Much of our teaching is contrarian to the pool industry's established standards. We often face pushback from naysayers, and we welcome it. So here's to the naysayers: Eric and Jarred reply to our most common criticisms.
00:00 - Intro - Jarred is a Debbie Downer
02:23 - Jarred printed the show notes for this episode
03:17 - Criticism: Orenda downplays the importance of pH
07:09 - Criticism: Orenda advocates for alkalinity below 80 ppm, but that will destroy a pool
08:38 - Criticism: Orenda says 50 ppm CYA or less, but you can't hold chlorine for a week with such low levels
09:54 - Criticism: Phosphates don't matter, and Orenda just says they do to sell more PR-10,000
11:25 - Criticism: The Orenda Startup conflicts with other standard methods
13:38 - Criticism: The Orenda Startup doesn't work
14:40 - Criticism: Orenda's "education" is just propaganda for you to buy more products
17:23 - Criticism: Orenda likes calcium hardness too high
20:44 - Criticism: Orenda says calcium flakes from salt cells are calcium carbonate, but I was told they're calcium phosphate
22:32 - Criticism: Orenda was anti-borate, but now they've flip-flopped and are pro-borate?
24:17 - Criticism: The Rule Your Pool podcast is lame. (We agree with this one).
25:07 - Criticism: The Orenda Calculator is inaccurate because it differs from other LSI calculators out there
26:29 - Criticism: SC-1000 is no better than other sequestering agents, plus it wipes out chlorine
28:19 - Criticism: Orenda is just another greedy chemical company
30:39 - Criticism: Orenda makes stuff up and calls it "research"
32:55 - Criticism: Orenda unfairly criticizes algaecides...they work so well
34:04 - Criticism: Enzymes don't "digest" because they aren't living
35:07 - Criticism: The LSI wasn't made for pools
36:34 - Criticism: Orenda says pH cannot be controlled...but my pool has a pH controller on it
39:49 - Closing. Thanks for listening!
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85. Here's to the Naysayers
===
[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Jarred, I got the best phone call from a customer yesterday. And I have to tell the audience about it. And Sonny, kudos to you, buddy. You know who you are. Talking about listening to our podcast. He actually likes our podcast, which I find weird. but I know one part of what he told me was sincere.
[00:00:17] He said, can you do something about Jarred? The guy needs to take some happy pills or something. He's such a Debbie downer. And I thought that is just the most perfect description of my co-host Jarred Morgan. Thanks for being back on the podcast, Jarred.
[00:00:31] Jarred Morgan: I don't find you funny Eric or Sonny.
[00:00:34] Eric Knight: Well, Sonny was funny. I didn't make it up.
[00:00:36] Jarred Morgan: Well, you know,
[00:00:36] Eric Knight: it made my day,
[00:00:37] Jarred Morgan: You know what guys, if y'all had to look at Eric while you do a podcast for the hour or whatever we do here, you wouldn't be very happy either, okay.
[00:00:46] Eric Knight: That's fair.
[00:00:46] Jarred Morgan: But in order to give our audience some education and hopefully we can help them, that's a big hope. This is just what we have to do.
[00:00:56] Eric Knight: Just putting up with me alone is climbing the ladder so that you're not quite the worst cohost of all time. You are, you are getting up there. Jarred. I got to say,
[00:01:05] Jarred Morgan: You know what? As long as, uh, I can wear it like a badge and I'm just not the bottom, but I'm just very close to it. That's okay.
[00:01:11] Eric Knight: Well look, consistency is key. And if we continue this, we're going to soon exceed 60 listeners. I'm fairly confident of it. And we have been receiving a lot of emails at podcast@orendatech.com. Great ideas for episodes. So thank you for that. And we have been receiving support requests or, questions for our new help center, ask.orendatech.com. So people are finding it. People are using it. It's awesome. And, uh, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I've a few that are a few days old, but I will do my best to get back to you.
[00:01:40] Jarred Morgan: I've been getting a ton of calls too. Probably two or so. And
[00:01:46] Eric Knight: yeah, dude ton. That's, that's so many, like how do you have the time in the day?
[00:01:50] Jarred Morgan: I know, and this episode is going to be pretty enjoyable because if everybody doesn't know yet, we do get some naysayers. Quite honestly it doesn't really get under my skin or Eric's for that matter...
[00:02:04] Eric Knight: I think it's great.
[00:02:04] Jarred Morgan: It does create a healthy dialogue. And we want to set the record straight here on some of those things that are being floated out there. And we're going to call this episode here's to the naysayers.
[00:02:16] Eric Knight: That's right. Episode 85. We are contrarian. So here's to the naysayers.
Long bullet list of criticisms in our show notes
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[00:02:23] Eric Knight: Jarred, I have this long list on the show notes, but I know you don't read show notes. So,
[00:02:48] Jarred Morgan: whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:02:49] Eric Knight: I'm going to send you a link and I'm going to hope that you open it up because I wrote down so many bullet points.
[00:02:53] Jarred Morgan: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I want everybody to understand something right now. And I know this is going to make one particular person in our company very, very happy. Kathryn, Varden I printed the show notes off. So Eric, eat it. And Kathryn, you're welcome.
[00:03:12] Eric Knight: . I am speechless. Let's do this.
[00:03:15] Jarred Morgan: All right.
pH matters and Orenda downplays it
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[00:03:17] Jarred Morgan: Orenda is full of it because the pH matters a lot and we downplay. That you can have any pH you want.
[00:03:25] Eric Knight: We don't say that pH doesn't matter at all, but it's absolutely true. You can have a much wider pH range because physics allows for that. And the whole idea that you can control pH is nonsense.
