Eric is joined by Bill Khamis, the visionary founder of Thursday Pools, a leading fiberglass pool manufacturer in North America. We discuss fiberglass pool manufacturing, transportation logistics, installation, and more. The crux of the episode covers water chemistry and a known issue with fiberglass pools that Eric coined the term "chalking" several years ago. Bill and his company have invested heavily over the past 15+ years to understanding and resolving this problem. And the solution is beautifully simple and affordable.
[00:00] - Intro
[00:38] - Bill's background
[07:27] - Expanding education and manufacturing capabilities
[14:44] - Clearance for fiberglass pool installation
[17:28] - How to become a fiberglass pool installer
[24:03] - Researching fiberglass "chalking"
[31:36] - Selflessness
[34:09] - Chalking looks like calcium silicate bound to to gelcoat polymers
[37:40] - The LSI, and chelating calcium
[40:04] - Gelcoat molecular structure
[46:15] - Thursday Pools' chemistry recommendations
[52:49] - One chemistry strategy that gets everyone's needs met
[57:00] - UV systems impact fiberglass chalking?!
[1:01:39] - Closing
191. Fiberglass Pool Chemistry (w/ Bill Khamis)
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Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the Rule Your Pool podcast. This is episode 191. Hard to believe we've gotten this far. I'm your suboptimal host, Eric Knight, and today I've got an unbelievable guest that I'm excited to have on. I've actually wanted him on this podcast for about two years now, and we finally have him.
Bill Khamis, the founder of Thursday Pools. Thank you so much for joining this show.
Bill Khamis: Heh. You're welcome. It's my pleasure. But, but I got to correct you on two things already, Eric.
Eric Knight: Oh, yeah?
Bill Khamis: You're not suboptimal. You are the optimal, man. Oh. You are the-
Eric Knight: Clearly you don't listen to a lot of podcasts.
Bill Khamis: I'm just one more person, so.
Eric Knight: All right. Well, thank you so much and today we're going to talk about fiberglass pools. So let's get right into it.
[00:00:38] Bill's background
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Eric Knight: Okay. So Bill, I met you a few years ago. We actually got introduced because of some chemistry articles that I had written about chalking in fiberglass, 'cause that was one of the big chemistry topics. And as I've gotten to know you, I've become more and more fascinated with what you're doing at Thursday Pools.
Let's go back to the start. How did you get into the pool business? And just give it a, you know, a brief 30,000 view summary of how you got into this and- Yeah ... and how it got to where it is today.
Bill Khamis: Well, the real fast story, so I'm actually an accountant. I'm a CPA, you know, by education, trade, all of that. But I did have a... I started selling fiberglass parts when I was 16 years old, Eric. Mm. And it grew and grew, so I did it while I was in college, of course. Um, and then after I got out of college, I worked in accounting for a few years, wanted to get the CPA license- Mm-hmm ... and got that. And then the fiberglass business really took off from there.
But we built, and this was almost 40 years ago, we built above ground fiberglass pool ladders. So I got exposed to the pool industry a long time ago. And I've done fiberglass my whole life now. Mm-hmm. So, um, but, but the pool ladders, eventually we, we started doing other products that were more popular than the pool, but we got exposed to the pool industry.
Um, I was going to build a, a boat factory, and this many, many years ago now. But the government did a 10% luxury tax. So I, uh, put it on hold and ended up building some houses, did construction, built a lot of residential homes. And then in '08, '08-ish, when the economy was slowing down, I was actually going to go back to start the boat factory again.
And long story short, my wife wanted a swimming pool, and we had our own concrete crews at the time, Eric.
And she thought I was going to bring my concrete guys over, but I just wanted simplicity. So I ended up having a fiberglass pool put in. And when I saw the, the construction of it, I knew we could do, you know, just as good and better in that market.
So at the time, I was thinking about building the boat factory again, but instead of boats, I just switched it to the swimming pools.
Eric Knight: Just on a whim like that, said, "Ah, you know what? Forget boats. I, I see an opportunity here."
Bill Khamis: You know, it, it was literally when that shell showed up in the yard that the light went off. I had already had equipment in place, and wood was ordered for the patterns for boats and that item. But when the swimming pool shell showed up, I, I realized, wait a second, this market ... Well, what I liked about the markets was the boat industry market's very, very mature at the time.
You know, '08, '09, '10, the, the fiberglass swimming pool market in the US was still very young. So I knew just that aspect alone, plus the fact that I, I'd been around fiberglass my whole life, I really wanted to do fiberglass. It was a matter of what product. And the pools made a lot more sense because I knew we could start out on the ground up. We could be a, hopefully a more prominent player, rather than competing in a very mature industry that was very cutthroat, so.
Eric Knight: That makes a lot of sense. So you said as soon as the shell showed up, you realized that you needed to do this. What did you see? What was wrong with it?
Bill Khamis: So, obviously, I installed my first for my own pool. And just being around fiberglass, I knew it could be improved, just rigidity-wise, strength-wise, finish-wise. Um, I, I knew we could, we could do every bit as good, if not better. And that's it. So you know, we, I learned those lessons. Like, I know when you're trying to install a 40-foot pool, it's real critical how level that flange is, how strong it is to make the installation a, a simpler process.
Eric Knight: And on these shells that are not made as durable as the ones that you decided to make, what would be the problems long term that a homeowner might see? Would you see, like, bowing in walls? Would you see failures? What, what would you see?
Bill Khamis: Here's the thing. Even if it's made a little on the thinner side or weaker side, once it's in the ground, you should be okay, Eric. That is one good thing about the fiberglass shells. I mean, I can't say that our competitors do weak jobs. We just try to do the specific things that make it really easier for the dealer to deal with. From not having to flip it being upside down when it delivers, so it delivers right side up. It's got four lift points that just are super rigid so they can lift it with their, you know, their lifting straps.
And not worry about it caving in and stuff like that. 'Cause you can cause some, some surface cracks in the gel coat if you do that. So we just made it rigid enough that it made it real easy to install, and then when you lift a corner, makes it a lot easier to get it level in the ground.
Yeah.
Eric Knight: One of the things that's covered in our Construction 2111 class at Watershape University is the weight of soil versus the weight of water. And in the geotechnical soils portion of that construction school, they talk about the pool is actually a lot lighter than the equivalent volume of soil. And so if that soil is in expansive clays, for instance, when you do your soil study, well, expansive clay means it expands.
Mm-hmm. And there's a lot of pressure that can push in, which is why you have a bond beam on the top of a concrete wall, kind of like the rim on a salad bowl. If you didn't have that bowl, you know, those pressures, you could bend the salad bowl. But when you do have that 90-degree rim around it, it makes it very durable.
Do you have the equivalent of a bond beam that holds the soil back?
Bill Khamis: So the dealer will pour that bond beam in the field. Mm-hmm. What we've done is made that whole flange so rigid and in a shape and a design that it helps lock into it. Very-
Eric Knight: Oh, nice
Bill Khamis: ... so, so when they... And, and the good thing is they can pour a monolithic concrete pour, so they're doing their deck and the bond beam at the same time. Kind of an advantage. But just, just makes sure it gets locked in, lasts longer, stays more rigid. And, and honestly, we hardly ... I, I can't even tell you the last time I heard of that even being an issue.
Eric Knight: Well, then you're making it well. It sounds like it's kind of integral into the design of the fiberglass pool.
Yeah. I, I- Which is good ...
Bill Khamis: I hate to say we build the best, because the truth is every single manufacturer says that exact same thing.
Eric Knight: Well, they have to. If they're going to compete, they've had to improve their design since the day that you bought yours originally. I mean, I would imagine all the brands have improved what they're doing.
Bill Khamis: Oh, they sure have. I, I mean, actually, that's one thing I'm proud of our whole fiberglass pool manufacturing industry. Everybody's trying to raise the bar for everybody. So it's all getting better, from the surface finishes to the structural to the, you know, just the efficiency of shipping and installing. I really believe as a industry, as a fiberglass pool manufacturing industry as a whole, they have all stepped up.
