Jon and Johan Temple, from Tempool, Inc. join the show to talk about the state of the pool plastering industry, best practices, and why hands-on education is so important.
[00:00] - Intro
[01:32] - Introducing Tempool
[04:33] - Common denominator lately: Residue
[06:21] - Easily distorted mix ratios
[23:22] - Rock-to-Rock Pebble Finish Exposure
[24:54] - Standardizing Systems
[26:50] - Exposure problems and Hot starts
174. Cementitious Pool Finishes (w/ Jon and Johan Temple)
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Eric Knight: What's up everybody and welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast. This is episode 174. And as promised in the new Rule Your Pool podcast, I'm bringing you perspectives outside of just water chemistry. In the next several episodes, I'm going to be having some instructors from Watershape University talking about what we are going to be offering December 4th through the 6th in Phoenix. Our Education Vacation.
If you have not seen that, you can go to Watershape.org/events. You'll find it right there, the Education Vacation. We're packing in 11 classes in three days, and one of the most popular classes out of the gate has been our plaster school. And this I believe will be the seventh or eighth time that we will be offering the Plaster School.
And this is a revamped version. For two reasons. Number one, I'm now the Director of Watershape and I have been a part of this class since its inception several years ago. And number two, cement has changed quite a bit in those years.
And so on the show today, we have Jon and Johan Temple from Tempool in Jacksonville, Florida. But they don't just plaster in Jacksonville. They plaster pretty much all over the world. It's amazing to see what they do and if you follow them on Facebook, they've got a very prolific presence there. They're in a bunch of the groups. Very, very cutting edge company. And I personally went down there a few years ago and learned how to trowel. and that's the first time I ever did that. It's also the last time I ever did that. Respect to anybody who gets in the pool, puts on the spikes and trowels. It is hard work. So Jon and Johan, thank you so much for joining our podcast.
Jon Temple: Thanks having us.
[00:01:32] Introducing Tempool
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Eric Knight: Absolutely. So I see a whole bunch of stuff written on the whiteboard, and this is on video, but I think most people will be listening to it. Would you mind explaining what is all this crazy Jon Temple math that I'm seeing behind you? because it looks like you're doing a lot of calculations.
Jon Temple: Well what we've got is, You know, summer's over. So we have to start recalibrating crews going over our warranty. We're a warranty driven company to where you know it's hard to keep your finger on the pulse when you grow. We do that off of our warranties. Our warranties are our direct link between us and our builders.
Eric Knight: And when you say warranty, hold on. When you say warranty, you mean like callbacks? If there's an issue, do you have to go undo or redo something?
Jon Temple: Yes, give me 2024 over there. So what we do is every warranty we get it's sent in on a form. Right there Johan. Nope. Over to the right the right to the right I'm sorry, technical difficulties. To the right. It says right there.
Eric Knight: No, this is, this is real life. Most of our guests, by the way, most of our instructors at Watershape University are actively practicing. They're actively building pools, they're designing, and in this case, plastering pools every day.
Jon Temple: This is 2024. This is a warranty book. this book is based on, These are all of our types of warranty claims. Um and this will say was it shotcrete or gunite? Was it bond coated? or Permakoted? These are the types of warranties. it dusty? Were there hydration issues? Did we use Set'n'cure? Did we start the pool up? We go through this whole thing.
And we track what is warranty and what is service? Which crew did it? What time of year it was, what type of material it was, what type of color, the temperature. Was it raining? We keep track of all that. We also keep track of when it occurred. When the report was filed. We getting warranty calls in the first three months? The first six months? Nine months? A year?
And we're talking about over 30 years worth of information. We're keeping service or warranty calls that get turned in on pools that are 25 years old. We're seeing what happens to our work from 25 years ago. Or 30 years ago. So at time of the year when we are able to catch our breath because summer's over, we go through and we find our common denominators.
[00:04:33] Common denominator lately: Residue
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Jon Temple: The biggest common denominator that we've had in the last two years is what people would call a dusty pool. Well is it dust? Is it calcium hydroxide or is it residue? But we found out it's residue.
