Terry Arko joins the show to explain why foam occurs in hot tubs and pools, what defoamer products are, how they work, and some better alternatives that don't contribute to the long-term problem.
00:00 - Introduction
01:18 - Soap
06:02 - Water temperature, soft water, and foam
12:11 - Defoamer products
17:16 - Proactive foam management: enzymes and chitosan
24:14 - When to drain and refill a spa
27:24 - Closing
[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host, Eric Knight with Orenda and HASA. And with me today is a guest that we need to have more of on this show. Terry Arko, welcome back to the show.
[00:00:10] Terry Arko: Thanks, Eric. It's good to be here. It's been a long time, but yeah, glad to be here.
[00:00:15] Eric Knight: It has been. I've been doing a bunch of them myself and that's not as fun as having guests on. Especially guests who know a whole lot about a very specific subject. And the reason I wanted you on this is because I've had several customers lately that have had some foaming issues. And one of them was, he's in Pennsylvania, a good customer of ours. There was just a lot of foam and it just kept coming back and it kept coming back and it kept coming back.
[00:00:39] And then another one is dealing with vacation properties which is related to the last podcast that I just recorded, and the spa just foams every single week. And so he's been trying defoamers. Another customer I actually put you in touch with in Las Vegas has been using defoamer products in commercial spas and having some other issues with this filter. And so in today's episode, I want to talk about what is foam, what causes it? What are defoamers? What's that chemistry like and what can we do to manage foam more proactively?
[00:01:11] You ready to do this?
[00:01:12] Terry Arko: Ready to do it. Let's go.
[00:01:13] Eric Knight: All right. This is episode 154 of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:01:18] Eric Knight: Okay, Terry, I'm going to give you the floor here. You have an extensive background in polymers and clarifiers and all sorts of products. What causes foam in a hot tub or a pool?
[00:01:54] Terry Arko: Really what you need to do is you need to, think about you're making soap in a sense. If you're going to make good old fashioned soap, what are the three ingredients that you need to make soap?
[00:02:03] One, you need water. That's in the hot tub. Two, you need oil. Three, you need sodium hydroxide.
[00:02:14] Eric Knight: You're making me think of Fight Club now where you make soap, but they use it for nefarious reasons. I've never tried to make soap, Terry, but we're learning a lot about your background right now.
[00:02:24] Terry Arko: Okay. Well, let's just You know, you can go off on that rabbit trail however you want, but let's go back to the hot tub. Okay.
[00:02:31] Eric Knight: Okay.
[00:02:32] Terry Arko: So in a hot tub, you've got the water. That's there, obviously. Okay, where are the oils coming from? Well, You've got people, right? People who are basically soaking in a temperature of 104 degrees and that's going to pull body oils, out.
[00:02:51] So there's your oils. It's human waste, basically. Sodium hydroxide, Let's think about this. Is there sodium hydroxide in hot tub water? I don't know absolutely for sure, but we do add things like sodium bicarb, possibly sodium carbonate. And so is there a possibility that there's some chemical reactions going on where there's sodium hydroxide? I don't know that for sure, but I'm kind of willing to bet there's that possibility. But there's all kinds of forms of sodium.
[00:03:21] So in a sense, you basically have the three main ingredients in a hot tub for making soap. Then you take that and aerate that. what's that going to do? It's going to turn up that soap You know, mixture that you have in there and you get bubbles, you get foam. And then you combine dirts and other things like that in there.
[00:03:40] And it's soap, but it's not the kind of soap I think you want to try and take a bath in.
[00:03:45] Eric Knight: No, definitely not. It does not make water look inviting. And I've seen several different types of foam. You know, when you purge with CV-600, you get some soapy suds at first, which is part of the surfactant in there. And any enzyme product is going to have a surfactant. But then you start to see the bubble clusters for several days after a purge, which is the CO2 bubbles leaving. And that's a good sign.
[00:04:05] But you also see a lot of the stuff that it's just getting out of the water. And you see a lot of this stuff rise to the surface. And in hot tubs and we'll just say warm pools that are heavily used, you also have this foam that just looks putrid. I mean, it looks nasty. And you got those almost stripes through it of chunks floating up in it. And I was told.
[00:04:27] Terry Arko: Brown specks.
[00:04:28] Eric Knight: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was told all these years ago, and by the way, for the listeners, I'm not leading these questions for Terry, because I actually don't know the answers to these. Terry does. So I'm right here with you trying to learn this as well.