[00:07:27] Expanding Education and Manufacturing Capabilities
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Eric Knight: That's what I like to hear. And speaking of stepping that up, we have talked about creating Construction 2112, 'cause we've had our flagship 2111, which is concrete pool construction. Of working with you and some vinyl liner companies about making an alternative construction school. You'll still go through soils, you'll still go through geotechnical engineering and hydraulics and all that stuff. Those are the same.
But the installation process for fiberglass and for vinyl liner are very, very different. And speaking of that training, you have really expanded your facility. When I was there, it was under construction, basically to make it a training center, not just for your dealers, but for everybody who installs fiberglass pools. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what your vision is for that?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. So the, the building is complete now. We've got a little over a 5,000 square foot conference room, and the idea behind it is the, the dealers are ultimately installing the pool. But we want to have them as trained as they can possibly be so that they avoid all of the pitfalls that can come up.
And so we used to do training just once a year, and we would rent out the hotel and, you know, it, it would work, but it was obviously not as efficient. And our people here realized there's a lot of value if we could get these dealers more often and during the year, and even offer where when they hire new project managers and stuff like that, that they could send them throughout the year.
So we built a little over 5,000 square foot conference room just dedicated to, to the training. And so we bring them in multiple times now. So we're doing it like four times a year actually.
Eric Knight: Oh, that's awesome.
Bill Khamis: And, and a few impromptu ones when, when dealers make a special request. Like they'll say, "Look, we want to bring, you know, a, a dozen people." And they'll even bring like the salespeople in just to help learn.
Eric Knight: Now, if it's in a conference room, are there any hands-on components to this learning?
Bill Khamis: So very little in the conference room, but we do have an area dedicated outside now. We have not built it yet, but we will be doing that soon. So, And that one will be hands-on for all of the steps, and w- we kind of figured that out. You know, the trick was we didn't want it to be the classical where you come and we're going to dig a hole, you know, drop the shell in, try to level it. We're actually going to have multiple pools at every stage.
Eric Knight: Oh, cool
Bill Khamis: that they can see every aspect, and the different types of options on coping, on covers, and pools and pumps and equipment and stuff like that. But that is not complete yet. That, that is on the design phase right now.
Eric Knight: You know, it's, it's funny, now I, I think we've got a, we've got a race here because we've also got a training facility being built that is being built by Tempool, which is a pool plastering company in Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah.
And they're building a very similar size facility with test pools, not only for shotcrete training, but for all types of interior cement-based finishes, plaster, pebble, quartz, exposure training, chip out training, waterproofing training. So for concrete pool construction, we'll have access to send our students to that hands-on school. And not just our students, but subcontractors.
Most of our students are pool builders, and, uh, there are service companies as well. But the subs, they need the hands-on training as well. And, and what we found is most subcontractors, they're working all the time. They ... it's hard for them to get away for classes. But if it's hands-on training, I think you're going to be able to get a lot of those people in your doors. So that's exciting. Do you have any sort of idea on timeline of when that's going to start construction?
Bill Khamis: Nothing we can mention yet.
Eric Knight: Oh, well then I'm, I'm not going to hold your feet to the fire, but, uh, let- let's, let's check years-
Bill Khamis: Same thing we did about the conference center. You know, that was, that was in the works for quite a while. Mm-hmm. It was just a matter till it all fell into place. So. Yeah. But, but we will. We'll, we'll get it here.
Eric Knight: Right. Well, I've seen your facility. I've been there twice now, and, uh, a lot of progress happened between my first visit and my second. I'm just amazed at the sheer size of it, uh, just the acreage alone of that lot of where you put the pools after they're made outside. I don't even know how many pools it holds. It's got to be over 100 pools that your- Oh, it's- ... gravel lot can hold.
Bill Khamis: Yeah. I mean, it's well over 600-700 actually.
Eric Knight: Wow. Yeah.
Bill Khamis: But what we realized there, Eric, you know, I'm a manufacturing type person, but you think everything happens inside those four walls. Which the manufacturing part does, but the business is not just manufacturing. You have to handle the pool shells, be able to store an ample amount of them, and then load them safely and efficiently and, you know, and not injure anybody. So a big part of the business is actually outside of the building itself. And if there's one thing that I underestimated initially, it was that aspect of it.
You know, our outside ... You know, obviously our building grew four different times, but the outside yard was the exact same. And when we thought, "Okay, now we've got this big area dedicated, you know, we've got four shoots where we store all the pool shells safely, uh, easy access with telehandlers." We started out with one pad, added a couple more.
I think we got like 11 or 12 now. Just for those storage. But, but then you've got to have acres and acres of asphalt for loading the trucks. And you know they all want to leave first thing in the morning, you know?
Eric Knight: Yeah, so they're all backed up. And, and we're talking ... Are we talking 18 wheelers, or w- what kind of trucks are carrying your-
Bill Khamis: You know, it's about 50/50. It's about half are the, the semis. And half of them now are just goose neck dualies. You know- now, obviously the 8, 10 pool stacks are, are all semis. But, but you can still get a few pools on a dualie.
Eric Knight: And so they stack?
Bill Khamis: Oh, they sure do. They'll nest and they'll stack on top of each other.
Eric Knight: Nice. Okay. That's super efficient. And I know that that has been one of the limiting factors when speaking with pool builders that if you are installing a fiberglass pool, there are dimension limitations, because it has to fit on a truck. It has to go under overpasses. So on top of the truck it still has to be under 14 feet, because that's the height of the bridges. And so there's a, you know, a maximum width that you can have. Of course, you can angle it a certain way. Maximum length, things like that. What are the main constraints that you have to build these pools within in terms of transportation?
Bill Khamis: So, so you'll see the, the, the biggest size you're going to typically go is a 16 by 40. You can go a little longer. I'm sure we got some, you know, a 41 also. But, but that 16 foot width, that is the main limit. That's the limit. So, and you can only lean it so far, and you don't gain much more than the 16. You know, you can turn some 14s down to 12s, but you can't turn a ... By the time you put the whole shell of a 16 footer on there, that is your limit. Your 16 foot. Be- And that's even pace vehicles.
Eric Knight: Yeah, I was going to say, because you have to ... now it's wider than a lane on a highway. Yeah. And you're transporting this across the country. That's interesting logistics. That's something that you don't think about unless you're transporting a very large object, and that's a huge part of your business. Would you agree?
Bill Khamis: No, it sure is. It sure is. And like when we started, Eric, we couldn't get anybody to deliver our pools. So we bought our own trucks and had our own drivers. But we quickly outgrew that. So now we sub that out and we've got more than a couple dozen truckers that are just dedicated to, to delivering these pools for us.
And so we've got a really good group there. You know, they're people we've worked with. It, it's a small group that do these wide loads, and do them efficiently, and are familiar and know how to handle them. The shells are large, so you know, it's easy for them to damage them if they don't know what they're doing.
Eric Knight: Yeah. Fair.
Bill Khamis: But shipping now has the ... You know, issues on shipping is a, pretty much a moot point. That we've got experienced drivers.
[00:14:44] Clearance for Fiberglass Pool Installation
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Eric Knight: So I, I would imagine on the dealer end, not on your end as the manufacturer, but on the dealer end, one of the main considerations is clearance and how you get that shell around the house into the backyard. Because if it's like a narrow, you know, side yard and you're next to a house, I would imagine you need a boom crane or something instead of a, uh, excavator or something like that, a telehandler.
Bill Khamis: And you're correct. You see all of the above, and it just depends on the circumstance. You know, in a, in an ideal situation, that truck can back up right to the, close to the, where the pool's being dug. Our excavator, has to be a good enough size, can lift it off, get it right in the hole. That's the easiest.