Eric Knight: Okay. I've seen things on Facebook with you doing experiments with modifiers, with water to cement ratios, all of these things. What have you discovered in the last two years that you think is leading to these dusty pools?
Jon Temple: What is the trend right now? The trend right now is additives. Additives additives additives. Last year and the year before, it was limestone cement. Portland limestone cement. So we had Portland limestone cement and now we have a lot of additives trying to mitigate the limestone. So
Eric Knight: Okay, well out. So this limestone, I remember it came out, from what I recall, this is an in, uh, this is a global initiative to reduce carbon footprint in the concrete industry. So they're not using kilns as much to create things like silica fume, fly ash, I could be wrong on some of these things.
But basically they're cutting into cement, limestone. Crushed limestone. Which doesn't need to be kiln dried, is that correct?
Jon Temple: That's correct.
Eric Knight: Okay. So that changes things. because you know, on concrete they care about PSI. It doesn't necessarily matter too much how it looks. But in a plaster surface that's only a half inch thick. Especially with pigments and all these other things, it can make a huge difference. And I've heard mixed reviews. Of course, I'm not a plasterer myself, but you're plastering over 3000 pools a year with this material, and you're seeing that it's dusting. But it can't be dusting on all the pools. What do you think is really going on?
[00:06:21] Easily Distorted Mix Ratios
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Jon Temple: What is dust? Is it calcium hydroxide? Or is it a residue? When we test our water chemistry, if our calcium levels don't change, we're ruling out calcium hydroxide. Well what is that powder in the bottom of the pool? It's residue. If you look at the board in the back and it tells you that a bag of Portland cement weighs 92.6 pounds. You're looking at a bag and I'm going to add an additive and it says to use X amount of ounces per pound of cement.
So I'm thinking I have 92.6 pounds of cement, I'm going to use X amount of ounces per pound. Well my yearly average of limestone in a bag, and this changes, so this is why you need to be able to have the knowledge to communicate with your Portland supplier on how to do this.
My average is 10.6% limestone yearly. We can't do it monthly or per rail car. So you have to try and come up with an average that works for your demographics also. You're basically looking at a 92 pound bag of Portland cement, 10 pounds is limestone. So adding too much additive if you're putting amount of ounces per true cement you're, you're, you're 10 pounds less
Eric Knight: this hasn't been lab tested, this has been field tested, correct?
Jon Temple: This has been field tested. That's why you always see videos of me with all these swimming pools outside, and I'm testing cement versus percents of this additive, percents of that additive, and what reactions do I get? Not only in my plaster, but in my water chemistry?
[00:08:19] Johan's observations
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Eric Knight: Now, Johan, I know you are one of the crew leads at Tempool, and you've been plastering pretty much since you could walk, it sounds like. Um, how old are you by the way, Johan?
Johan Temple: I'll be 30 in January.
Eric Knight: Oh my gosh. So you've been plastering for 29 years? Um, basically. Talk to me, what are you seeing out there?
Johan Temple: So we've been noticing a lot of differences in dry times. Depending on different materials if you're using a onsite mix compared to a pre-blended mix and stuff. Some companies use more limestone than others so sometimes depends on the truck so how you mix it it could be a a false set time. So if you have a hopper and all this material that's sitting inside the this machine will like feel like it's getting hard until you start moving it around again and start loosening up.
But then there's depending on regions and everything, so plastering in South Florida compared to plastering in Colorado , the plaster will feel like it's drying up too fast. Until you trowel down again and this cream starts coming up to the surface. So now are using a lot more water in their mixes to prevent that super fast dry time. But then it comes back to using a bunch of calcium. So then it comes back to different chemistry issues.
Eric Knight: Well, okay, so because I have been in the test pool that you have in Jacksonville, troweling with you, specifically, both of you. You made it very clear that the water to cement ratio is very important. And what you just said is if it's setting too fast and they add, you know, maybe it's this limestone in the cement, or they add extra calcium and it dries too fast, they're adding more water to the mix. But that actually leads to weaker cement because there's going to be more shrinkage.
Or as Charles Hanskat in the last episode from the American Shotcrete Association, just told us, early plastic, uh, early plastic shrinkage, cracking, or as we call it in the plaster business, check cracking. So if you add that water, it makes it easier to trowel and spread, it sounds like. But it's going to shrink more and you're going to get those check cracks.