[00:03:36] It's physically impossible. The only thing that can control pH is physics. That would be Henry's law, where the CO2 equilibrium at the pH ceiling, when there's an equilibrium between CO2 and your water and CO2 in the air above the water. That's when your pH stays still. But we, because we've been following textbooks for so long, we try to impose our will upon water and it doesn't work.
[00:03:57] So this idea that you can maintain a 7.2 to 7.8 is not true unless you have an acid feeder, trichlor feeder, or an auto cover. And the auto cover is because you lose the ability to lose CO2. You're you're basically capping your carbonated drink. But the whole reasons they give for this, Jarred are, oh, you know, Orenda shouldn't say that because the pH of your eyes, right.
[00:04:19] Bather comfort is one of the main reasons. And another one is corrosion and scale. If your pH is too low, you'll etch. And if it's too high, you'll get scale.
[00:04:27] Jarred Morgan: Which technically that's correct.
[00:04:29] Eric Knight: No, well, it can be, but we know that that's actually an LSI function and the pH is a major contributor to the LSI.
[00:04:36] You can offset that lower pH by having more alkalinity, more calcium hardness, higher temperature. It's all about the LSI. So what we really say is don't focus on chasing pH. Focus on anchoring your strategy in the LSI, and then leveraging physics using the pH ceiling and allowing your pH to naturally rise because it's going to anyway. Your job is to make sure that when it gets to its pH ceiling, which you can determine by your carbonate alkalinity, you're still LSI balanced. So that after seven days, you come back and you're still in the LSI balance, you win.
[00:05:09] That's what we're saying. Bather comfort? Fake news, man. I got deer park water at 5.5 pH and I've got alkaline water from Costco that says 9.5 pH. That's a 10,000x difference in acidity. And yet they taste fine. I was a swimmer, you know that. It's really about chloramine byproducts and chlorine, oxidizing things like sunscreen. That's what burns our eyes. It's not the pH.
[00:05:32] Jarred Morgan: Well, the biggest concern that we get is scale forming and also they need their chlorine to be as efficient as possible. What do we have to say? because...
[00:05:39] Eric Knight: Well, we've color coded that on our app. When you push show on your secondary readings, it will turn purple. If your pH ceiling is too high.
[00:05:46] Jarred Morgan: Now, one thing we do need to cover here is that the chlorine efficiency is a factor. Everyone. We understand that
[00:05:52] Eric Knight: If you don't have cyanuric acid in your water, because when you do, that chemistry changes dramatically. As we show in multiple episodes, multiple blogs, help center, everywhere. And we didn't come up with this. We didn't do the research. We found this research from guys like Richard Faulk, who explained it to us. All we're doing is publishing it.
[00:06:11] Jarred Morgan: And we do understand that as the pH increases, when cyanuric acid is in the water, technically it does matter as far as the efficiency goes. But it's so little that it's quite honestly, it's not a major factor for consideration. Uh, at those levels.
[00:06:27] Eric Knight: The percentage of hypochlorous acid at 7.0 is like 3%. And then at 8.0, it's like 2.87%. So it's negligible, but at the higher pH's, the hypochlorite ion will break away from CYA and you can start losing it to sunlight. That's true. But we want to set our ceiling at like 8.0 to 8.1. So that doesn't happen at a noticeable rate.
[00:06:50] Jarred Morgan: So we're getting into technicalities and we just wanted to make sure we clarified all these because we do know that all these things come into play. But at the end of the day, we are trying to simplify this information so that you, our audience or our industry can hopefully better understand it. That's it.
[00:07:05] Eric Knight: Yeah, you don't want to fight physics. You want to use it to your advantage. That's how we teach it proactive.
Alkalinity below 80 ppm
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[00:07:09] Jarred Morgan: All right. Moving on. We're going on to, uh, we can have an alkalinity below 80 because we always tell people, when they have salt pools, and they have calcium flakes in their water and they're coming into this problem that's consistent. We say, Hey, run your alkalinity at 70.
[00:07:24] Eric Knight: Or 60 something.
[00:07:25] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. If everybody understands, if they follow range chemistry, first, they know that our range has to be between 80 and 120 parts per million. And we buck that trend. So therefore it's going to cause a problem.
[00:07:38] Eric Knight: Well, you're missing one half of this equation. You're right. You can absolutely go below 80. I wouldn't say go below 50, because it's kind of a slippery slope, but 50 something, 60 something even 70 something is fine for a salt water or liquid chlorine pool. You'll need a little bit more for trichlor, but that's when the water's warm enough that the salt cell is firing. Because in the colder temperatures, you actually want 80 or 90 or even 100 alkalinity if you're winterizing your pool because of the LSI.
[00:08:02] So the other half of this equation is this only works in the context of a managed LSI. The argument is like, Hey Orenda, you're saying you can have alkalinity under 80, but if you do that, you'll destroy your pool. You'll etch your plaster, you'll destroy your equipment. You'll ruin your heater.
[00:08:16] That would be true if you don't have enough calcium hardness to offset it. And that's the missing piece. So we are not saying just have low alkalinity because that's where it should be. We're saying that you want to lower the alkalinity to limit your pH ceiling within the context of the LSI. Huge difference. Anything you want to add before moving on?
50 ppm CYA or less
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[00:08:38] Jarred Morgan: Nope. That pretty much covers it. Uh, Orenda says 50 parts per million or less CYA, but if I have more cyanuric acid, I can hold chlorine longer.
[00:08:49] Eric Knight: Well, that's true, you can, but that's a two edged sword. We talked about this a few episodes ago that you can choose to have 60 or 70 cyanuric acid knowing full well that you are slowing your chlorine dramatically.