Yeah. If not, and you, you know, you've got to go over homes or too, too big of structures or trees or fences or stuff like that, cranes are very popular. They will crane them, and they'll go from a small size crane just to go over minimal stuff in the yard, to, as you can imagine, the monster cranes to lift way over-
Eric Knight: Over the house.
Bill Khamis: Yeah. Yeah. Then the other thing, uh, we'll see sometimes is if they rent a telehandler, an ex- you know, a telescopic fork truck machine. They can take that pool, pick it up in the street, drive it wherever they need, lift it over fences, stuff like that. But you do still need that width. But they get real creative to get it back.
Eric Knight: I would imagine so. So on a typical, what, what's a typical size? Probably, I'm guessing like 14 by 30 something?
Bill Khamis: You know, the, the 14x35s, very popular. 16x30, 16x35s. The 16x40s, are not the most popular. Believe it or not, it's a little bit smaller than that.
Eric Knight: I would imagine so. Yeah. So what's the approximate weight on something like that? Because if there's a pool builder listening to this, and we do have quite a few pool builders that do listen to this, they need to be thinking about the size of excavator or the size of lift capability they need on site.
Bill Khamis: Right.
Eric Knight: And you can't just use a mini excavator to lift this thing. I'm guessing it's several thousand pounds.
Bill Khamis: Correct. So the shells, you're probably no less than the, for a majority of them, no less than 2,500 pounds. Easily up to 3500, 3,800, pushing 4,000. Now some of them will be 4,500, 4,800, but those are the big diving pools. So, so you're easily in that 3,000 pound range. But, but the issue is they have to be able to reach out far enough. Because you're not just lifting it right in front of you. You know, you've got a- Right ... 16 foot wide pool. You've got to reach out to the middle of it, and up high enough.
Eric Knight: Right. So it's, it's just the lever arm. It's the moment arm, right? So we're talking physics here. So you have to have a lot of base weight on that excavator or that telehandler, because just because- Yes ... you can lift it, like, a tractor will have a lift capacity at the pin, but if you're using pallet forks, the weight is not at the pin. It's two or three feet in front of the pin, so that changes your center of gravity. That makes perfect sense. Right. Yeah. Um-
Bill Khamis: You're right.
[00:17:28] How to become a Fiberglass Pool Installer
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Eric Knight: So I appreciate all this, and the, part of the reason that I'm asking these questions is because we've gotten a lot of requests at Watershape University about fiberglass. I have two questions on that. For someone who's never installed fiberglass, actually three questions, how would they get started? That's the first question. Number two, what are the timeline expectations for, say, a eight-foot diameter circular spa with an overflow? And then, um, where can they go to learn how to do this?
Bill Khamis: Gotcha. Well, when you say getting started, you mean to learn how to install?
Eric Knight: Or to get involved, to, to get connected with a manufacturer, um, so that you can start becoming a certified dealer or just get access to this, 'cause you're not going to sell it to just anybody. It's not like you can sell a fiberglass pool on Amazon, at least I hope not. So you have to have a qualified installer. Oh, got it. How does that process start?
Bill Khamis: Yeah, so really most of the manufacturers only work with people they have contracts with. 'Cause obviously they want to control the quality of that. And we're very similar to them. I believe they all have similar to what we're doing. You go on the website, and you put a dealer request form. We have the thursdaypool.com and we have riverpoolsandspas.com. So either of those websites would be the place to go to, and they have a dealer request section there. And then there's a whole, um, vetting process and onboarding if they can be accepted, 'cause obviously we're, we're like the other manufacturers also. You want to respect people's territories or areas.
Right. But we don't give documented, written dedicated territories, but we do control that everybody's got respect for each other. And so, you know, if that market's already saturated, we, we cannot Like the other manufacturers, you know, we won't accept more and more dealers just to put them on top of each other.
Eric Knight: Right.
Bill Khamis: But if more territory is there, then it moves on to the next processes. And with us, it starts with a Zoom meeting. And then they have to have recommendations if they have installed pools, you know, of customers and suppliers. And then we'll do a, we actually do a credit check and a background check on them.
Eric Knight: Good.
Bill Khamis: Not saying that they have to be perfect, but things have to be understood. So you've at least done your due diligence to know you're going to select somebody to represent that brand that is going to be beneficial for all of the other people that are representing the brand, right? Then there is, they do have to do an in-person meeting, actually to come to the plant for a full day and learn a little bit of the paperwork. But that also gets done over some Zoom calls. And to learn the installation, the recommendations that we, you know, can show them.
Eric Knight: So it sounds like there's a very well-established process for this.
Bill Khamis: Oh yeah, there's a team here that, that takes care of that on both brands actually.
Eric Knight: Okay. Cool.
Bill Khamis: And they overlap a little bit, like on the install side, but the marketing side, there's, there's complete teams here that would, would onboard somebody.
Eric Knight: And in terms of timeline, what would be the lead time if, uh, one of your dealers says, "Hey, I've got a customer. I'm going to add this fiberglass spa during a major renovation." What are they looking at? Let's say you have one in stock, and then let's say for example too, you need to make it. What would the lead time be for them to get that spa delivered?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. So, so lead times will vary anywhere from like four to 12 weeks.
Eric Knight: Okay.
Bill Khamis: Um, but, but like right now we're in the middle of the season. I think we're in the five to six range and getting it just now down to the four to five range. Which usually works, it works out pretty good because it takes them that long to get permits and neighborhood approval. Assuming they've even got work going on already, they can't put it in the next day either, right?
Eric Knight: Well, it's going to take them a few weeks to get the excavation and everything leveled and the plumbing run. I would think that that actually works pretty conveniently.
Bill Khamis: Lead time overall I don't think is usually an issue. Re- really whether that's or other manufacturers. Because the dealer has to get all of that paperwork and process in place before they're ready for you to actually say, "Ship to shell tomorrow." So when they place an order, like with us, they'll give an expected delivery date. And then there's a team here that just contacts and schedules all that logistics to make sure production and shipping c- can handle all of that. So, so they, they stay very much in touch with the dealer. The timing's usually not the issue. Um-
Eric Knight: So is it fair to say, and, and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, I'm just curious. This question just came up in my mind. Do you not have certain things just sitting in stock, like spas that have been made that are not already spoken for? Or is everything on your lot already spoken for with a work order?
Bill Khamis: Everything is spoken for on this one.
Eric Knight: Wow.
Bill Khamis: Yeah.
Eric Knight: That's incredible turnover.
Bill Khamis: Yeah, but, you know, when you've got several hundred of them out there, if a dealer called with a crisis and they needed something immediately? If you've got several hundred to pick from, you can always take one of those and send it out, and then replace it. You know, making sure you're not... You're still taking care of that first dealer who's expecting it. But when you've got several hundred out there, they're not all going tomorrow.
Right. So, so do we have inventory? Technically, no, because it does actually have a serial number for a dealer with a homeowner.
Eric Knight: Got it.
Bill Khamis: From the beginning. But it is relatively common that they have to swap. So to say we have inventory, we technically, um, not to just choose from, if that makes sense.
Eric Knight: Well, I mean, four to eight weeks is a totally reasonable lead time. I mean, if you were... Sometimes getting a dehumidifier for an indoor pool is four to six months of lead time. Not, not always, but, like- Yeah ... if it's not a common size, there's a lot of components. I mean, some of the, the sponsors of Watershape make very specialty items that can take months of lead time. So that's not so big of a deal, especially since you can't just dig a hole, level it, and get everything done in a weekend. At least if, if you are, you're probably rushing things. So, I would think that once the hole is dug, the rock is in, you know, all the... I don't know how to build it, but based on what I've learned at your conference, there's some fundamentals that are done. Once the hole is prepped and ready, and the plumbing is in the ground and everything's ready to go, that shell gets delivered, it gets hooked up.
I mean, it's getting filled with water within 24 hours usually, is it not?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. Yeah. And you'll see the, the people with real crews, I mean, they can dig the hole in the morning, get their four-inch stone bed in, level. And then if this pool shell shows up midday, they'll drop it in. It's not too uncommon that they'll have water in it by the end of that first day.