[00:04:40] But I was told many years ago that that's dead skin. That's being, I guess, oxidized or something that's the leading cause of that foam. What's that all about?
[00:04:49] Terry Arko: Yeah. I mean, you just, again, you've got to consider hot tubs. They're being used by people. Then you've got to consider the cleanliness or non cleanliness of those people that get in. You know, do they shower before they go or not? They just work out and then jump in the hot tub. You know, there's lots of factors, In that, so there's a lot of waste contaminant that can be coming from that. But also, when you think of a hot tub and the bather ratio to the amount of water you have, you know, which is pretty extreme. Like you can take two, three people in an average maybe 500 gallon hot tub. And that's equal to about 25 to maybe 50 people getting in like a municipal size pool.
[00:05:33] And what kind of effect would that have on the chemistry and the water quality overall? I mean, obviously, you get 25 to 50 people jumping in a pool at one time, there's a lot of waste that's going to be coming off those bodies. in a hot tub, that, load ratio is concentrated so much. So yeah, there's a lot of gunk in there.
[00:05:53] And that's going to end up in, you know, that material because it's going to get collected by the oils and so forth and end up in the bubbles.
[00:06:02] Eric Knight: It makes me think of washing dishes in my sink. If you are washing dishes with Dawn dish soap, that of course is a surfactant, and it can release grease, no problem. But it doesn't work nearly as well in cold water. I'm wondering if the water temperature accelerates this or makes it better because you could get that grease off no problem in hot water.
[00:06:21] Terry Arko: Definitely. And we know that things react faster. They work better in warmer, hotter water than they do in cold water. That's a pretty common thing that's known. So you know, I do want to point out, and I should point out that there can be different types of foam. And you can get foaming naturally from spas that are filled with softer water or where they're just running lower calcium.
[00:06:46] It's softer water or whatever. And, and that
[00:06:49] Eric Knight: for the audience, hold on for the audience. What do you mean by soft water?
[00:06:53] Terry Arko: I'm talking water that has very little mineral content. So you have naturally soft water. If you live in an area like I do in Seattle here, we basically have zero to little calcium in the source water coming in. We have to add calcium. But our alkalinity, our pH, everything is low. We have a lot of surface water. That's our source water. It's surface water. It's not water that's been in the ground and collected minerals.
[00:07:15] Eric Knight: Got it.
[00:07:16] Terry Arko: And so in those areas, especially when somebody's starting up a spa and they're kind of bringing things up, you may notice some foaming if you turn the jets on. And that's natural foaming from soft water. Now the difference, and I teach this when I teach CPO, because it's a big thing. If you have natural foaming from soft water, it's really only going to be there when you're aerating the water or you're kind of churning up that water with the jets.
[00:07:41] So you turn the jets on, you aerate, you're going to see foam. And like you said, a lot of it could be like, it's just CO2 being forced out. And you're getting some foaming and some bubbling from that. But once you turn off those jets, if it's just soft water foam, that foam disappears immediately. Once you stop that aeration, it stops
[00:08:00] Eric Knight: Interesting.
[00:08:00] Terry Arko: Now that's the difference in how you can tell. If you've got like a foam that's caused from contaminant waste and all those oils and all that junk in there, you turn the jets on with that, you aerate that and you make that nasty soap, then you turn the jets off that foam does not go away immediately.
[00:08:19] In fact it stays, it floats. So that's a big way how you can tell what you've got going on in the water compared to, you know, is it newer water that's soft or is it older water that's accumulated, you know, a lot of contaminant?
[00:08:31] Eric Knight: Well, I'm glad you brought that up, Terry, because that kind of gets my mind into another path. When I go to certain hotels, just like you were on the road a lot, especially during trade show season. I stay in a lot of hotels. And there are some places where I will shower with the same Hilton soap everywhere I go. So I know exactly what that soap is like. And there's some places where I have no problem showering. It rinses right off. And there's some places where it makes me feel slimy and I have to rinse and rinse and rinse and rinse and keep rinsing. And it still doesn't feel like soap comes off. And I've been told that that's from soft water. Is that your experience?
[00:09:07] Terry Arko: Yeah. Well, so really, I think primarily what it is you're definitely going to from soft water that soap that you use because soft water soap is just going to suds and suds and suds like crazy.