[00:09:01] And that gets into a chlorine efficiency conversation where you might start to get outbreaks. Chlorine is about speed. It's not about strength. It's about speed. Contact time specifically. So one part per million over 10 seconds is the same as 10 parts per million in one second.
[00:09:16] So the faster your chlorine can kill and oxidize, the better. CYA slows that down. So yeah, you can deliberately slow your chlorine down, so it lasts longer. But are you actually staying ahead of what's trying to grow in your pool? What we're saying is you want minimal CYA because you want sunlight protection before you start to get that diminishing return. Because there's not that much difference between 50 and 70 in terms of sunlight protection. But there's a huge difference between zero and 30, right? So the lower you have it, you get the benefits without slowing down your chlorine. So I mean, I get the argument, I just disagree with it.
Phosphates don't matter
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[00:09:54] Jarred Morgan: Moving on. So, phosphates don't matter, dude.
[00:09:58] Eric Knight: Oh, I've read this so many times on forums and other websites. Yeah, they're made up so that Orenda can sell more product. Well, we're not the only one selling phosphate remover and they sell very well in all brands because the pros know this and the homeowners know it, it makes managing pools easier.
[00:10:13] If there was nothing to it, they wouldn't sell. The market speaks volumes. The research also speaks volumes. This is research that we got from guys like Richard Falk, who are leading the industry in this kind of research. So, yeah, I mean, if you don't want to focus on phosphates, you need enough chlorine to stay ahead of what chlorine has to kill.
[00:10:32] Specifically with CYA, you need at least 7.5% of your CYA level in free chlorine. So if you've got 100 CYA, your new baseline is 7.5 parts per million. Good luck maintaining that.
[00:10:44] Jarred Morgan: I was going to say, can you do that for a solid week? When you're a pool professional, you're there once during that week. Yeah.
[00:10:49] Eric Knight: Good luck. You're going to have to chlorinate to like 15 or 16 parts per million, and nobody's going to want to swim in that. At least they shouldn't. Well, you should not be treating it like that. No.
[00:10:57] Jarred Morgan: Can you manage a pool without phosphate removers or having high phosphates?
[00:11:00] Absolutely. Yeah, no question. Yes, you can. Uh, it's just obviously our opinion that it has to be taken into consideration because it increases the likelihood of problems down the road. And what we are trying to do is be proactive. We want to make sure that our chemicals are efficient as we can possibly make them and be proactive.
[00:11:18] Eric Knight: Stop relying on chlorine to do all of your heavy lifting. Instead, be more efficient and decide to take phosphates
Orenda Startup conflicts with other methods
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[00:11:25] Jarred Morgan: All right. Good job, Eric. Next, we're going to the Orenda startup conflicts with other methods out there. So therefore I can't do it.
[00:11:34] Eric Knight: Are you going to let me ask you any of these questions? I'll answers this one.
[00:11:37] Jarred Morgan: No, no. I like cutting you off. I really like cutting you off in the middle of your explanations.
[00:11:41] Eric Knight: You're getting good at this. Okay. Say it again, I'm already off track.
[00:11:44] Jarred Morgan: Oh, I'm sorry. I want to do the Orenda startup, but it conflicts with the other startups out there. So I can't do it.
[00:11:52] Eric Knight: That's true, but that's changing. Manufacturers are starting to adopt our startup. Not because it's ours, but because it works and it's LSI based, not Orenda based. So focusing on the saturation index instead of range chemistry, certain pH parameters, certain alkalinity parameters. Uh, the biggest one of course is the NPC startup, which is close, in our opinion, but it is not LSI based. If you do the math.
[00:12:17] Like you try to plug in those numbers. There's no mathematical way that you can maintain LSI balance in those first critical days. And it's our belief that the first few minutes matters a lot. So it's not like water just fills a pool and waits to start etching. No it's going to eat if it's imbalanced and almost all tap water is aggressive.
[00:12:35] Not all, but almost all water in the country comes out red on the LSI. So we have more urgency to it. We say, let's fill this water, so it doesn't feed on your walls. And if that conflicts with standards, then screw it. The standards are not accurate enough for your pool, if that's your case. But it all depends on your tap water, Jarred.
[00:12:53] Jarred Morgan: Absolutely. And a lot of my, I don't want to say rebuttal cause it's not like we're arguing with these people. If they don't want to do the startup or they want to have our problem with it, that's fine. I mean, we're not for everybody. We understand. But if you went to the plaster manufacturers and read their information, they will say don't fill a pool with soft water. And my argument to that is, well, how do you fill a pool with not soft water?
[00:13:17] Eric Knight: Yeah. If you're not doing our method. Right? I mean, there's the bicarb startup, and this is the same concept. onBalance Came up with the bicarb startup decades ago. And it's the same idea. It's based on the LSI. It's not based on range chemistry. Like this whole idea that you can maintain 7.4 - 7.6 pH in the first five days of plaster? You're out of your mind. It doesn't happen that way. You have to saturate the water based on the LSI.
The Orenda Startup doesn't work
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[00:13:38] Jarred Morgan: Well, good job, Eric. Next, we're going to talk about, uh, I did the Orenda startup, but did you really?
[00:13:46] Eric Knight: Well, I don't even know how to answer this one.
[00:13:48] Jarred Morgan: He didn't get the show notes on this one, because I just wrote 'em down on my paper. All right. Well I get this call a lot because people are like, well I did your startup and uh, it just didn't work. And then when you start,
[00:13:58] Eric Knight: Oh, I know where you're going with this. I've had this phone call too.