Eric Knight: Wow. So timeline is incredibly fast.
Bill Khamis: Oh, they... Yeah. Now obviously, you have to have good weather. You know, you're not in the rain, you're not in too much mud, stuff like that, too much cold. But a lot of them, a surprising amount of them, the morning they dig, th- they'll have the shell in there.
[00:24:03] Researching Fiberglass "Chalking"
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Eric Knight: Oh my gosh, see I had no idea. I'm glad we're talking about it. But I do want to shift gears here, Bill, because the main reason I wanted you on here is because you are doing something that I don't know if any other company is doing. A, you all approached me years ago because I had published an article about what I called chalking. Just because I didn't have a better name for it.
I did some episodes, I'd have to look up the number, but, um, I did some episodes on this show where we were trying to figure out what it was. And the best I could come up with, because acid didn't clean it up, was I just called it chalking because it will wipe off on your fingers. You'll get this white residue on your fingers. And everybody seemed to think that this white stuff on fiberglass pools or spas was scale. And I said, "If it's scale, with traditional scale like we think of, which is calcium carbonate, acid would clean it up, and yet it doesn't do that." Right. Your team reached out to me. They found this article, I guess. We've been in touch quite a bit. Not just with you, but your team as well, trying to figure out what this is.
And I have to commend you, your company is the only one that, at least that has made the, themselves aware to me, is doing some serious research on this. And I got to give you kudos, and I was hoping you could share whatever you are able to share. I understand a lot of it is in confidentiality at the moment until it's published. You've done a ton of research on this. I know in your own facility, I saw a lot of samples and a lot of tanks of water and little three-inch square, if I remember right, cuts of different types of fiberglass and gel coats.
What's the status of it? And let's start from the beginning. You started doing this research. Uh, what have you found out that you can share, and what are we still expecting results for? And we don't know what the results are, but where are we in the process?
Bill Khamis: So you said start at the beginning. Good idea. There were three main accomplishments we've had along the way. We had to figure out how to repeat it so that we could do the actual testing on it. We had to find out what was actually happening in this process, and then we found out what is a simple solution to solve it. So those are the three things we've got done.
The fourth step is going to be changing the industry standards, you know, for the US and the world. And that- that's the... We're on that fourth of the fourth stages right now currently. Nice. But, but going back to how it started, because, you know, I got to commend you, Eric. When we were out there, we were doing our research, and that's why we hooked up with each other.
You know, I was like, "Oh my gosh, Eric is out there at least talking about this. He knows it." So, but when we started, you know, we were just one manufacturer doing a small volume at the time, just starting. And we knew the people at River Pools very well. And so we, we talked to them because they were starting to manufacture their own fiberglass shells also. And we realized real quick that we had too small of a database to try to start eliminating these variables. You know, because you come up with not 10 or 20, you come up with about 50 or 100 variables that could be contributing to it, when we knew nothing about it.
And we knew we didn't have enough data. Thanks to River Pools, Jason Hughes there helped organize with, and at the time it was the APSP. You know, to work through them to, to coordinate having all the manufacturers get together, be able to legally speak together and safely. You know, because you've got to avoid all the collusion laws, right?
So Jason helped start the Fiberglass Pool Council. Brought in, I want to say it was pretty much every fiberglass pool manufacturer, and I'd say maybe all, at the very most one of them just, you know, didn't stay with it or something. But, but all met. And what was good about that was we were able to get the data from every manufacturer. And then we had a database that you could start eliminating, okay, wait, it's not, you know, different states. It wasn't different regions. It wasn't different seasons. It wasn't internal mix equipment, external mix equipment. It wasn't this brand catalyst. It, it was not a specific brand, not a specific temperature, all the way down to the day of the week.
By the way, looking back at that, um, it probably is a little bit more to where there's high hardness in their water. You know, you can Google the US map of where there's hardness. There is probably a little bit of that there, but we didn't pick it up quite at the time.
Eric Knight: Right you were looking for common denominators and throwing out everything else basically?
Bill Khamis: Yes. Then we started doing testing. And we had the whole group together, and we were paying some labs to do some of the testing. Couldn't get real far with it real quick. By the way, the trick there was we're all, everybody was using deionized and osmotic filtered water. Could not get any results to happen. And we quickly realized we were going to need to do many, many more of these tests, and it was difficult to get all those manufacturers together. Not that they're bad. Believe me, I actually want to credit them. Because, you know, bottom line, we got, because of getting everybody together- Right ... it put us years ahead, Eric, on this research. We wouldn't be this far along if we didn't have all of them ...
Eric Knight: Around what time? Like, what years was this going on?
Bill Khamis: This had to be Uh, gosh, I'm going to say 11, 12, 13?
Eric Knight: Okay. So over 10 years ago.
Bill Khamis: Oh, it was a while ago. Okay. Yeah. And, but it went on for a few years and just, it was moving slow. And we realized, hey, if we, you know, we're willing to put in, of course, a lot more resources of money and time and all of that good stuff. But we did go to the whole Fiberglass Council and said, "Look, whatever we do, we're going to share it with everyone." And then we immediately went out and we had a list of a handful of labs that, that we knew what we could start, uh, at least attacking it from. Still took a year and a half, maybe two years, of just doing outside independent labs.
Eric Knight: Would these be like material science labs? 'Cause, uh, I mean, I've sent like crystals and they could analyze exactly what the material is.
Bill Khamis: Oh, 100%.
Eric Knight: Is that kind of the same thing?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. Okay. Down to the atoms and elements and, oh, all of it. But we got a little sign of it from them, and they did do good. It got us in the right direction. But then we hired people full time and brought it in-house, and then we could start doing hundreds and hundreds of the tests, just to figure out how to reproduce the issue. And I would say within a year we got it figured out. It took us like, you know, three, four, five days. We've gone in a five-day period to reproduce it down to 24 hours. You know, by the way-
Eric Knight: Wow ... So you can get a sample to chalk within 24 hours?
Bill Khamis: Yeah, we can. Pre- pretty extreme conditions.
Eric Knight: Oh, man.
Bill Khamis: But, we took that information then to the gel coat manufacturers. And there's only a few of them out there that we all pretty much pick from, right? They were actually, we were in, obviously, very good communication with them, 'cause they were just as concerned. And we gave them the methods that we were using to test, and so they could reproduce it and make their gel coats more robust.
What did come out of that, they did make some improvements, which helped a little bit. And so we got to the point where, okay, it's a little bit better, but, you know, there are just limits in, in the polymer chemistry. Um, and so at, at that point we, we, we worked on phase three, which was what do we do to give the homeowner a better result so this doesn't happen with them?
And I think we were in close touch with you and stuff at the time because one of the things we did notice, the people that followed the LSI, for the most part, would have much better luck. And so we encourage that, of course. But as you know, LSI is much more geared towards a concrete surface. Where the big difference between concrete and fiberglass is you don't have the calcium in fiberglass that you do in your concrete pool.
[00:31:36] Selflessness
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Eric Knight: Yeah, I want to get on that in just a second, but I want to take one step back of something you said, and you were on a good flow so I didn't want to interrupt while you were saying it. I want to point out to the audience just how rare it is what you are doing, for two reasons. Number one, companies do their own internal research all the time. That is not rare. But sharing data on what you are investing in, 'cause you're the one spending the money, you're the one hiring the people, you're the one investing all the resources and time and devotion in your own place. I've seen your setup, it's incredible. To figure out this problem, and you're sharing it with all of your competitors and your gel coat manufacturers and all that stuff so that they don't have to go through all of that expense and time. So they don't have to catch up. They're just at full speed. Actions speak louder than words, Bill. That's what really gravitated me towards working with you guys in terms of fixing this on a chemistry side.