[00:09:22] So it's a little harder to get that washed off. And I think your skin's going to feel well, your skin, the reason you kind of have that feeling it's, it's, it's kind of clean and it's softened in a sense. Okay. Whereas you, when you shower in hard water it's really hard to get that soap to really suds, suds a lot. It does, you know, and you kind of notice it, but it's nothing like it doesn't soft water.
[00:09:45] Because of the high hardness in the calcium, you've kind of got that layer of calcium between the soap. And it sort of forms almost like a film, if you will. And a lot of times you'll rinse, yeah, you rinse off real quick, but you'll notice that you, you just kind of have that, you've got a filmy feeling on your skin.
[00:10:02] Eric Knight: Yeah. that dry...
[00:10:03] Terry Arko: Dry, crusty feeling from it. And then
[00:10:07] Eric Knight: I'm a swimmer. I know exactly what you're talking about.
[00:10:08] Terry Arko: Oh yeah. Well, no, same here. And that's just the fact that the calcium has just interfered with the ability of that soap to even, you know, cleanse. Or a cleanse as well as it could, because there's a little bit of a barrier in between there.
[00:10:21] Eric Knight: Right. There's a, big difference in pools that I've trained in and I never really thought about it until you and I were talking, I don't know, a couple months ago. But when my pool switched to cal hypo, a calcium-based chlorine, yeah. Our hair got noticeably different. Not only did it start bleaching a little bit more, but it was just dry and crunchy almost.
[00:10:42] You could almost break your hair and you know, we're talking swimming. Every bit of four hours a day. And, you know, you get in and out of the water like that, that much. Our skin was always dry. Lips were always chapped. And so you could just smell it on your skin and all that stuff.
[00:10:58] Terry Arko: Yeah. And that residue of all of that calcium, you know calcium chlorinated product on you. Probably even when you showered, it still was enough of an interference with the soap and everything to where you really couldn't cleanse that really well.
[00:11:13] Eric Knight: You know, I don't remember that. That's probably somewhat true. In my experience, it's been a decade since I was a competitive swimmer, but I didn't mind it that much because you definitely never needed to style your hair. Wherever you dried it, Terry, it stayed. The hair was not flowing in the wind. It was dead. You know, the hair just, it stayed there exactly stiff and brittle like that.
[00:11:34] But yeah, I know we're off topic. Sorry about that. Let's get back to soft water and let's get back to this foaming. You know, for the interest of the listeners.
[00:11:41] Terry Arko: Here's the main thing I would say. You had me get in contact with the customer who was doing the commercial spa, commercial spas and was judiciously using defoamer because he had foaming problems. But the reason he was calling is because even though he was using that defoamer, he still was having foam problems. And even more and more.
[00:12:04] Eric Knight: Well, it wasn't, hold on. He didn't call us about the foam problems. If you remember, he called us about the filter problems.
[00:12:10] Terry Arko: Well, yes.
[00:12:11] Eric Knight: This is a good segue and I'm glad you brought this up. So we know what foam is now. It's basically sudsing up of oxidized oils and whatever else is in pools. Now you got this whole category of products called defoamers. And I don't know anybody in the industry that knows more about defoamers than you.
[00:12:27] So what is a defoamer? What is it made of? What's that chemistry look like?
[00:12:32] Terry Arko: Yeah. Well, so the idea of a defoamer basically is to be added to the water and it causes an interference in the surface tension of the water and basically disperses the bubbles. Okay. That's maybe that's the main selling point or the idea.
[00:12:47] But I'm going to tell you 99. 99 percent of defoamers that are on the market are all made of one thing. And that's silicone oil.
[00:12:56] Eric Knight: Silicone oil.
[00:12:58] Terry Arko: Silicone oil.
[00:13:00] Eric Knight: Interesting. Okay. So what is silicone oil?
[00:13:02] Terry Arko: Well basically silicone it's, it's like a polymer that they derive from a distillation process. Of methylene chloride. It's a complicated thing you could probably talk about.
[00:13:13] Eric Knight: I'm Googling it right now. Do you want me to read the definition?
[00:13:16] Terry Arko: Yes, go ahead.
[00:13:17] Eric Knight: Okay. Silicone oils are considered inorganic or hybrid substances because they have an inorganic silicon oxygen backbone. Even though they can contain organic components like carbon and oxygen. The silicone oxygen backbone gives silicones different physical and chemical properties similar to carbon based organic chemical substances.