[00:14:01] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. You start peeling back the sheets a little bit and you quickly realize they did not do our startup at all. All they did was add calcium to a bucket, poured it in the pool and said, voila! That is not our startup.
[00:14:14] Eric Knight: Or they use a competitor product, which has an acidic pH and it screws up the pool royally.
[00:14:20] Jarred Morgan: Correct. Yeah, if you're going to call and say you did our startup, we'll know, maybe take our, take our startup academy, download the startup procedure page and just read it and let's just make sure we understand it. But the bottom line is. It's not just a calcium based startup. Our startup is an LSI based startup. Most of the time it involves the addition of calcium. But
Orenda's Education biased, and just aimed at selling more products
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[00:14:40] Eric Knight: Moving on, Jarred, I'm going to cut you off this time. Go ahead. Nice. Okay. Orenda's education is heavily biased and we only make it so that we can sell more products. What do you say to that? Jarred?
[00:14:53] Jarred Morgan: Fact.
[00:14:56] Eric Knight: I mean, you, you do pay the bills, but I, I would say to that in 2016, we made a decision as a company to pivot from just another chemical company into an education company. And if you have listened to this podcast, I think there's been five or six episodes where we talk about products out of 85.
[00:15:13] We try not to talk about products. In fact, I didn't want to do it. If you read our blogs less than 5% of them, talk about our products at all. Uh, now we do have procedures that explain how to because we get those questions, but our education is not about our products. Our products just allow you to be proactive in your pool care, taking Orenda academy, there's only one section at the end that talks about products. So I don't look at it as we're educating to sell products, but I'm also not going to make any apologies for the fact that we make our money selling products. We're a business. That's how we have to pay our bills.
[00:15:44] Jarred Morgan: And quite honestly, we get a ton of phone calls, probably like six of customers that just call us who, who don't use our products at all.
[00:15:52] I mean, they really don't, but you know what it's our, our take is to help people in general and maybe they'll come along. Maybe they won't, but if we provide the information and hopefully help them along the way, they'll remember that. And that's really it.
[00:16:05] Eric Knight: Well, I have customers call that say, oh, well, you know, your green pool cleanup didn't work.
[00:16:08] I'm like, okay, well, what did you do? Well, you know, I chlorinated, I added a phosphate remover and then I added... what it's like, wait a second, you added a phosphate remover? What did you add? And they get real quiet. Well, I couldn't afford yours, which brings me to my next point. This whole idea that we're the most expensive chemical company.
[00:16:26] Well, we are, if you look at the size of the bottles, but actually lately with COVID not so much, it's actually pretty competitive. But you're not looking at the dose. You're not looking at the price per dose. You're looking at the price per volume and our stuff is super concentrated. So don't get focused on the price of the bottle.
[00:16:43] Look at how many doses you get in that bottle, which is why we talk about measuring and measuring your pool chemicals,
[00:16:49] Jarred Morgan: And I think we mentioned in a previous podcast, we are transitioning to a more pools per gallon method. Which involves measuring, dosing with the app properly, getting your practices up to date and, you know,
[00:17:04] Eric Knight: diluting with a bucket.
[00:17:06] Jarred Morgan: Good. Uh, let's start there. And, um, obviously we're not going to be the cheapest, everybody. We understand that. But like Eric said, a lot of stuff has changed over the past two years and you know, maybe it's time to take another look.
[00:17:20] Eric Knight: Yeah. Anything else you want to add on that?
Orenda likes calcium hardness levels too high
---
[00:17:23] Jarred Morgan: Uh, no, I do not. Let's move on to Orenda wants higher calcium hardness levels, and it's going to lead to scale.
[00:17:31] Eric Knight: Well, that's an LSI function. The amount of calcium carbonate in your pool is calcium hardness, but how saturated that calcium carbonate is in those given conditions like temperature, alkalinity, pH, that's the LSI. And the LSI is what water cares about.
[00:17:45] So the analogy of sugar in your drink. If you change the temperature of your drink, you can dissolve more sugar. But it's the same amount of sugar that you poured into the drink. It's just, some of it sat at the bottom at the colder water, and then you raised the temperature and then it all dissolved. So it's not a amount of calcium hardness that creates scale, unless it is too much saturation on the LSI in those conditions.
[00:18:08] Where we see this the most is in hot climates with a lot of evaporation, uh, heaters, spas, because in those conditions, yeah, you have a localized LSI violation. But we have commercial pools, Jarred, on cal hypo that have 700 plus calcium harness and they don't have scale. Because they're managing the LSI. So it's not an amount. It's the LSI.
Orenda wants too much calcium when winterizing a pool
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[00:18:28] Jarred Morgan: And on that same note, Orenda wants us to winterize with extra calcium in the water, but I don't want to have scale in the spring, Eric.
[00:18:35] Eric Knight: No joke, because in the spring you don't have scale. It's almost always the opposite of scale. Crystals, calcite crystals, come out of the plaster.
[00:18:44] Winter dust comes out of the plaster and then as the temperature rises, precipitates as dust. So it's not scale. Even though it's calcium carbonate. And this is where people screw up because they think, oh, I had too much calcium going into the winter. But that's not true. You didn't have nearly enough. That water got hungry in December and started eating your walls.
[00:19:03] That's why the calcium went up, pH spiked through the roof. You know, you did it right when you come back and your pH is exactly at the pH ceiling, and your calcium is probably diluted from where you set it off in the fall. And so the type of cover matters too, because you've got a mesh cover, solid cover, dilution, CO2 leaving, all this stuff. But the point is insulate your pool for the winter. Feed that hungry bear before it hibernates so it doesn't wake up in the winter and eat your pool.