Not that I have anything to do with fiberglass, but, you know, this little podcast of mine reaches a lot of pool pros, and they service a lot of fiberglass pools. And I'm so grateful that you're on here, but I have to tell you, that's rare. Because in the chemical business? Sharing research doesn't really happen. I mean, it just doesn't. There's a lot of knowledge that chemical companies have. We were a very small one at Orenda. We published everything. But we also didn't have the proprietary research that some of these big companies have. So the fact that you invested so heavily, and that's big money when you're talking multiple employees for several years, and all the lab testing equipment and all of that stuff to figure out a problem that you didn't necessarily cause, but it, it was your problem as a manufacturer because it was your dealer's problem. But ultimately, it was your customer's problem. And I have to commend you for that. So sharing it to get to a faster outcome for solving the problem, I wish more sections of our industry... Well, actually, just globally. I wish more people would do that so that we can get answers faster, so thank you for that.
Bill Khamis: Right. It's our pleasure. But Eric, coming from you, boy, that's a, that's a big compliment, so.
Eric Knight: Oh, I've only got 17 followers on here. I, I was once up to 300, and then we, we, we went down. I'm just kidding. But
Bill Khamis: I mean, the truth is we wouldn't have it any other way. I mean, people always talk that talk, but then they-
Eric Knight: You don't have to. The results are there. You've found, you've discovered so much more and, and that's really where we got brought in, right? We got brought in during phase three of this. So you had already been doing this, gosh, at least nine or 10 years when we met, right?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. Yeah, it was a while. But, but the, the beauty is, after we had figured out how to reproduce it and made the gel coat a little more robust, it was like we, we were still frustrated because we see homeowners struggling with their water chemistry.
[00:34:09] Chalking looks like Calcium Silicate bound to the Gelcoat Polymers
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Bill Khamis: And thankfully, we, we've come across something that's really, really, uh, does benefits like to, to no end. Doesn't compare. But you kind of got to understand what was happening in the water chemistry. Like you, you talked about the calcium carbonate, and it will remove with, uh, an acid.
Eric Knight: Right.
Bill Khamis: Usually muriatic acid is what's used. And so everybody was applying that, but it wasn't until we took it to the labs and they basically came back saying, "You're not dealing with calcium carbonate, it's more calcium silicate." Which is just, you know, silicone- Uh-huh ... with an oxygen is a silicate, and then it's combining with the carbon.
Like to give you an idea, it, it's so hard to remove because it's glass, but it is literally like glass. So our fiberglass, the fibers are literally made from silica sand. You're forming that, a carbon silicate on that pool wall that is as hard as glass.
Eric Knight: Wow.
Bill Khamis: Ultimately. So you're not going to put an acid in it to remove it. The problem gets a little worse than that though, because when you do let that even form, it's actually hydrolyzing the polymer that the polyester is, that the gel coats are made out of. It's an MPG, isophthalic polyester. Very robust. Can handle all the chlorine that you can put on it, literally 100%. It can handle all the acid you put on it, 100%. It can handle ultra high pH. What it can't... And it can even handle most of those three together to an incredible level. The, the issue comes when there's calcium in the water.
Eric Knight: Because that has a bonding substrate that it likes to connect with?
Bill Khamis: It's a positive two ion, as you know. It helps the reactions have enough energy to literally break the the polymer. It can only do it when pH is high, chlorine is high, and you have the, the presence of the calcium.
Eric Knight: So you need this perfect storm. And for the listeners, when this was first hypothesized, what I was doing was, if you... well, actually, you can't read the old article now because we've updated it, which is what you do when you're learning new things. We suspected it was some sort of calcium compound that was not calcium carbonate. We had no idea what it was. Yeah. But we knew that acid was not wiping this away. We also knew that in all of the cases that had been brought to us at Orenda, and there were many, like many dozens upon dozens upon dozens, if not over 100 over the course of my years there, they all shared a few things in common. And a lot of them were trying to, they were trying to maintain a 7.4 to 7.6 pH.
Well, what, in reality, any pro listening to this knows that it's not going to stay there. The pH isn't going to stay there because of air physics, so it's rising up, so they're hitting it with acid repeatedly. And originally, when we had talked, the suspicion was that it was calcium oxide, CaO, that was binding to these polymers. Now it sounds like it's calcium silicate, and this is where the research is leading. The research is not done. So I applaud you for continuing to do that, and I, I look forward to seeing that.
Bill Khamis: You were on the right area, though. I mean, silicate is silicone with an oxygen. So, so- Well, close ... so you were real close. You just add one more S to that and you're there.
Eric Knight: You know, it makes me wonder, this is just coming to me now. It makes me wonder if you could plug in that data to AI and let, you know- Oh ... a ChatGPT paid version of Gemini or Groq or, um, Anthropic or something like that say, "Hey, can you analyze this and tell us what you think is going on?" I wonder what AI would say. Um.
Bill Khamis: Go ahead and do it.
Eric Knight: Yeah, I think I will. I think I will.
[00:37:40] The LSI, and chelating calcium
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Bill Khamis: You'll be pleased, actually. You know, we knew that the silicone and oxygen were high from that elemental analysis. But in the whole research, when they talk about boilers, and, you know, obviously boilers are the ver- first big one where they start talking about LSI. What I learned was, I thought it was mostly LSI, like on boilers, but on the boilers, it, LSI is just one of the parts of it. You know, a boiler tries to maintain zero silica and almost zero calcium. Now, they will say technically they do want a, a very, very, a micro amount in there. That will, uh, some of the best-
Eric Knight: Well, they're also running between 200 and 212 degrees because that's when water boils Right?
Bill Khamis: And when you look at your LSI, how they balance the LSI, because temperature's so elevated, you have to have zero hardness. And then you're still balanced, but that's why, that there's no... So we looked at the pools and started analyzing, you know, actually running water softeners to get rid of the calcium. Absolutely successful as far as water chemistry. Absolutely a nightmare about trying to put soft water in your pool all the time and exchange it with it, and you find out just how, how small of a volume a water softener, uh, can do compared to the number of gallons in a swimming pool. Let alone the maintenance of the water softener. So, so we had to keep pushing on that. And fortunately, working with the chemist, what we realized is all you have to do is neutralize the calcium ions, which are a positive two, and you can easily do that with a stain and scale control.
Eric Knight: Sequestering agent or a chelating agent. Again, how we got connected was experimenting with SC-1000. So tell us a little bit about that ...
Bill Khamis: So we tried your SC-1000, and it was phenomenal results. Remember how I talked about turning it changing it da- doing the, the test in 24 hours?
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
Bill Khamis: It was an amazingly small amount of that SC-1000 we could put in, and you couldn't do it after two weeks.
Eric Knight: That's incredible.
Bill Khamis: It was, like, noticeable. And it was like, now wait a second. So we put less and less of the stain and scale control. It, it was meaningless. We stopped measuring because we weren't going to count the moles or atoms or molecules. You know, literally. It was-
Eric Knight: Well, because you, you neutralized the valence on the calcium ion by chelating it in this case so that it didn't have a substrate to bind to in the polymer.
[00:40:04] Gelcoat Molecular Structure
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Eric Knight: So let's talk about a polymer real quick. If we could just give a visual description to the listeners, 'cause you gave this description when I was there, and it made a lot of sense. That you had a bunch of links, and then at the end they have to kind of turn 90 degrees because it's, you know, it, it's coming up, and then it has to turn. Could you describe how these polymers are linked? Sure. And I think that'll help me explain how calcium could bind to it.
Bill Khamis: Got you. So these are polyester resins basically. So it's a styrene monomer that is cooked and added with glycols and acids to make it a liquid. It comes to our plant. We add just a catalyst to start the reaction that lets it reharden, basically. When it hardens, it is cross-linking. So you know when you do your classical chemical formula, all of this is going to yield this? People usually think linearly, that it's just a long, long molecule. In the fiberglass material, it's a cross linked in three dimensions. So it's not just attaching as a long molecule, it's attaching in all three dimensions.