How have you mitigated check cracks?
Johan Temple: So we honestly mix a way tighter material. We don't really use that much calcium our calcium is what
our calcium is 0.3 percent.
Eric Knight: I mean, calcium chloride's an accelerant, so it, it, it heats up, it gets hot, it accelerates the set time. And you're using only 0.3%. What does that mean for the applicators in the pit, so to speak? You're in the pool having such a less amount of calcium. Does that affect set times or what are you noticing?
Jon Temple: Calcium makes things dry. Something without as much water dries quicker. You're trying to dry up all the extra water that you used. If you don't use as much water and you mix a thicker mix, your mix is mixed more thoroughly will dry quicker. If you add a lot of water to it, you've got to use something to help dry all that water out.
Johan Temple: There's different ways we've learned to kind of work around not using wet material. So a lot of companies will use wet material is sprayed on this whole pool and then use torches to try to speed it up even faster. A lot of things people don't realize is that the butane that the torch is put off will actually like stain the dye so it'll actually have a negative reaction at times.
We learned we've used a bunch of fans. A bunch of high powered fans. We'll put them on the deck, and it'll actually pull the water from the material so it helps dry it up in a safer way. And now without having to use torches, we're not spending so much money on propane and stuff. But with a thicker mix and some little admixtures that we use at times with less calcium on the fans on the deck, it gives us a lot easier material to be able to trowel and expose with now, rather than a torch. Which if you over torch a spot anywhere in the pool you won't be able to expose it the same nearly at all compared to the rest.
Eric Knight: Huh. Well this affects the strength of the cement too then because hydration begins on the truck. It's when water is first introduced to the dry cement, you create calcium oxide, but prior to limestone being added to Portland cement, in the past few years, roughly 24 to 27, so we'll call it, a quarter of the material becomes calcium hydroxide, which takes longer to cure.
So as the inevitable shrinkage occurs, these little void spaces happen specifically around aggregate, because there's no chemical bond between cement and a smooth pebble, for instance. And these areas between these smooth pebbles and the cement are called ITZ's. Interfacial transition zones. At the interface of the pebble and the cement. This is why if the chemistry is bad and the water's hungry, it's going to take the most soluble form of calcium.
For the audience listening, if you've ever seen a pool start graying out, or you got these white marks and discolorations and it's just looking like what most people would call mottling or ghosting. If you look closely at it and you can see all the pebbles and there's nothing covering the pebbles, but it's like white rings around each one, that's what we're talking about here. Because that calcium hydroxide is going to be sucked out by the water who's trying to balance itself because it cares about its own equilibrium with the LSI. And by making this mix tighter, which Tempool has been doing, meaning less water to cement, according to Charles Hanskat in the last episode, using less water to cement actually makes the cement stronger.
And then once it sets, extra water then strengthens it. So I went to that pool in Greensboro with you guys, um, and there was no check cracks on the second day. You finished that spa the day before I got there and it was hot. It was 90 something degrees in Greensboro, North Carolina. And there were no check cracks in that spa, Jon.
And you told me that's because you mixed it right. So what are you doing with your mix and what are we going to be learning about this in the C3611 plaster school?
Jon Temple: you saw that spa people say you can't have plaster out of the water cause it's going to crack. Well the test pool that we have here is out of water. It never gets filled up it gets rained on, freezing, hot sun, everything. And we have a wing wall that we polished and it's six years old and there's no check cracking on it. When do the test pool we can have 20 feet 20 linear feet of wall six foot deep without check cracking and using the same mix but adding water and less troweling it, we can make it check crack. So I can start with a material that's not going to check crack, make it check crack, just by adding water and not troweling. Not giving it that compression hard troweling.
Eric Knight: Or wet trowing,
Jon Temple: Or wet troweling, right. I don't throw water. My guys aren't allowed to use a sponge and throw water on a pool. Because then you trowel the water into those capillaries and you open them up. So we can cause it to check crack. If you can cause it to crack, you know what's causing the check crack. So just don't do that and you won't have check cracking. And then the use of sodium bicarbonate on the wash the following day, you know it's been a game changer.