[00:19:31] Jarred Morgan: Well, I had a call, uh, email actually yesterday from customer of Oklahoma, which, appreciate it. If you listen to the Rule Your Pool podcast, I'm, uh, going to talk about you here for a second. But he said he closed a pool down in October of last year and they opened the pool in May of this year. And they had just this white haze all over the bottom of the pool, which was more than likely winter dust.
[00:19:55] And it brought up a good point that I'm going to tell you right now, everybody, if you're in, uh, Oklahoma, Texas, South of Tennessee, and you're opening a pool in May, that water's not that cold anymore. It's pretty warm. And when you wait that long to balance the chemicals and so forth, you're going to have some issues. And that is one of them. Because that temperature increased dramatically from the lows of 33 34 degrees in January to probably 70 ish degrees in May.
[00:20:26] Eric Knight: Right. But that 40 degree swing just slam dunks the last point we just made. It's not about the amount of calcium hardness. It's about the LSI. The temperature changed the LSI. And you have to be prepared for that. So, yeah, we absolutely advise for more calcium hardness, knowing full well the temperature's going to get colder. But don't wait till May to open up your pool.
Calcium flakes are not calcium phosphate
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[00:20:44] Eric Knight: Okay. I got one for you.
[00:20:45] Jarred Morgan: Okay, fine.
[00:20:46] Eric Knight: Orenda says that the calcium flakes in saltwater pools are calcium carbonate, but a lot of people say that that's calcium phosphate.
[00:20:54] Jarred Morgan: I would say negative. Is calcium phosphate a reaction that can occur in your swimming pool? Sure.
[00:21:02] Eric Knight: Super rare.
[00:21:03] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. But if anybody knows or is aware of they've run into this problem, calcium phosphate is extremely hard. I mean, it solidifies to a rock, call it. Um, calcium carbonate is soft. It's like a fingernail it's flimsy, you break it apart. You can touch it and basically mash it in your fingers. Right. We've all played with it and seen it. And if you just look at the chemistry of how salt cell works and what exactly it's doing, and as the water's passing by and why we think it's calcium carbonate is cause in that salt cell, you are spiking that pH way beyond the 8.2 something threshold where you start introducing carbonates to the water. And when you have calcium and then spike in carbonates, you are going to get calcium carbonate.
[00:21:46] Eric Knight: Right. Well, this myth was perpetuated because they would take samples of this stuff and put it in water. And then they'd test for phosphates in the water and they'd find high phosphates. Uh, there's actually no correlation. That's just a coincidence. Calcium phosphate, as Jarred is saying is harder than concrete. It is really hard to get rid of. It would not flake off and blow into your pool. I've never seen that happen. Every time I've seen calcium phosphate, it's been on a commercial pool that's very hot, like a therapy pool, indoor. Cal hypo, and high phosphates in that pool.
[00:22:15] Usually using sequestering agents or something. And it's almost always in a filter of some kind or a heater. I've never seen it in a pool ever. And we deal with problems all the time. So calcium phosphate, if you have it, I hope you don't. Because you would know. It's a huge difference between the flakes and these flakes are easy to get rid of.
Orenda is now pro-Borate?
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[00:22:32] Jarred Morgan: Next. So Orenda has always been anti borate and now we've caved because we included it in our app.
[00:22:39] Eric Knight: Oh, I love this. So many questions about borates that we've had. Where do you want to begin? Cause I could talk for minutes on this.
[00:22:46] Jarred Morgan: I'm not going to talk for minutes. And the bottom line is honestly, it's not that we're anti-borates, it's more of, we just don't think it's necessary. Uh, we think that the benefits are oversold and the reason we included it in the calculator now is because it does have an impact on the LSI. And if we want to be as open and honest as possible, we felt that it was important to include it in our calculator, which is why it is now there.
[00:23:11] Eric Knight: We don't want to demonize practices unless we know that they're completely wrong. And here's the truth. For many years, the latest research was showing that borates are illegal for toxicity reasons. We didn't look much further into that because they were listed and illegal to sell in California. We didn't go into this depth of research to find out why. We just knew that they were illegal to sell in pool stores in California. And they still are today. So why would we do the research on something that's illegal to sell in a pool store? So we didn't.
[00:23:37] So Harold has been very vocal, we don't want to put anything toxic in a pool. That's Orenda philosophy. That's Papaw's law. We don't want to put algaecides in a pool because of things that stay behind. No long term byproducts. No chemical conflicts. It just didn't fit our philosophy. And so as we got all these questions over time and kudos to the late Bob Lowry for doing the lion's share of this research, and then also kudos to Richard Falk for helping us distill that and understanding what it was, we came to an understanding of what this stuff is.
[00:24:10] We don't recommend it because we don't think it's necessary, but we're not going to demonize you for using it as long as you don't use too much of it. So that's where we're at.
RYP is lame
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[00:24:17] Jarred Morgan: This next topic we're going to discuss hits near and dear to my heart, Eric.
[00:24:21] Eric Knight: You have a heart?
[00:24:22] Jarred Morgan: People say that our Rule Your Pool podcast is lame.
[00:24:26] Eric Knight: Well they're right.
[00:24:27] Jarred Morgan: I think they're really just referring to you.
[00:24:29] Eric Knight: No, there's no disagreement there. I didn't want to that's the worst. Well, we, well, we've been pushed out of the top 17 of swimming pool industry podcasts. So we got to do something to get back in there.
[00:24:38] Jarred Morgan: But we have been growing at a pretty slow rate. Like you said earlier, we have to be close to 60 listeners now,
[00:24:44] Eric Knight: but consistent,
[00:24:45] Jarred Morgan: But people actually do call us and tell us that Jarred is a lame host. And that hurts my feelings.