Eric Knight: And it's very thin. I mean, you spray this onto the mold first, and then you start applying fiberglass to it. If we, if we think of a mold as an inside out pool
Bill Khamis: Correct
Eric Knight: you're spraying the gel coat on first, correct?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. And it's in your 25 to 35 mil range, so very, very thin. Which is why we put an additional vinyl ester barrier coat right behind that. Yeah. Which gives it ultimate waterproofing, but it also gives it a lot more exotherm so that it can help that curing process, because you want that gel coat to cross link just as much as possible.
You never achieve 100%. Ironically, if you did, your pool shell would be one molecule of resin.
Eric Knight: Oh, whoa.
Bill Khamis: Which is ... But you never get there. It follows a log curve that basically goes to infinity. It never gets to 100%. But it does cross link in three dimensions, which is why inside radiuses, outside radiuses, flat surfaces, flat going to a textured. Believe it or not, that three dimension of cross linking is affected by what surface it's up against. molecule of the, the gel coat, let's say, in the middle of surrounded by other molecules, they're going to cross link exactly to each other.
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
Bill Khamis: If you have one molecule and it's up against a hard surface that it's not going to be able to, to, to cross link with, then picture that three dimension of it trying to cross link just to those sides. Which yield different cross linking, um, which is why you will get differences on, you know, inside radius, outside radius, a flat surface or a texture.
Eric Knight: Yeah.
Bill Khamis: So you can see those differences, which all of that was indications of what was kind of leading us to what was happening, though. When you get those high pH, chlorine, calcium, um, situation, it actually breaks that molecule. So it's hydrolysis. It's using water, plus calcium, plus the, the chlorine, oxidative state of the chlorine, and the higher pH to cleavage that molecule. And so you literally are breaking the original molecule. Um, and then that just makes it worse. Because now you've actually made a physical gap that more water molecules can get in.
Eric Knight: And then it starts. Yeah. It's kind of, it's almost like a, an inverse of corrosion where once it grabs hold, it replicates and it's very hard to stop. And, and I've noticed this on stairs. Because, you know, to a stair, an inside radius, we think of it where your toe would be if you were walking up the stairs.
But technically, that's an outside radius because you got to remember the gel coat was shot on an inverse of the pool, right?
Bill Khamis: Correct. When it's manufactured.
Eric Knight: Yeah, which makes a lot of sense because I've seen a lot of chalking very focused on those edges of steps, which I'm like, "Why? Why would it be there?
It doesn't make sense." And now it makes sense because it's the cross-linking and it's binding to basically unstabilized or, uh, unsequestered or unchelated calcium. Am I getting that correct?
Bill Khamis: Oh, correct. Yeah. And we would probably recommend a chelated calcium, so, so, you know, it's only attaching to one molecule. If you do the sequestering, then it will attach to more, and then that's when you may have to filter it out, which, which becomes more work. So for an average homeowner to just add a chelating stain and scale control, which your SC-1000 we had great luck with. It will neutralize that calcium. And basically, the water recommendations we started with years ago are still pretty much true. The only thing we've done is by lowering the calcium, telling the average homeowner to have a much lower calcium, you've just put them in a window that is much wider that they can expose or abuse that water chemistry.
Knowing that you know, in reality, that happens. Whether it's carel- and, and it's, it's not necessarily the homeowner's careless abuse. You know, if you just have a standard salt generator and have it turned on and you don't have ORP and pH sensors and automatic acid drips. Which, let's be honest, the majority of them, that's what they have. They just have a salt generator, which is a chlorine generator, right? And when it's on, it's on nonstop. And so too many of them don't put the switches, like with an auto cover, it automatically shut it off. They don't have the ORP sensors when the chlorine gets too high to automatically shut it off.
So what happens, they drive the pH up and with a lot of chlorine. Yeah. And if you have the calcium unchelated, then you're greatly increasing your risk to have that hydrolysis reaction. If you did the original water chemistry recommendations, and by gosh, if you keep the LSI? if you keep it there, you're golden.
The big, big issue comes, in reality pH fluctuates too much. As, as you know, nobody understands the LSI more than you guys do. When that pH goes up, you know, even half of a point. Well, that's 0.5. You're out of range no matter what you add.
Eric Knight: So, so it's funny you say this. I want to step in here because when I first met you, we went to your office. A, your office is cool as hell. I've never seen an office... You've got a train that comes down. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. But that has nothing to do with this episode. It's just- Yeah ... something I'm fascinated by. But it tells me a lot that you think and you tinker and you experiment a lot.
[00:46:15] Thursday Pool's Chemistry Recommendations
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Eric Knight: So in that meeting, we were talking about the LSI. We were talking about why pH rises, Henry's Law, and how if you don't have chemical automation, the pH is going to rise up to the pH ceiling when it goes flat. And I remember you had a can of Coca-Cola, and I was using that as an example, or maybe it was Sprite. But I, I remember you had a canned drink on, on the desk.
Now, for the audience listening, if you have seen the chemistry recommendations from Thursday Pools or River Pools, they say no calcium added. No calcium additives, no, uh, cal hypo or anything like that. And it has led to a ton of questions, which is why we're doing this episode today.
I want to make some things clear. That on its face would definitely conflict with what Orenda has been teaching. However, let's understand the context for what they're trying to do. What I think would be helpful, Bill, by the way, now that I'm thinking about it, is no unchelated calcium over 120 parts per million would probably be the right way of saying that.
Because you have to walk this fine line. We certainly do, and our customers do. It's one thing to protect the fiberglass shell, which is super durable, super robust. Fair. Awesome. But the heat exchanger isn't. And so what happens is when people are overcorrecting, if you don't have that base of calcium, you can't afford to have the lower alkalinity to limit the pH ceiling because you don't have enough calcium to offset it, and it leads into rapid pH rises and overcorrections with acid. And if that happens, that overcorrection with acid finds the main drain. If they are not diluting it enough, which, let's be honest, homeowners and pool pros alike typically cut corners, unfortunately. And that's going to destroy a heat exchanger. And so I'm trying to balance this of, like, the holistic view of the entire pool system as if it's the human body.
And if I eat junk food, it's not going to just affect my stomach and GI tract. That junk food percolates through the rest of the system. So the way I look at this is, okay, we see the goal. We understand the, the... enough about the problem now, even though it's not completely conclusive of exactly what is happening. Uh, we have a good idea, but who knows? There could be a variable we haven't discovered yet.
If it is calcium silicate chalking, which it sounds like it is, what is the main problem there? Well, in the perfect storm, as you say, Bill, high pH, high chlorine, and enough calcium that's unchelated, that's when this starts to happen.
Do I have those three correct?
Bill Khamis: I think so. I think I know where you're going, so keep going.
Eric Knight: So there's more than one way to do this is what I'm saying. So you could either have pH control to keep the pH down. You could have these... And, and by the way, if you have an automatic cover and a salt cell, you have to get the automatic shutoff trigger switch that tells the logic. If you don't have automation with that system, get automation. It's becoming more and more affordable. But you should not be running that salt cell with that lid on at all. That's really, really bad for the pool, no matter what pool surface it is. Same with a trichlor feeder. But they do have these little switches that say, "Hey, this cover is closed. Don't chlorinate right now until it opens", and then, you know, you can reengage.
But there's different ways you can do it. You could sequence your automation. And if you have questions about this, any of the manufacturers can do this when you explain the problem. You could sequence your equipment so that you don't get that perfect storm of high chlorine, high pH, and high calcium. But the easiest thing by far is to just chelate your calcium. It costs you roughly $20 a year, fiberglass pool owners, about. you know, like peanuts, $20 a year to chelate pretty much all the calcium in there. And the, the other side is you're not adding calcium throughout the year.
Your tap water usually has at least some in there, so you're going to get new calcium introduced. If you have enough chelant, it'll be handled. So that means no cal hypo. And I, in other cases, I never recommend against a favored chlorine as long as you are taking care of the byproducts.