Eric Knight: I think from a chemistry perspective, especially with the advent of these new technologies like Set'n'Cure and MicroGlass and Advanced Pebble Solutions, all of which are part of this class in Phoenix and at the Southwest show that you teach. With that new technology, I think bicarb has kind of risen to the forefront of importance because think about this. For all the builders and service companies listening to this that have ever done a startup or seen plasters that turned white and gray. When that pool is done and it's sprayed down with a hose and it looks perfect, man, it is done. It's been exposed. It looks great. And then it dries. What does it look like?
It looks cloudy, hazy. You know the mottling is real. I think we've all seen this. And what you're actually seeing is the carbon dioxide in the air is beginning to carbonate the calcium hydroxide at the front of that surface. It takes a long time to carbonate plaster. And if you hold up your index finger, not you, Jon, because your in index finger is massive, but, uh, that's, that's a man who trowels every single day. Um, but if you look, most of the white discolorations that you're going to see on any color plaster pool, whether it's blue, gray, french, gray, black, doesn't matter.
It's always a white discoloration because it's carbonating into calcium carbonate, which is pure white. It's the same reason why plaster dust is always pure white. It's never the color of the plaster. But this dust that you're seeing probably is the same color as the plaster, is that correct?
Jon Temple: A lot of times.
Eric Knight: The residue.
Jon Temple: lot of times.
Eric Knight: So it can't be plaster dust, and it didn't spike the pH. So again, it can't be plaster dust. But the chemistry that's actually going on is the air is beginning to carbonate the hydroxide into calcium carbonate and it turns white. And there's so little CO2 in the air relative to the air that we breathe that it doesn't happen evenly.
What Bicarb does, and Jon discovered this, I mean, almost by accident it sounds like. But you just have so many test runs of doing this. You can actually wash that pool two or three times around with a bucket that you put a 50 pound bag of bicarb in. Put a little giant pump in there. I'll let you and Johan explain how you actually do this because it's a big part of the Tempool process that is sort of going viral on the Facebook groups. You're flooding the surface intentionally with sodium bicarb right after you expose it. Not only to neutralize what you have done, because you're not doing acid washes with muriatic acid anymore. But what you're doing is you're forcing carbonation evenly and the whole thing will turn really, really gray temporarily, but it's even. It's perfectly even.
And as you fill that pool up, the gray goes away. And this is why, you know, there's no dust on the startup. As a guy from Orenda who helped develop the Orenda startup, we were doing it on the backend. You're actually getting ahead of it, and I've never seen anything quite like it. So I think startup is absolutely still important.
But if you can actually start the carbonation process evenly with the proper exposure and the proper bicarb washing. You're not going to have the mottling. And you don't. It sounds, I mean, I looked at your book there in warranty, you don't have that many compared to 3000 pools. So I'll, I'll let Johan speak first on this.
Talk to me, what is this bicarb washing and what is the process after everything's been troweled?
Johan Temple: So typically we would do an exposure on a pool, we do a broom wash finish. Wait 24 hours, then the next day we'd go out there typically like 7:00 AM and the pool is going to have your salt, all your residue that's dried up to the surface all the powder and everything. We would do our chemical wash. After that, neutralize everything with the sodium bicarbonate.
Then as you were saying put in 50 pounds we do pretty much a 50 pound bag per pool. Our average, our minimum is 420 square foot pool and we'll use 50 pounds for there and just go proportionally up and more sodium bicarbonate
Eric Knight: Bicarb is cheap, so it's a cheap insurance policy.
Johan Temple: Yeah so we'll fill bucket up with water in the main drain, put a sump pump in there, and we'll use a water hose on that pump so you can use more volume. So you don't have to use as much volume as a typical one inch discharge line. You can use less volume and walk around with this water hose. And we will use this, we'll walk around for 15, 20 minutes to start it up and we'll spray this sodium bicarbonate water mix on the walls, inside the skimmer, try to neutralize everything we can, and we'll keep walking this chemical mixture around the pool until you see as many parts of this pool accept this mixture. Start hydrating itself. And then you can physically feel this water be colder once you put this sodium bicarbonate in the water mixture together. So it's cooling down the surface, so can cool down the surface temperature of this finish it'll help accept it a little bit easier. That way and all the molecules will start swelling up and that's what leads to those check cracks starting to disappear.