[00:13:40] Let's see, so silicon oils are synthetic polymers made up of an inorganic frame with a series of bonds between silicon and oxygen atoms and organic side functional groups. These functional groups are similar to carbon based bonds. Silicone oils are produced by hydrolysis. Ooh, that's a word that you've told me about recently. I'm going to come back to that. Hydrolysis and the poly condensation of of mono functional and bifunctional methylchlorosilane, ethylchlorosilane, and phenylchlorosilane.
[00:14:17] Polydimethylsiloxane, PDMS, is one of the most important silicone oils. Silicone oils are often used in industrial contexts and are grouped into three categories. Lubricating oils, elastomers, and resins. So yeah, that's a lot of information. It sounds to me if I'm summarizing this right, silicone oils, they're being produced by hydrolysis, meaning they're being dissolved in water or interact with water with some sort of polymer, and it breaks the surface tension.
[00:14:46] Okay. You know what it reminds me of defoaming something is, not that I would ever drink heavily in college. But when I was in college, if you had too much head foam on your beer, you just wipe your nose with your finger and you tap that head foam with your finger and it just starts eating away at that foam very quickly.
[00:15:01] Is that a similar thing to changing the surface tension?
[00:15:04] Terry Arko: Yes, it's exactly what you're doing. By adding oil, any kind of oil to water, you're basically disrupting the surface tension. And the thing with defoamers is they temporarily disrupt the surface tension of the water. And when that happens, the bubbles, you know, surface tension is what makes things float. You have to have surface tension or things do not float. And that's where you just have a stronger hydrogen bond at the surface of the water. It was H2O molecules are tightly bound and you have that skin, sort of, the water things float on that.
[00:15:36] Well, you disrupt that for a while, now you've got nothing there. Those bubbles are going to sink. As they sink, they pop, foam is gone. Right? And it's a very temporary process, however.
[00:15:48] Eric Knight: So what does that mean? Temporary, like a couple of minutes?
[00:15:50] Terry Arko: Because you're using silicone oil to do that. And earlier we said, what are the three main ingredients of soap? Water, oil, hydroxide or whatever. So now you just put another one of the main ingredients to deal with it on a different level, right? But that's temporary. So water's going to go back and do what it's going to do. Now you've got more oil in there and you're just going to make more soap.
[00:16:18] Eric Knight: This really makes me think of algaecides. A lot of algaecides you put in pools, they break down, they conflict with chlorine, and then they become food for algae, like nitrates. Like if you break that down over time, like a quat, quaternary ammonia. Eventually that gets broken down into its final oxidation state of a nitrate, which is food for algae. Am I correct in that?
[00:16:41] Terry Arko: Yeah, you can have nitrates from algaecide that are going to form.
[00:16:45] Eric Knight: So basically solving the problem with
[00:16:46] Terry Arko: Fuel for algae.
[00:16:47] Eric Knight: But for defoamers, you're basically solving the problem with fuel for more foam in the future.
[00:16:52] Terry Arko: Exactly.
[00:16:53] Eric Knight: Oh my gosh.
[00:16:53] Terry Arko: Exactly right. A while back, we would basically say that they are nothing but a Band Aid. And they're not a good Band Aid. The Band Aid comes off. You ever get those cheap Band Aids?
[00:17:03] Eric Knight: Oh yeah.
[00:17:04] Terry Arko: You put them on a cut and it's like five, 10 minutes later, the Band Aid's peeling off.
[00:17:08] Eric Knight: Yeah. Walmart Band Aids.
[00:17:09] Terry Arko: Yeah. So it's the same thing. That's what a deformer, a silicone based de foamer based ingredients.
[00:17:16] Eric Knight: Let's talk about management of foam. Let's say our listeners have some foam in a hot tub, and maybe it's a client's hot tub. Or maybe it's a pool owner who has a pool spa combo, and they've got a lot of foam. What is a more proactive way to manage this?
[00:17:29] Terry Arko: Okay, so let's go back to the three ingredients. All right, we got water. You got to have water in a hot tub. That's why people use it, and hot water. Oil, and you got the sodium hydroxide or whatever's going on there. All right. Well, so I'm going to say there's a vital ingredient there that if you're able to remove, it's just the one thing you're not going to be able to make soap and that's oil. You minimize the oils, you can't make soap. You can still have the water and the sodium hydroxide, but you need that oil.