So for instance, I'm not anti-trichlor. I'm anti-trichlor as a primary chlorine if you're not diluting it all the time because the cyanuric acid is the problem. Cal hypo is actually the problem here because the calcium. If you are constantly adding it and you're not chelating it, that's the big and, then you're going to likely lead to this problem.
Number one, temporary pH rise. Not permanent, but temporary pH rise. Number two, very high chlorine. Number three, high calcium concentration. And you have noticed a direct correlation with cal hypo and this chalking, right?
Bill Khamis: Yes. And the other reason... But we are adamant no cal hypo no matter what, no matter what.
Eric Knight: I get it.
Bill Khamis: And the reason for it is if it was a perfect mixture, as soon as it goes in the water, then it releases the calcium, and the chlorine's going to do what it's going to do and convert, you know, the hypochlorous, all that story. The problem is with the cal hypo, they're all adding it as that powder, and it creates a microenvironment where it's extreme levels of everything in that microenvironment. Mm-hmm. that little bag is not mixed with the 20,000 other gallons automatically and immediately.
Eric Knight: Right.
Bill Khamis: It takes a little time. And during that time, that's, that's when the damage will occur on those pools.
Eric Knight: Makes sense.
Bill Khamis: So, so we're adamant against the cal-hypo. Only liquid chlorine. Salt generator is fine, but, but pH, no matter what, always needs to stay as narrow of a range as possible. You know, not too low and not too high. If, if it's... We are good with even zero calcium in the water on that hot water heater. Remember, the hot water heater's more acting like a boiler also, 'cause it's going to be an elevated temperature. It wants zero calcium, or next to no calcium.
Eric Knight: But it can't handle the low pH, and it can't handle the offset alkalinity that's driving the pH up- No which would then... You know, like, if you, if you theoretically had zero calcium, your LSI, as we discussed in the last episode is the delta between the, the pH your water wants and the pH it actually is. And so if that is truly zero, well, you have other needs that you have in that pool. But continue where you're going.
Bill Khamis: So your, your heater? The low pH is the biggest insulter to that one. So, you don't want low pH for the, the water heater. But, but no calcium is fine, and even chelated calcium, same thing. So chelating it is definitely the key. Um, no calcium hypochlorite. If you did need to add chlorine, liquid chlorine. And it doesn't seem like you can even overdo that. You can add whatever you need to add, the shock or super shock. If it is your salt generator that you're using, you know, if you super shock and raise the pH too high, then realize you are in, in a bad area. You've raised... Unless you've got automation, you just mentioned, that will keep up, you know, with the salt generator to keep pH neutral. Number one, pH always neutral.
[00:52:49] One Chemistry Strategy that gets everyone's needs met
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Eric Knight: Well, if you can. And, and this is where it comes back to Henry's Law of, of what I teach. I'm not saying aim your pH higher. What I'm saying is limit how high your pH can go by bringing your carbonate alkalinity lower.
What calcium offers, especially in a concrete pool, it offers you a foundation to build that strategy on, which affords you the ability to lower your alkalinity to limit how high your pH goes. In your case, you just need to chelate the calcium you have. You're never going to have zero. You're not running RO every day to pull calcium out of your tap water and out of the pool. There's going to be calcium in there. But chelate the calcium you have.
And, um, unfortunately, you can't have LSI balance with, you know, 10 calcium hardness unless your alkalinity's really high, and then you're going to need to be feeding a lot of acid, which is going to neutralize your alkalinity. So it's, it's one of those things where I think the only way that I see all of these, uh, disparate, um, interests, I would say, all these different chemical things that are trying to work in harmony, let's get back to the root of what water's trying to do.
Take fiberglass, plaster, vinyl, take all that out of it. Water. Water will always return to its natural state.
In your case, in a fiberglass pool, there is no calcium. Okay, so it can't pull calcium. It's still trying to get to its natural state. So it either has to wait for air physics to get it there, but that's based on carbonate alkalinity, and that could lead the pH to becoming too high anyway, which could lead to other issues. My thinking here is if it's, if we're trying to satisfy everything except the textbook ranges, which I am a known proponent of challenging. Um, if we're-- Obviously we want to optimize chlorine performance, so we protect the bather first and foremost by allowing them to not have a pH that goes so high. Because we have to have so much alkalinity, the pH goes high, which separates from CYA, and now we lose our chlorine to sunlight. This is the big problem with having no calcium, Bill.
You're going to have to have, you know, 110, 120 alkalinity if you have 10 calcium, for instance. But the pH is, the pH ceiling is 8.4 something at that level, let's say. Well, you can't hold chlorine for a week if you're a service company or a homeowner who's not chlorinating every other day. Because at that pH, chlorine doesn't stay bound to CYA. So now you're losing it to sunlight, and now you have an unsafe pool. You see the problem here? So how do we get everything happy?
Bill Khamis: The good news, Eric, I don't think we've tested a pool that didn't have calcium.
Eric Knight: Good.
Bill Khamis: They all have calcium. But if you put the chelating agent in, you're not going to do any damage either. And you've opened up that window that you can get a little bit too much chlorine in there. You can get a little bit higher pH in there, which we know is going to happen, and you're safe.
So, so we don't want to get rid of the calcium. I mean, that, that is a... did it work? It sure did. But it's way too difficult to maintain. And as soon as you add tap water, you're starting to add it. Yeah. So, but, but we don't ever want to contribute to it, which just means don't add calcium increaser and don't add calcium hypochlorite.
Eric Knight: Okay. That makes sense. So- That's it ... so for those of you who have seen the chemistry recommendations, um, the calcium you have, just chelate it.
Bill Khamis: Yeah, that's it.
Eric Knight: Okay. That makes a lot more sense. That's it. And perhaps the verbiage on there would be helpful. Don't add unchelated calcium because you can't have zero and pull off these other things, especially protecting your chlorine with CYA. Too high of a pH, it's just going to break that bond and there's nothing you can do, so.
Bill Khamis: And from the data, the beauty we see, y- you maybe add it twice a year. Once at the beginning of the season, maybe the middle of the year.
Eric Knight: Yeah. It's not a lot. Because
Bill Khamis: you got water changes that are going on in there. But you know, that $20, if you do that twice a year, uh, it, you just opened up that window. Yeah. Now, we still are going to say keep the recommendations, don't come back and say, "Well, you said we could be abusive on chlorine and pH." We're not saying that. No. What we- Have one, it, it, you stand in a much, much better position. But the good thing is the data has shown this already now.
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
Bill Khamis: So the, if you called it chalking or oxidizing or bleaching, whatever you want to refer it to, these instances are down drastically.
Eric Knight: That's great.
[00:57:00] UV systems impact fiberglass chalking?!
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Bill Khamis: You know, the other thing I probably should point out, the use of UV- is a huge, huge statistical improvement when somebody has UV sanitizing.
Eric Knight: On chalking?
Bill Khamis: On not experiencing it.
Eric Knight: Really?
Bill Khamis: A UV, if there was one item in the data that jumped out, screamed correct, confidence interval through the roof.
Eric Knight: Wow.
Bill Khamis: Use UV, the, your, your statistics are not twice as good. It's more like 10 or 20 times as good. And the only-
Eric Knight: Whoa, now you're bending my mind here, Bill. I have no idea what the correlation might be.
Bill Khamis: You, you took the water chemistry of maintaining that you were just picturing. Adding the chemicals to keep it within these ranges and balances. You turn the salt generator on, what happens? pH going through the roof. You're adding, uh, tablets. You're changing CYA. So you're changing a huge amount of variables. Alkalinity, all the above.
People that are using UV, because now it seems to be much, much more common with these variable speed pumps and efficiency. That they run the filter 24/7.
Eric Knight: Yes.