[00:24:53] Eric Knight: No, no. There's only one guy and he said, you need happy pills. I never, everyone's always like, we love Jarred. We want more Jarred. I'm like, I'm on that podcast too.
[00:25:00] Jarred Morgan: What they really want is more Blue. I mean, Blue has been pretty lame these last couple of episodes.
[00:25:06] Eric Knight: Blue, the cat.
The Orenda Calculator is inaccurate because it's different from other apps
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[00:25:07] Jarred Morgan: I just said Blue's name and he just walked in the room. He's right here.
[00:25:10] Eric Knight: Oh, Blue's with us? Put him on the keyboard. Oh, we need to see him now.
[00:25:13] Jarred Morgan: He doesn't like me picking up. He ran away like a cat does. Hey, Eric, our app's inaccurate. Why is it different from other LSI calculators out there?
[00:25:20] Eric Knight: Yeah, I get this question a lot. We actually just did a whole episode on this. The reason is the LSI apps out there. We were one of the first, by the way, back in 2017. And we did this too. There's a reference chart for different factors. And there could be a difference between like, I don't have the chart in front of me, but let's say 75 to 78 degrees is the same factor. Well, what if you have 77 degrees? Or 76 degrees? Which factor do you choose?
[00:25:47] And so a lot of the apps are based on this table of factors without much accuracy in between. And so what we did for many years on our calculator was we took that chart, we based it off of that. And then we extrapolated each degree for instance. So every degree in Fahrenheit and Celsius had its own specific factor. Same thing with every single alkalinity, in units of 10. Now it's units of five. But we have since changed to account for things like the densities of chemicals, the density of water at given temperatures. So it's a far more accurate thing. We had help doing that, but that's why we believe it is the most accurate LSI calculator in the world.
[00:26:24] That's the only reason we did the update is to make sure that we had the most accurate LSI calculator in the world.
SC-1000 is nothing special, and it wipes out chlorine
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[00:26:29] Jarred Morgan: Hey Orenda, your SC-1000 is no better than any other sequestering agent and it knocks out chlorine. So it's not worth it.
[00:26:38] Eric Knight: Well, the second part is absolutely true. And the first, well, I mean, I wouldn't say it's not worth it, but the second part, it does knock out chlorine when you purge. And that's because it's immune to chlorine, chlorine is going to try to oxidize it. It loses. So it wipes out chlorine until SC 1000 finds a metal or mineral to bind to.
[00:26:54] But we never actually say it's any better than a sequestering agent. I've been sure to never say that because it binds just as well as pretty much any other sequestering agent to do its job. It just lasts longer.
[00:27:06] Jarred Morgan: And if you've called the hotline and asked for help and, you know, consideration on other things, we actually do recommend other products and competitors' products. I do all the time. Because our deal is as long as you know what you're doing and why you're doing it, and you can manage the byproducts after the fact. You absolutely can use another sequestering agent or some other product to help you rule your pool. I mean, that's really the bottom line.
[00:27:29] Eric Knight: Sometimes it's necessary to do a little bit of bad to remedy a bigger problem, and then correct your course afterwards. So the analogy is kind of like taking ibuprofen. If you take ibuprofen, it relieves pain, but if you take too much of it, it can cause damage to your stomach and your liver, if you take too much of it for too long. So like a sequestering agent. Yeah. They're phosphate-based. We're not demonizing 'em they work. They work really well.
[00:27:55] So if you're trying to remove metals for instance, and you have a lot of metals in your water, we will recommend competitor's products, specifically, something like CULator, that's a great product. It's an awesome metal removing product. And use a sequestering agent to more rapidly get rid of metals. You could do it with SC-1000 too, but perhaps a sequestering agent's going to work faster. And that's probably what you need to do knowing full well that later on, you're going to have to deal with those phosphates.
Orenda is just another greedy chemical company
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[00:28:19] Jarred Morgan: But Eric, this definitely conflicts with the next question or problem. Orenda's just a greedy chemical company that wants to sell more chemicals.
[00:28:27] Eric Knight: Well, what is greed? Self-interest? I mean, we are in business and we make no apologies for growing our business. The idea that we're misleading people to sell more products that would require talking about our products more. We don't ever do a presentation about products.
[00:28:43] Jarred Morgan: Not a features and benefits presentation on products.
[00:28:45] Eric Knight: It's not a sales presentation, it's water chemistry education. When I first got into this industry, Jarred, you remember this, this was 2016. I sat through every class that I could at these trade shows. I was told to I was a new hire. I didn't know chemistry yet. And they were all product pitches. They were talking about their chemical line. You have this problem? Buy this product. You have this problem? This is what this other product's going to do.
[00:29:06] I didn't learn anything. So I had to start doing water chemistry research outside of the pool industry so I could get away from the biases of these companies that were teaching classes. To their credit though, one company that did very well with education was Taylor.
[00:29:20] And that was, uh, Wayne Ivusich who just retired. So Wayne, we love you. Uh, I don't know if you listen to our podcast, probably not. Because you're cooler than us, but
[00:29:29] Jarred Morgan: We only have 60, I mean, what's the chance he's one of the 60?
[00:29:32] Eric Knight: Somebody text this episode to Wayne because I learned a lot from you and Bob Lowry was the same way. He didn't sell products. He was educating. And that's what we want to do. We want to educate.
[00:29:41] Jarred Morgan: On that note, people call all the time, your dose rate says this. Can I double the dose? And I will absolutely tell them no. Do not do that, even though it's going to result in more product usage and so forth. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that you are applying the products as prescribed and dosed and not more.