[00:17:57] Eric Knight: Well, the sodium hydroxide, before we get into the oils real quick. The sodium hydroxide, there's, there's always going to be sodium in the water, especially if it's a saltwater pool.
[00:18:05] And of course, every chlorine leaves behind some form of salt because they're putting chlorides in the water. And since there's also sodium from sodium bicarb or sodium carbonate or other sodium sources, tap water, whatever. They are not together as sodium hydroxide in the water because they've undergone hydrolysis. It sounds like you just need the ions, even if they're separated.
[00:18:25] Terry Arko: Possible. Very possible. Yeah. Like I said, I don't know that for sure.
[00:18:28] Eric Knight: We should find a soap chemist. That would be an awesome guest on this podcast.
[00:18:32] Terry Arko: I'm saying those ingredients in one form or another are enough that are there that, you know, could possibly do that. But let's just go back again. Let's take that main ingredient. That main ingredient has got to be the oil. You don't have oils, you're not going to make soap. Okay.
[00:18:45] Eric Knight: Right.
[00:18:45] Terry Arko: That's what we want to reduce. So how do we do that? Well, there's some proactive ways like people could take showers. That would be good. Maybe not be so sweaty or whatever when they get in.
[00:18:54] Eric Knight: Right.
[00:18:54] Terry Arko: But you're still going to get some. But what's something that breaks down oils or, or reduces the amount of oils?
[00:18:59] Eric Knight: Oh, geez. I don't know. An enzyme. Yeah.
[00:19:02] Terry Arko: Okay. So the use of an enzyme, which is going to chop up those oils into smaller little bits and break them down and get them removed.
[00:19:11] The other thing I would say is and this just goes back to my past when we were looking at defoamers and all the problems of defoamers, when I was with another company. We actually developed a natural defoamer. It didn't have an enzyme in it. But it was it was a natural oil to do that sort of disruption. And then the natural oil, we combined it with chitosan. Which is in clarifiers, natural clarifiers.
[00:19:38] And chitosan is a natural polymer. It's like a polysaccharide. And one of the characteristics of chitosan, especially in the presence of chlorine or bromine, which are both halogens. If you halogenate chitosan, chitosan has the ability to remove greases and oils through a, flocculation process. Not a breaking down, but a flocculation process of the oils and taking the oils to the filters.
[00:20:04] So when we developed this product, which had a an interesting name. We called it self-floccing de foamer. The idea behind it was, you know, you were initially that oil was going in there. You were breaking up the surface tension, the foam was being dealt with. And then the chitosan was kind of taking over in combination with, if it was bromine, chlorine, whatever, and pulling the oils out.
[00:20:26] And so it wasn't the band aid of building up. It was actually dealing with some of the root problem.
[00:20:31] Eric Knight: And it worked well?
[00:20:32] Terry Arko: It worked well. You can also do the same thing just by using an enzyme and incorporating chitosan clarifier as well. If you did the two together, or if there's, you know, I think there's products where those are combined actually.
[00:20:46] Eric Knight: Yes, Terry, you can tell them we do have that exact product.
[00:20:49] Terry Arko: Right. Right.
[00:20:50] Eric Knight: The CE-Clarifier.
[00:20:52] Terry Arko: And I think that's an ideal product for spas, especially. Because you're getting the best of both worlds. You're getting the enzyme, which is going to do the chopping up into the small bits. And then you've got the chitosan and the chitosan will take over from there. And you know, it can floc and take other oils and those small bits even and remove them.
[00:21:10] Eric Knight: One thing that got brought up pretty recently, we've known about it for a while, but I just wrote a help article about it. Is when you combine CV-600 enzyme into a chitosan clarifier, which we do, that's what CE-Clarifier is. Not only does it boost its strength substantially, but over time it can congeal in the bottle and it kind of looks for lack of a more polite term, it kind of looks like snot.
[00:21:35] But it works perfectly well, just shake it up and it'll work just fine. Just use it. I know that looks unsettling.
[00:21:41] Terry Arko: Yeah. You've got an emulsion going there and, you just need to shake it up very well. We had the same problem with the defoamer product that we sold.
[00:21:48] Eric Knight: Well, I'm sure because based on what you're telling me, it's basically floccing things and,
[00:21:51] Terry Arko: And The number one direction was shake well.