Sometimes the pools will have a lot more cracks than other ones, depending on how it was trowelled and stuff. So we'll do it for 30 minutes if we have to. 30 minutes to an hour and just continue to walk around and then we with a hard bristle broom, broom down the whole wall so the aggregate of the actual sodium bicarbonate is helping do that last little bit of exposure help with it.
Eric Knight: So how has this process, Jon, been refined since you discovered it all those years ago? It just continues to get more and more streamlined. How's that happening?
Jon Temple: You know I think in our industry as a whole, everything you add to it people think you're adding costs. Okay now I'm going to use a product that's not acid. It costs more money. Alright now I'm going to wash it with sodium bicarbonate. We start looking at cost. Now I can show it to you where it saves you a lot of money on startup and problems and everything like that. But then we also started looking at okay, how can we make our application less expensive? What we figured out with the sodium bicarbonate The sodium bicarbonate has a grit in it, Uh you know and that
Eric Knight: Yeah. The texture right.
Jon Temple: that when you apply that to the wall and you hit it with a stiff brush, that almost sands or polishes off the oxidation. So then we don't have to pressure wash the pool. When people are pressure washing they're pressure washing off the oxidation that your chemical wash did.
Eric Knight: It's worse than that. And, and it's not just oxidation, it's laitance which is the mineral salts that rise to the top because as we learn from Charles, when water in the cement is leaving, it takes mineral salts with it. Because it has to leave. It's part of the natural process of concrete. And, well, this is a cement based finish.
Um, when it takes that latent, that white haze to it, that's really what you're taking off. You're not trying to dissolve cement. You're trying to take off the laitance. And if you had oxidation, uh, such as, uh, if someone was acid washing, you can oxidize pigments, you can make them darker or whatever.
The problem with pressure washing is if anybody has ever used a pressure wash, listening to this pressure washing is a lot of fun. However. It's really hard to make it look perfectly even. Unless you have the exact same distance. because you know, usually it's on a, um, a rotation, right? You're, you're kind of sweeping back and forth. And so the pressure is never perfect and you always see lines. When I do my sidewalk or driveway, A, I love doing it, but B, I can never make it look perfect.
Just magnify that on a swimming pool because this is a pigmented surface that is just so delicate in its early hours. Pressure washing is one of the things that I have seen a lot of problems with. And you have gotten away from pressure washing with the regular wand. You have a different way of doing it now. So I just wanted to interject that because you're doing a lot of things differently, but that's just one of them.
Jon Temple: And that saves me. You know you took an $8-10 brush versus a $4,000 pressure washer. The pressure washer is expensive, and it also, you know on that sprayer, the two ends of that spray are your hardest things. And you can see those lines in that wall. Um it's definitely uh not the best thing.
[00:23:22] Rock-to-Rock Pebble Finish Exposure
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Eric Knight: Now what do you say to the applicators that are demanding that rock to rock look? Where you don't have a lot of visible cement like you get with your brush wash? They want the wand washing to take material out so that you just get like a solid pebble look. For those applicators that are putting in those products, how does this method apply to them? Since they're not using a brush?
Jon Temple: For 30 years when we look at our warranty, our biggest warranty, one of the biggest things is I don't like it It's too rough. This is our new pebble. And when you look at that, a great exposure, but it's smooth. it's as smooth as glass. This will not check crack. I have one outside a whole board that's eight years old now, out in the sun, everything. it's still the smooth. You cannot polish and make it this smooth a pool that's been wand washed It
Eric Knight: Because the pebbles fly out, right?
Jon Temple: To have your pebbles encapsulated, and it had to be hard troweled. To make it to where it's going to be that hard where you can polish it. This is the future of our industry. Within the next few years you will see polished pebble finishes. This is what's changing my industry in Jacksonville right now. This is our future. And to get there, you can't just take a bag of material or make your own and then go to polish it. It's not going to turn out well for you at all.
