because I see more problems beyond water chemistry. Okay?
So I want to help elevate this industry far beyond just teaching you chemistry. This is just one of many courses. It's actually the anchor course that it is going to lead into our new service track that we're unveiling this week.
[00:27:13] A.1 Hydrolysis, Saturation and Solubility
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Eric Knight: So let's start with understanding water. Now, let's go into the book here. I want you to know as we go through this, that this book is the basis for this class. Every slide is going in order of the book, so you should be able to follow it along pretty easily. And I'm going to tell you right now while page one still says Basic water chemistry, this is not basic. Okay? This will go far deeper than basic. We will touch on the basics. We're about to, but it goes far deeper than that. I don't expect you to remember everything that we talk about today. I just don't. There's no way you're going to, if you, if this is your first time being exposed to it, it's far too in depth.
But you can go back to this book. And you can go back to this recording because we have this wonderful film crew here today. And you can watch this again now that you've taken this class. And you can go back and say, gosh, I remember him talking about that one thing. Find it in the book. Scrub through the video and you'll be able to see it again. So let's go to page, oh, here's the table of contents.
11.
Page 11, thank you. Alright, hydrolysis, saturation and solubility. The technical term for dissolving a substance is called hydrolysis. What actually happens when you put a dry substance into the water is the water molecule, H2O, separates and starts binding to things in different ways. The concentration, we're going to get to in a second, the concentration of the hydrogen, because there's two hydrogens and one oxygen. The concentration of the hydrogen that bonds to a substance determines the pH. If there's more hydrogen on that substance, the pH is lower. That's more acidic, because that's the acid. If there's more hydroxide, which is, basically if you looked at Mickey Mouse with two Hydrogen ears, the ear breaks off, that's the acid. And Van Gogh over here is the base. If that's more attracted to the substance, it's going to have a high pH. It's going to be more basic or alkaline.
So when we think of chlorines, for instance, cal hypo and liquid chlorine, are they acidic or basic?
Basic.
They're basic. They have a high pH. Those are hypochlorite. Okay. An acid would be like trichlor. That's an acidic chlorine. Or what's the name of, like what's the chemical name of acid when you put it in the pool? Muriatic. but the chemical name is hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric, not a hypochlorite, but hydrochloric. So it's got a higher concentration of hydrogen. Now, technically, and I'm going to wink because it's on the quiz. Technically, dry substances do not have a pH. Why do you think they don't have a pH? Because they're still dry. They haven't bound with water because they have not undergone hydrolysis yet. Until they go through hydrolysis, there is no pH of a dry substance. Remember that.
Because if I have a completely dry hand, I can hold trichlor and it doesn't irritate me, does it? But what if my hand is wet? Yeah. You, you've, you've done this probably before. Most pool pros have, they've experienced this. It's kind of like if your hand is really dry, you can hold calcium chloride too. But what if your hand's sweaty? It gets real hot, doesn't it? Okay. So the reactions actually happen when you meet with moisture.
Now, saturation is how much of a substance is dissolved in that water relative to how much that water can actually hold. So in air, I'm going to translate this to my initial industry, which was HVAC. There's a term called relative humidity. That's different from absolute humidity. When we think of, oh, it's a humid day out, maybe not in Phoenix where we are, but when it's a humid day out, you're usually thinking of total humidity or absolute humidity. But when you're doing dehumidification, you're actually thinking about relative humidity. Relative humidity is how much moisture the air is holding relative to how much it can hold at that given temperature.
So saturation is how much of a substance is in water relative to how much that water can hold in those current conditions. This is incredibly important to remember when we get into the LSI in unit two, because calcium carbonate is all about calcium. I'm sorry, the LSI is all about calcium carbonate saturation. How much calcium carbonate can be held in that water in the current conditions?
I would say remember it, but we're, we're going to beat that dead horse for about two hours in this class. Okay, finally, solubility. This is how easily a substance can be dissolved in water. Something that is not very soluble can be exposed to water for a very long time, and nothing really happens to it. Like glass. Glass can hold water forever, basically. It's not soluble at all. But what if you put salt in water? Salt will dissolve, won't it? That's a very soluble substance.
[00:31:51] A.2 Water Chemistry Ranges
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Eric Knight: So as I said before, there are two sides to water chemistry. There's water balance and there's water quality. These are not the same. And they cannot be identified by looking at the water. You have to test for things. And there's some overlap. As you'll see on page 11, there's some overlap of what we test for. Notice, I got water quality on the left and I got water balance on the right. There is some overlap. Parameters do affect both. We'll start in the middle.
Water temperature. It affects both sides. pH, well pH basically impacts almost everything in the water. Cyanuric acid, salinity, and TDS. But chlorine has nothing to do with balance. You can have a shocked pool with very high chlorine and it has nothing to do with balance. Your water could look super clean and it could be disinfected and it could be safe, but you could be destroying the heat exchanger. You could be destroying the plaster and the tile grout. How many of you have ever seen like, I don't know, a green spa? Let me guess. You've come across somebody else's pool. When they were sick and tired of their pool pro, they said, oh, we have all these stains. We're kind of mad at that. You've ever come across somebody else's work? What's the likelihood that there's trichlor in the skimmer basket? Your laughing, because you make equipment, you know this. But if you put trichlor a skimmer, we will go through this. That is one of the leading causes of destroying a heater. Not because of the chlorine, but because how acidic the chlorine is.
How many of you have pools with floaters in them? You know, like trichlor floaters? You ever seen where it like floats near the skimmer? Because you know the water moves that way? Or maybe it hangs out in an eddy by the stairs, and it just ruins that part of the pool? People think that's chlorine. That's not chlorine. That's the 2.8 pH of that chlorine lowering the LSI making that water around it starving. And it's starving for calcium. And it's going to find it, and it's going to take it. Because water doesn't care about us. Water, like everything in nature only cares about getting back to equilibrium. It cares about getting back to balance.
So chlorine has nothing to do with that. This is all manmade. This is what we care about: safe, clean, and clear. Conversely, alkalinity has nothing to do with water quality... directly. There is an indirect relationship because this is going to determine how well chlorine can stay attached to that, which we will get into in Unit C. But directly it doesn't have anything to do with it. Neither does calcium hardness. You can have a perfectly balanced pool that is unsafe. It could be green. It could be a swamp, but it's perfectly balanced and I can prove it to you. When you go home, go, well, it's winter now, but in the summertime, go to a lake or a pond, grab a sample of water and test it. I can guarantee it's going to be LSI balanced.
Now you don't like the numbers. The pH is going to be sky high and the alkalinity is probably going to be very low and there's not a lot of calcium depending on where you live. Maybe in the Great Lakes it is, but the point is it's all going to aggregate out to balance because water balances itself. We don't like how it gets there. It's not compatible with what we want, which is water quality. But if you think about it, we are trying to do something that is unnaturally natural. We are trying to give water its natural balance, but on our terms, which is an unnatural way. Water can't balance the way that we want it to be balanced. It will not automatically do that on its own. Does that make sense? So we have to do it for it.