[00:30:00] Now we do run into some problems of people underdosing because they don't want to use as much. And that could create another problem down the road, which if I've talked to you about that, you know why.
[00:30:08] Eric Knight: One final note on that before we move on is it would violate our own philosophy to recommend overdosing our own products. We want as little in that water as possible. We want to take things out of your water. We want the purest water possible with the least in it. So overdosing our chemicals doesn't do you any good. We want to have the correct dose to remove the contaminants that you have. Now a heavily loaded commercial swim school or water park is going to require more enzymes than a backyard pool that gets used once a week.
[00:30:36] So the doses are different. That's why. So
Orenda makes stuff up
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[00:30:39] Jarred Morgan: Well on this same note, uh, we're moving on to Orenda makes stuff up and pretends it's research. And it's not fact based, Eric.
[00:30:46] Eric Knight: Well, that would be the case if I didn't get everything vetted before we published it and we do send it to people who know way more than we do, and they are gracious enough with their time to make sure we have our equations, right. That our facts are accurate because if we can pass for instance, the Richard Falk test, or get it to our friends who are chemical engineers and chemists, they will tell us where we're wrong. And we will not publish something that is not fully accurate.
[00:31:12] And I made this mistake early on and here's what happened. Jarred. You remember it. I was sitting in a class back in 16 or 17 at the trade shows. It's my first year in the company. And it's a class about phosphates. And the question was why do phosphates weaken chlorine? And they had this formula on their PowerPoint that I wrote down that phosphates took a hydrogen away from HOCl, hypochlorous acid. And that's what weakened chlorine.
[00:31:38] That was not true. But I thought it was because I learned it in a class. We published that and got crushed by chemists online from that. Specifically Richard. Well, and we corrected it, we remade our video. Like we do not want to be that company that makes anything up. Everything is backed and vetted.
[00:31:57] Jarred Morgan: I would agree with all that, because at the end of the day, we are people we are not perfect, but we've learned some things along the way. And one of those is that we absolutely want to make sure that the information we put out there is as honest and accurate as possible.
[00:32:09] And we don't just put stuff out there on a whim. We read it multiple times. We make sure that it is going to be accurate in the way that, you know, it needs to be worded and so forth. So we've gone through a vetting process, um, a lot. And if you think these blogs are bad, Boy oh boy, just wait until we get into script reads for our academies. Those are painful.
[00:32:32] Eric Knight: It takes an average of three to five weeks for me to go through the entire process of writing a blog, that from research to writing the draft, to getting it vetted, to correcting everything, and then finally publishing it. These are not things that I just write in an afternoon and publish because it's something I feel like. No, no, there's a lot of thought.
[00:32:49] Jarred Morgan: I know guys, he makes me read these at least like one time before they can go out.
[00:32:54] Eric Knight: And Jarred can't read.
Orenda criticizes Algaecides
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[00:32:55] Eric Knight: Okay. Moving on. Um, Orenda always criticizes algaecides and recommends against them, but they work so well, Jarred.
[00:33:03] Jarred Morgan: We don't say they don't work because they do. They're algaecides. They have EPA registrations.
[00:33:08] Eric Knight: They kill algae.
[00:33:09] Jarred Morgan: They do. We obviously have a different approach. We just don't think they're necessary. And we think they're reactive products. Um, so therefore we don't recommend the use of them.
[00:33:20] Eric Knight: Well, hold on. I mean, there's some proactive algaecides right? The 60 and 90 day polyquats. Those are proactive, aren't they Jarred?
[00:33:26] Jarred Morgan: Uh, with long term byproducts that would violate a rule in our overall philosophy. We have beliefs that we don't want to compromise. And I'm not saying y'all are wrong. It's just, that's not our practice.
[00:33:39] Eric Knight: Orenda is not just a product line. It's a belief system. And we do not want long term byproducts in those pools. We want everything to be able to be drained down into the river and not kill fish. We care about the long term health of that water. We don't want to overtreat it. We don't want to be in a chemical cocktail. So I will step up to the plate and say, I don't like algaecides because of what they leave behind.
[00:34:00] We have our belief system and if you don't want it, that's fine. We're not forcing you to do anything.
Enzymes don't digest because they're not living
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[00:34:04] Jarred Morgan: Hey, Eric, did you know that enzymes digest oils, organics non-living organics and so forth?
[00:34:10] Eric Knight: Technically enzymes are non-living. They are amino acids and proteins, but they're not living things. So the idea that you have to be alive to digest something, is the argument here. Uh, I don't know that I agree with it. This is really semantics. So technically it's a type of metabolizing it's bio oxidation in a way. Basically an enzyme catalyzes a reaction to break it down to lower the energy level for further oxidation.
[00:34:33] That is a type of metabolizing or digestion, but it's not living. What we're referring to is breakdown of organic material. And that's true. That's what they do.
[00:34:42] Jarred Morgan: This is something that we're just trying to simplify what's going on so that it is a ease of understanding. Uh, and that's really what it comes down to.
[00:34:51] Eric Knight: Something relatable like beer. Like we talk about a carbonated beer when we talk about Henry's law and the pH ceiling. Because we can all relate to the bubbles in a beer, and then the beer goes flat. It's not that you have beer in your pool, although you might, we're just trying to make it relatable with analogies. So that's what that's all about.
The LSI wasn't made for pools
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[00:35:07] Eric Knight: How about this one Jarred? The LSI is not appropriate for pools because Dr. Wilfred Langelier made it for closed systems like boilers. Why are we using it for pools?