[00:24:54] Standardizing Systems
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Eric Knight: Well, it has to be a system. How many crews do you have running? I know you got more than three or four.
Jon Temple: We're back up to six.
Eric Knight: So six crews running. You have to have systems in place to standardize how things are done across all of those crews. And not, you know, the crews are multiple people too. So every single person has to be on the same regiment at Tempool to deliver Tempool's brand promise the same way every time.
Now I know you float around and don't always tell people which pool you're going to. So if you know, if Jon shows up, you better be doing the right thing. Because you could show up at any moment. But you plaster outside of the times that you're teaching or with family, you plaster pretty much every day, at least one or two days a week. Is that a fair statement, Jon?
Jon Temple: I would say four days a week.
Eric Knight: Four days a week. So Johan, same thing, right? You're plastering pretty much every day? So you're seeing things in the field that people like me do not see. Here's where I'm going with this. Homeowners are investing an enormous amount of money for most people. Now, there are the uber wealthy that it doesn't matter to them, but let's focus on the core customers of the swimming pool industry that have in-ground concrete pools.
The money matters, and a lot of them have to take out loans or get financing to pay for this backyard dream. They're really investing in their home. Everything that a pool builder does could be perfect. They could do the, the hardscapes perfectly well. They could do the soil science, the shotcrete. All of this stuff is great. And if that plaster looks bad, none of it matters. Because it's an eyesore.
That money wall that you talk about in our class, where the homeowner sees that wall or that corner or that whatever their perspective is that they see the most is the money wall. If that looks bad, it's a poor reflection on the entire industry. I cannot tell you how many calls I had from customers, both homeowners and pros and builders about plaster problems.
[00:26:50] Exposure problems and hot starts
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Eric Knight: It was every day. I'm not a plasterer. Why are you asking me? And I think it comes down to, we were the ones talking about it at Orenda. We were the ones looking into the chemistry and realized not all of these are chemistry problems. Now LSI problems do exist. Absolutely. But there are also, most of the issues that we faced hands down were exposure problems.
People know how to trowel generally. I mean, everybody can get better. But the exposure is seeming to be the biggest hurdle. Would you agree with that?
Jon Temple: Without a doubt. I think never going to get past that if there's a simple, what they believe is a remedy. Oh if it doens't look good, just throw lot acid to it. Hot starts.
Eric Knight: Oh, the hot start. Oh my gosh. Can't believe that's still a thing. It's like, it's like column pouring acid. It's one of the worst things you can possibly do to the pool, and I have no problem. That is my opinion, but it's backed in a lot of like field experience and research. Hot starts are terrible.
They're terrible. Now you could, you could wait like 60 days or so and do a no drain acid wash if you needed to, because that's more like taking the char off a steak instead of sucking the juice out of the steak in the first few days. But, oh, hot starts are just brutal on a plaster and they should not be done.
So let's, let's get back to this. So you're teaching this in a class. You are building a training center at your facility in Jacksonville. You're actually building a new one. Talk to us about that. And more importantly, why are you doing that? You don't have to share all your experience and your trade secrets. You earned this wisdom and now you are sharing this wisdom. Why?
Jon Temple: Back in I would say the late nineties had a job and I had to prove myself right against an association. So I had a person that had never plastered before was in charge of an association. He told a homeowner that I was wrong and he was right because he was in charge of an association. And he had never plastered a pool before. I had to go through so much to prove myself right against somebody that had never done it before. And that irked me.
So I always thought about all these other guys that are out there in the sun, the heat, the rain, working every day plastering swimming pools. For us to have to prove ourselves right against somebody that's never done it before or hasn't done it in a long time I thought was wrong. I thought that if you want to teach pool plastering or if you want to learn pool plastering, you need to have a place to go to where you can learn with people that do it every day and have a business of doing it every day and physically do it.
You know as a construction worker, I have a vocational education mentality. I can't just sit in a room or read a book to learn something. I have to put my hands on it. Well our industry has been around for such a long time and we still don't have a hands on place to do it. That was our reasoning behind building a place to where we can physically apply and test the product. What you were saying to homeowners get a loan to get these huge backyards, I mean beautiful backyards. And the builders do this great job, and they dread day it's going to be plastered. Our plaster industry blames everything on the startup, we take no blame for ourselves because that's what we've been taught.