[00:21:54] Eric Knight: Yeah. That's our direction for CE-Clarifier as well. If you see it and it looks unsightly, that's why. It's not a flaw in the product. But you know what this reminds me of, Terry? We have a really good customer in the pacific northwest. I think you know them. i'm not going to say their name but they were working with a large fitness chain. And they had built this pool and spa at this health club.
[00:22:14] And the health club has this problem where the pool's fine, but the spa is just a nightmare for them. It is foaming constantly. It's dirty, it's brown foam, It's just nasty. They can't get it clear. It's just a constant problem. They couldn't figure it out. So they're trying secondary systems, they're trying our enzymes, which is how I know about this. And anyway, make a long story short, they had this meeting with the pool consultant, the general contractor, the pool contractor, like everybody's there. The king's table, the owner of the facility is there. And everyone's up in arms trying to figure out what is wrong with this spa.
[00:22:48] And as they're talking on the deck, this vagrant person walks in, opens their backpack, drops in a Tide Pod, Like a laundry detergent tide pod, empties the backpack of his laundry into the spa, climbs in and starts washing his laundry in front of this group of six or seven pool professionals.
[00:23:11] Everybody apparently was just completely silent. And then our customer kind of looks at the owner is like, so we're done here, right? I just, I love that story so much. Apparently laundry detergent is going to fill a spot too.
[00:23:27] Terry Arko: Only in Seattle. I mean, and I've heard tale of you know, condominiums and places in Vegas where basically homeless come in and they'll just bathe in the, you know, and it's the same thing. They're having all kinds of problems.
[00:23:40] And again, that's it. I mean, it's just it's that accumulation of waste and you, you've got to deal with that. So proactively, you're going to deal with that. Like I said, if you're using an enzyme, if you're using a chitosan clarifier, even better yet, if you're using them combined, that's a really good method to begin with.
[00:23:58] People would call me and they'd say, you know, my spa is foaming like over the top and I, and I'm using defoamer, I'm doing it and I tell them, look, just drain the spa. You're going to get to a point where there's nothing you can do. There's so much contaminate in there, and just drain it and start over.
[00:24:14] Terry Arko: And there's actually there is a replacement interval. And I teach this in CPO as well for commercial pools to know how often you should be draining the water in that pool. And a lot of times when I go through this, I know I have operators who are like, oh, well, I don't, I only drain our spa every six months or something, you know. And they've got the problems. And that interval, if you want me to tell you what it is,
[00:24:38] Eric Knight: Yeah, please do. What's the interval?
[00:24:40] Terry Arko: Take the gallons of the spa. And you're going to divide that by three, and you divide that by the number of daily users. You kind of come up with an average of how many people a day are getting in it. And whatever you come up with, whatever number you come out with, and you can probably have to top of your head, do something.
[00:24:58] Eric Knight: Okay. So let's say I'm just going to use for easy math. Since we're using threes, I'll say a 900 gallon spa.
[00:25:04] Terry Arko: Okay.
[00:25:04] Eric Knight: Divide that by three is 300. Divide that by say 10 people a day would be 30 days. You should drain it every 30 days.
[00:25:12] Terry Arko: That would mean every 30 days you should drain that spa.
[00:25:15] Eric Knight: Wow. That seems pretty frequent.
[00:25:17] Terry Arko: yeah, you could get an objection. Somebody could say, I can't drain it that often, or that's too much water or that's expensive. Well, okay hang on now. Chemicals are more expensive than water. And also having happy customers and happy users and people that aren't getting skin rashes or whatever you can get from being in a very contaminated spa,
[00:25:39] Eric Knight: You know, this also reminds me that same customer in Vegas is a big user of SPA-500, which is our purge, which goes in and cleans out the pipes. He was actually asking, could he use it to purge his filters? Because that defoamer product he was using was just screwing up the filters. They were just pressure going through the nose. And the answer is yes, you can. It's an enzyme based purge that also has sodium hydroxide in it, oddly enough.
[00:26:04] But when we use that on hot tubs, Terry, I mean, you'll get over six inches of foam on top of the water surface when you're jetting that through the tub and purging it out. And some of that stuff that comes out as just brown. Dark brown, and then you drain it out completely. You rinse out the system with fresh water and then you refill.
[00:26:20] It's a very popular product for commercial operators of hot tubs for sure. I just I think most residential people don't do it because you wouldn't use it on a pool spa combo unless you could isolate the system. It's not for use with bathers in the pool. And I know I'm talking more about products in this episode than pretty much any other episode we've done. But it's an important topic here the reason those products exist is for the problems we're talking about today.