[00:35:18] Jarred Morgan: Because water's water. It does not care whether it's in a closed system, in a boiler, in a swimming pool or in a air handling, you know, evaporation system. Doesn't matter. Water is water. If you want to know the calcium saturation of whether it's going to scale, or if it's too low and aggressive and it's going to cause etching and so forth, you got to have the LSI.
[00:35:40] Eric Knight: And it has been adapted to pools because it needs the carbonate alkalinity, not the total alkalinity. Our app does all this math for you, but it's been adapted to pools, to account for things that impact the carbonate alkalinity, like cyanuric acid and now borate. So yeah, it it's the gold standard. That's what every industry is using.
[00:35:56] But one of the arguments we get from some of our commercial dealers is, well, the Ryznar index is more appropriate because it forces a higher level of calcium. And, you know, the Langelier saturation index was never made for pools, but the Ryznar is all about corrosion and... Listen, the difference between Ryznar and LSI is so small. I mean, there are differences, but generally speaking, if you're using one or the other, you're doing a good job.
[00:36:21] Jarred Morgan: If you're using either one or if you're just it's on your radar and you have a philosophy that you're going to pick one, or have a similar thing, you follow, kudos to you. You're doing something proactive. I can't complain with you.
Orenda says pH cannot be controlled?
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[00:36:34] Eric Knight: Absolutely. Um, okay. One more thing. I'm going to come back to the pH thing, because this is probably the biggest one that we get. But Orenda says pH cannot be controlled, but it has to be. And if it couldn't be controlled, why do systems exist that are called pH controllers, Jarred?
[00:36:49] Jarred Morgan: Because a lot of those systems are commercial applications and they generally most likely don't have cyanuric acid in the water. And your strength of chlorine is absolutely going to be dependent on that pH level. Now controlling the pH is a losing proposition, because you're going to constantly beat your head against the wall. I'm not saying you can't do it. It's just going to be very, um, I guess,
[00:37:15] Eric Knight: well, I'm going to jump in. I'm saying you can't do it unless physics is doing it for you. Because all a pH controller does what chemical does a pH controller add?
[00:37:24] Jarred Morgan: It's adding acid or carbon dioxide.
[00:37:27] Eric Knight: To lower the pH, but there's no bicarb feeder. There's no soda Ash feeder. No. This is because physics is forcing your pH to rise. So you're not controlling it. All you're doing is like pushing a helium balloon back down. Yeah. It rises up. You push it back down. It rises up, you push it back down. If that's control. I don't like that word. pH management system sounds a lot better to me, but you know, we don't make this equipment. But the point is you cannot control pH.
[00:37:53] That is a physical fact. The only thing that's going to control pH is when your CO2 is an equilibrium in the water and the air above it. And your pool is so to speak flat. Like a beer goes flat. When CO2 can't leave anymore, your pH is controlled because it can't rise anymore.
[00:38:09] Jarred Morgan: But generally speaking, that's going to be at a higher pH Eric.
[00:38:12] Eric Knight: So you better be LSI balanced when you're there, Jarred.
[00:38:15] All right. Well, this has been episode 85. Jarred, are there any more criticisms that we want to smack around a bit?
[00:38:21] Jarred Morgan: I don't think so. I hope everybody enjoyed the episode because we just kind of wanted clear the air. We're not calling anybody out in particular. This is just something we've heard repeatedly. And, uh, we do appreciate the calls, the emails, the, the text messages. Um, and we do like helping people. That's the bottom line.
[00:38:43] Eric Knight: Mm-hmm for sure. And I always welcome challengers and anytime I'm teaching a class, I say you can ask me anything you want. Challenge me all you want. All I ask is you raise your hand first and we welcome the discussion! We take phone calls from people that criticize us. And then we try to explain like what we're actually saying. And generally it's like, oh, I wasn't thinking about those other factors.
[00:39:03] The principle one was the very first one. Like, we're not saying that you should have a pH that stays high all the time. We're saying that it's going there anyway, contain around it, use the LSI. We're thinking through these in a holistic way. We're not thinking about one specific factor. We're thinking about your water and what water wants.
[00:39:22] Jarred Morgan: Well, and the fact that people, you know, are out there and they'll vocalize it and they'll tell us, or they'll put it out into social media and so forth. We do appreciate it because if you're thinking it and you vocalize it, somebody else is probably thinking the same thing. So it gives us an opportunity to clarify things. And like I said, before, we are humans, we are not perfect. And if we can improve on what we say or how we say it or how we do it, we are absolutely open to suggestions.
Closing
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[00:39:49] Eric Knight: That's right. This has been episode 85 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. We love you so much. Thank you for calling us at, I mean, the hotline rings with people saying they found our podcast. It means a lot to us. You know, we spend a lot of time doing this and we enjoy it. This is kind of the highlight of our week. Wouldn't you agree, Jarred?
[00:40:05] Jarred Morgan: Mm. Maybe your week. I'm still having to look at you though.
[00:40:09] Eric Knight: Aww. Man, you always find a way to speak the nicest things.
[00:40:13] Jarred Morgan: I got to bring it back down for our one caller who thought I was a little bit of a downer.
[00:40:18] Eric Knight: He was right though. Listen to you. He was right. Uh, the help center for most of these questions, ask.orendatech.com. The email, if you have podcast questions or ideas, we are always looking for more ideas, is podcast@orendatech.com.
[00:40:36] I'm your host Eric Knight. This has been Jarred, who is becoming the host. He keeps being on this show. Jarred, thanks again for being on here.
[00:40:43] Jarred Morgan: Happy to be here and thank you all for listening and we appreciate it very much.
[00:40:47] Eric Knight: All right. Take care everyone. You're the best.