That's why we're building this facility. So we can get not only myself, you can get guys like AJ, or Tony, Little Tony from up in the Northeast. uh Jason Evans, Mateo Brown. You can get those guys from all over to come here and teach. Physically teach what they're doing to other people. It's not the Tempool show, it's everybody.
Eric Knight: That's awesome. And thank you for doing that because it is hard to intentionally go in and learn on somebody's property that they're paying for this to be done, right. And that's how most people learn. They just learn on the job. And having a place to actually go is amazing. And so thank you for that because the barrier to entry is very high. You have to have property, and it's a massive investment that you are personally making into this industry, and I wanna thank you for that. And not only that, thank you for your involvement with Watershape University as well.
We try to help anybody in this industry who is trying to achieve mastery get there. And the fact that you are devoting these resources and your time and wisdom makes that possible. Not only is it the construction 3611 classroom portion, which is two days, but there's actually an advanced plaster class called Construction 4611 that is taught in Jacksonville at your facility where you get the hands-on component of it, actually fully hands-on.
You get some hands-on in the class too. But I mean, putting the spikes on and getting in there and actually doing it and holding the trowel. um, what's next?
I mean, we have these two classes. From what I see, there are a lot more questions after the class from these pros than before the class. Before, they're like, well, I've been plastering a long time. I know how to do this. And then they, they leave the class, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm questioning everything. I've been doing this so long. What kind of education do we need beyond what we're offering now so that we can show people a path to becoming a world class finisher?
Jon Temple: We need the 3.0, which would be the business aspect of it. We still have to put in pumps and equipment. Different types of chemistry, additives, modifiers, things like that. We're going to bring in our mining partners like Consolidated aggregate are going to teach us about how product is mined. Those little rust spots are what Lignite is. Bring in the cement manufacturers. Federal White, Cimsa, to talk to us how cement is made.
You know if you're going to be a good race car driver, you need to know how that car is built. Those are all the things that we need to do, we just there's a lot of great trowelers out there. People trowel a beautiful job. If they would learn the other parts after that, they can go a lot further.
Eric Knight: That's awesome. Johan, do you have any final thoughts?
Johan Temple: the final step would be learning and having a place where everything is tied together. So I myself am fortunate enough to be able to see pools filled up with water after the day I have plastered them. Previously, I had seen only commercial pools on vacations and stuff full of water. Like I'm an empty pool type of person now. But seeing pools filled up and seeing how I do my actual troweling tansfers and tool and a pool is filled up with water during the day.
Seeing how shadows and sunlight and everything affects how the pool is presented, and then seeing how the chemistry works. And seeing how a wetter mix is affected by chemistry later on compared to a drier mix that we do now. And it comes down to even the size of trowels that we use. The way that I was taught is a lot different than the way that I teach guys on crews now and working from all over the states and stuff.
So habits and everything changes from you know I think we're trying to clean up the act of pool plastering. now. You know, it used to be It's definitely still is a very labor intensive job but I think we're trying to clean up the whole scene of it and I think tying everything together and seeing how a pool is finally filled up with water and seeing how everything reacts to each other is a huge step that people need to learn.
Eric Knight: We are honored to have you part of the Watershape faculty. Thank you so much for everything that you do for the industry. If you are interested and you are a pool builder or service tech who does startups or an applicator or you're any of those people that wants to get their applicator into the class.
The class is taught in English and Spanish. It's the same class. Both Johan and Robert are fully Spanish. And that is going to be offered at our Phoenix Education vacation December 5th and 6th.
You can visit our website, Watershape.org/events and you'll see it. It will also be offered at the Southwest Show in San Antonio. That's not on our website yet because the registration page is not up yet, but it will be. And you can see Tempool and what they are doing in both of those events. And we are very grateful for what you guys are doing for the industry.
And, uh, just want to thank you for that. All right guys. Well, this has been episode 174 of The Rule Your Pool Podcast. More to come with more instructors. And, as Bill Drakeley would say, get out there, keep your hands dirty. Thanks everyone.