[00:26:44] Foam is a big question that we get. We're just not really in the hot tub business very often. We don't focus on that at Orenda. But we do have a spa purge and we do have a CE-Clarifier. So it sounds like those two products could be very beneficial to operators. That's why I'm sharing it. And you know what? It's our podcast. So, sorry.
[00:27:00] Terry Arko: I would say and this would be my viewpoint. If it were me, I would do that purge before every drain. I would purge it, drain it and start over.
[00:27:12] Eric Knight: Yeah. It's eight ounces per 500 gallons
[00:27:14] Terry Arko: you've got to get that stuff on the inside. You got to get that stuff on the inside out. And there's trust me, stuff accumulates inside.
[00:27:24] Eric Knight: Well, are there any final thoughts that you have on this before we wrap up? This has been great. I've learned a lot. I did not know what a silicone oil was. Did not know that defoamers were silicone oils. I do know that enzymes go nuts on pools that use defoamers.
[00:27:36] I've seen people purge it and they send me photos and the bubbles that go on. And they're like, Whoa, this is going crazy. I said, yeah. So whatever's in that defoamer, it must be something that the CV-600 is going after. And come to find out. Yeah. It's a silicone oil.
[00:27:50] Terry Arko: Yeah. Well, the only thing I would say in closing, and this will probably put a big target on my back from all of the manufacturers who sell defoamers.
[00:28:00] Eric Knight: Don't worry. I got your back, bud. I'm right there with you.
[00:28:02] Terry Arko: Don't use defoamers. I wouldn't use defoamers.
[00:28:04] Eric Knight: I wouldn't use algaecides. They make those too.
[00:28:07] Terry Arko: definitely for a hot tub, if you have foaming problems if they're real bad, probably the best thing you could do rather than dumping a bunch of defoamers in it is just do a purge of the spa, do a drain of the spa and start over.
[00:28:19] And then when you start over, incorporate using an enzyme. Incorporate using a chitosan based clarifier or, a product that is a combo of the two, like CE-Clarifier. And the other thing too, the one last thing I guess I want to say is make sure that you do have a regular oxidation maintenance practice, like you're oxidizing on a regular basis. If you do it with chlorine or if you do it with a non chlorine shock. Oxidation is real important too. So those would be the things I would say.
[00:28:49] Eric Knight: That's good advice. Just while we're talking about it, we mentioned chitosan clarifier. Why not a synthetic polymer clarifier? Like most of them are?
[00:28:58] Terry Arko: Every other polymers that are out there are synthetic and they are derived from petroleum by the way. So basically again, what you're doing is you're using an oil to remove dirt. And they work great. They clear the water. But once they do their thing, they congeal into this kind of mass of oil and dirt, and that hits your filter. So you get, you know, filter clogs. The biggest negative side effect that you're going to get from using synthetic polymers, you'll really notice scum lines will increase. Because you're getting oil and dirt and it's going to stick to the sides of your pool. So yeah, those are not really the way to go.
[00:29:38] Chitosan is a natural polymer. It creates a loose net flock. It does not congeal with oils. And so you don't get, you don't get the scum. You don't get the clogging of the filters like you do.
[00:29:50] Eric Knight: Well, it's always a pleasure, Terry. I've learned quite a bit in this episode and I hope you, the listeners also learned something. This has been episode 154. And just as a reminder, if you have episode requests, I know I just did one in the last episode. This was also a customer request. You can email that to podcast@orendatech.com.
[00:30:10] Our help center is ask.orendatech.Com. So if you have questions and you want to learn more about this stuff, Please reach out. I will eventually probably write a blog about defoamers, but I'm not there yet. I'm working on, believe it or not, Terry, a topic you're very familiar with, calcium phosphate. I am deep in research on calcium phosphate because people keep saying, Oh, you got flakes in your saltwater pool? Test for phosphates. It's calcium phosphate.
[00:30:33] No, I don't think it is. I'm pretty sure it's not. So we're going to try to figure out the truth on that one. But anyway, this has been great having you. I really appreciate it. And we're going to have you on the next episode as well.
[00:30:44] Terry Arko: All right.
[00:30:44] Eric Knight: We're just not going to tell people right now what that next episode is going to be. Sound good?
[00:30:49] Terry Arko: All right. Great. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Eric.
[00:30:51] Eric Knight: Yep. Thanks everybody.