Bill Khamis: And the UV will be on 24/7. So imagine you're sanitizing up to and more of what chlorine does 24/7 of the water passing through those bulbs. Your use or demand and the need, the chlorine demand, is greatly taken care of. It, it literally it's all taken care of except for the residual. It is all taken care of except for residual. So you need that micro amount of chlorine as a residual for safety, and the EPA requires it if it's commercial, but these are residential. I get that. But what happens is it does all of that without changing pH, alkalinity, TDSes.
Eric Knight: Right.
Bill Khamis: Nothing. Nothing.
Eric Knight: So is it, is it the UV or is it the associated reduction in free chlorine?
Bill Khamis: It's the reduction in the chlorine demand that's needed because it took care of all of it.
Eric Knight: Well, UV can take care, it sterilizes, you know, living pathogens, but it doesn't kill algae and it doesn't kill, uh, it doesn't get rid of non-living organics and oils. So you'd still have chlorine demand. It doesn't do that. Yeah. It, well, it can't do that. But, uh, ozone would, AOP would. Yeah. But I'm, I'm, I'm curious as what UV would do. Well, this might take some research offline, 'cause now you've, you've- Yeah ... introduced a variable that I'd never would've suspected.
Bill Khamis: It makes that chlorine demand drop drastically.
Eric Knight: Interesting.
Bill Khamis: So, and statistically it's incredible where it sticks out.
Eric Knight: Hmm. Oh, that's cool. I wonder if there's, uh, with automation, if it's ORP driven, that would make a lot of sense 'cause then you would be feeding less chlorine even if it's a salt system 'cause the automation would tell the salt system to fire less.
And the best thing on those true automations-
Bill Khamis: it maintains pH because it's doing an acid drip.
Eric Knight: Yeah.
Bill Khamis: You'll have very, very good success with that type of automation. We have to be careful though because when we did the surveys, you know, and homeowners have to respond. 80 to 90% of them who have a salt generator with just a dial that's turned on and runs 24/7 typically, cover closed or not, um, and they don't, you know, not as many go out there and adjust it daily, right?
Eric Knight: Sure.
Bill Khamis: Um, they say, "My system is automated." So, so we learned years ago the term automation, y- you and I will have a different interpretation of that compared to a homeowner. Homeowners who have a salt chlorine generator will say, "I have automation."
Eric Knight: Oh, yeah, see, I'm thinking of, like, controller logic and- So I- pH and ORP and all that. Yeah,
Bill Khamis: ORP and pH control. And it keeps that salt generator off or on, and then it dispenses acid when the pH is creeping up. Those systems are phenomenal. And become a little more affordable, um- They're, they're a little more complex. But, but, but they're, they're much, much more popular now. systems.
Eric Knight: Speaking of that, uh, shameless plug here because it's my podcast, so I'll do it anyway. I am in the process of editing the Core Four, which is our eight-hour watershape class of two hours roughly each of pumps, filters, heating, and automation. And I just edited the automation section yesterday.
And just watching as I was scrubbing through the video editing it, there's a lot I didn't know. I mean, you can automate valves, you can automate lights, you can automate, you know, you could have your lights synchronized to music. You could do all sorts of stuff. Turn the spa on. Turn the heater on before you get home. So automation has a lot of different definitions. But, at its core what we're talking about is chemical automation or chemistry automation. Yeah. And, uh, pH... It's not pH control, it's really pH suppression, but it's automated pH suppression, so. Yeah.
Bill Khamis: Yeah it only lowers it. Correct. Well- Correct.
[01:01:39] Closing
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Eric Knight: Well, Bill, I got to tell you, this has been amazing. I'm so grateful that you're doing this research because honestly, I was getting questions about it and I didn't know how to answer them. I was just throwing a hypothesis out there that it's not calcium carbonate binding to these fiberglass gel coats, but it's something calcium, I think.
Bill Khamis: Does, does it make sense?
Eric Knight: Yeah, it does. So let me see if I can distill this, and you tell me how accurate it is in layman's terms. The way that a fiberglass gel coat, which is the hard finish that the water touches, but that we touch, right? That's the surface of a fiberglass pool. Super chemically resilient against just about everything except a Ca++ which is called a cation of calcium.
Yeah. Because that can bind to the interlocked, uh, polymer chain, which can link in three dimensions. And if it can take one of those links, it actually severs the interlocking between the gel coat bond next to it within that polymer. Am I good so far?
Bill Khamis: Yeah. Well, more or less. But you have to have high chlorine.
Eric Knight: Yeah. So you need the perfect storm in order for that reaction to take place so that you... I would imagine it's a substitution reaction. I'd have to speak to the chemist that you're working with, 'cause I'm not a chemist. But I would imagine there's a substitution of ions there to put the calcium in its place. And now you get a calcium silicate, which is a type of glass basically.
Same with, like, what microglass is for a plaster finish. It converts things to calcium silicate hydrate. I would imagine it's something similar there. Yeah. And if that's the case, no wonder acid isn't cleaning it up. It's glass. But it's white in this case, and so it's super resilient. It's taking over those things.
High pH, high chlorine, and concentration of calcium. So in your research, no calcium fixes it. But also chelated calcium fixes it. Which just means we got to stop that bond regardless of the rest of the chemistry. At its core, we need to make sure that the calcium's spoken for in the water. Am I right so far?
Bill Khamis: You're, you're dead on.
Eric Knight: Okay, cool. So what I'm saying is there are other needs beyond protecting this fiberglass gel coat. Obviously, we want to stop that, but number one priority is the health and safety of swimmers. Which means we need chlorine to hold. So if we don't have chlorine automation or salt constantly producing it when the cover's open, then, like on a weekly route, for instance, or a homeowner who chlorinates once or twice a week, you have to limit how high your pH can go because no matter how much cyanuric acid stabilizer you have and how much chlorine you have, if the pH gets too high, the chlorine's going to separate. It can't stay bound to CYA, and the sun will zap it and it'll be gone.
So then you have an unsafe pool. Well, how do we limit how high the pH goes? Well, we need to curtail how carbonated our water is, which means we need to lower alkalinity. Well, that's like 60 to 70 in most pools. So if I'm 60-something in a liquid chlorine or a salt pool, that's great, except if I have really low calcium because now I can't maintain LSI balance for the, the natural state of water. Water's going to be mad. It's trying to get back to that state. So in order to make everything happy, if I'm hearing you right, we just need to chelate the calcium and go for LSI balance, and you don't need 400 calcium necessarily. You just need to make sure that the calcium that you have is enough to get you to LSI balanced, and it's not able to bind to the fiberglass gel coat.
I'm exhausted. Was that- No. That was a lot.
Bill Khamis: When you say balanced, you're probably thinking plus/minus .3?
Eric Knight: Yes.
Bill Khamis: So the, the fiberglass can handle negative one.
Eric Knight: Wow.
Bill Khamis: So you don't have to worry about the negative side of LSI on a fiberglass shell. You only have to worry about damaging specifically the pump or heater. Usually the pump is plastic also, so it's okay. But the heater, metal. And the key there is keep pH neutral. Don't go too acidic.
Eric Knight: Yeah. Don't overcorrect.
Bill Khamis: Your heater is, is fine also.
Eric Knight: And no trichlor in the skimmer, listeners. Well, Bill, we could talk for hours. I'm always fascinated speaking with you, and thank you again for investing so heavily in this research and for sharing the research that you can. I understand you had to hold back for legal reasons. You can't share everything yet, but the information will be available at some point once all of that is, uh, confirmed and reviewed and all that stuff. But it's a real service to the industry, so thank you so much for that. And thank you for, uh, voluntarily lowering your standards and joining my show for the day.
Bill Khamis: Oh, man. Eric, it's always a pleasure with you, man. I've learned a lot from you also, so thank you, and keep the good work up, Eric. Always good talking to you, my friend.
Eric Knight: All right. You too. Thank you, Bill.
Bill Khamis: All right, bud. Bye-bye.
Eric Knight: Thanks. Bye.