This episode explains CV-600 and CV-700 enzymes, how enzymes work, and how to use them. Then Eric goes through the boring process of answering FAQs in a manner that one of those text-reading robots on YouTube could do (except the robot would do it better).
00:00 - Intro
00:58 - What is an enzyme?
03:28 - Enzymes vs. sunscreen
05:54 - How to use CV-600 and CV-700
08:29 - Enzyme dosing
10:47 - Differences between CV-600 and CV-700
12:44 - FAQs
15:11 - Summary. Thanks for listening!
------------------------------------
Connect with Orenda Technologies
Website: https://www.orendatech.com
Blog: https://blog.orendatech.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/OrendaTechnologies
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/orendatech/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orendatechnologies/
Swim Across America | Team Orenda: https://www.swimacrossamerica.org/goto/orenda
66. How to use CV-600 and CV-700 Enzymes
===
[00:00:00] Eric Knight: We are back everybody. This is episode 66 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. This is going to be about CV-600 and CV-700 enzymes. A lot of the questions we get have to do with enzymes because they are really the foundation of the Orenda program.
[00:00:15] People ask, you know, "how do you have an Orenda pool?" Well, that foundation is actually built upon enzymes. Not phosphate remover. Not SC-1000. But enzymes. It's the core of every single purge. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. I'm your host, Eric Knight doing this one alone like I'm doing all the other episodes of this series. But I do hope to have Jarred back with me in the future, in the near future. Especially after Memorial day, because that's when everything seems to cool down for us. Everyone's just too busy to call.
[00:00:46] So let's get right into this. Episode 66, how to use CV-600 and CV-700 enzymes.
Intro music
---
[00:00:58] Eric Knight: First of all, we should know what an enzyme is. An enzyme is a catalyst of a given reaction. In other words, it is something that encourages or forces a reaction to take place. They're usually made up of proteins or amino acids or some combination. I'm not a microbiologist or a biochemist, whatever. I don't know exactly what the science discipline is that would deal with enzymes, but I'm not that. I'm just a guy trying to distill this for you.
[00:01:47] So the way I kind of think of it is, this protein complex enzyme is going to have a shape to it. And it's going to attract something that fits uniquely into that shape. Kind of like a key would fit into a lock. And only that given key can turn that lock. It's very similar.
[00:02:05] In most cases, an enzyme breaks something down. Like the hundreds, if not thousands of enzymes in your digestive system, starting in the stomach and through the intestines and all that.
[00:02:16] It metabolizes things. It breaks things down. But there are also enzymes that bind things together. But not ours. In swimming pools, our enzyme goes after carbon chain non-living organics and oils. Ours is something called a broad spectrum enzyme. So it's not super specific, it's just specific enough to go after the contaminants that you would have in a pool.
[00:02:39] And actually they weren't made for swimming pools. So it actually is a little more broad than that because it was originally made for industrial wastewater. That's what CV-600 and CV-700 that enzyme that's used in those products? Way stronger than what is necessary for a pool. It's probably why they work so well.
[00:02:57] What an enzyme will do is find those non-living organics and break them apart. And what that does, is it lowers the energy level required for those organics to be oxidized out by chlorine or some other oxidizer like maybe ozone or AOP. So what you're basically doing is you're breaking apart complex molecules to lower the energy level, so that chlorine doesn't have to get used up oxidizing and burning through this complex organic material.
[00:03:28] So I'll give the example of cosmetics, or better yet, sunscreen. Sunscreen is a really complex molecule. Chlorine has to oxidize it and it cannot even oxidize it completely, because if it could, uh, the remainders of it would not be able to irritate our eyes or float to the surface and create a scum line. But if you've ever been to a summer pool where people wearing sunscreen get in the water, you'll see that oily slick on the top of the water. Well, that's part of the sunscreen that's organic material. That film.
[00:03:59] Enzymes go after that. Enzymes will devour all of it. Whereas chlorine will oxidize what it can. And oftentimes it gets used up doing that. For more information on the whole oxidation process, check out our second pillar of proactive pool care.
[00:04:15] Chlorine is trying to burn through this complex molecule.
[00:04:20] Enzymes don't do that. Enzymes are going to find that molecule they're going to find every single carbon bond, at least our enzymes will, and they're just going to break it down into carbon dioxide. Splitting this really complex thing into a very, very simple set of things.
[00:04:36] One of the things that people bring up to us often is how much enzymes can actually save them on other chemicals. Generally that's chlorine, and there is no way for us to quantify what those savings could be, or even if your pool will have savings. Because every pool is different. I want to be clear about that.
[00:04:54] Enzymes don't kill anything, but they do address the lion's share of the oxidant demand. So by taking that burden off of chlorine, there's more available chlorine to do the other jobs that enzymes can not help with. Namely, killing things.
[00:05:09] And that's really the point of having enzymes in there. Sort of a administrative assistant, if you want to think of it that way, handling the busy work so that chlorine can focus on what it excels at. At least that's how I look at it.
[00:05:22] One very important thing to understand is enzymes are not living. They are made of amino acids and proteins. But they're not living. It's not like a bacteria that's doing this work for you. And it's a really good thing, because if it was something like a living bacteria, chlorine would just kill the enzyme. But it's not living to begin with.
[00:05:41] So we use terms when we're talking about our enzymes, like it "digests oils". Technically what it's doing, like I said, it's breaking down oils so that you're reducing the energy level so that chlorine can finish the job.
Purge and How to Add
---
[00:05:54] Eric Knight: Now let's talk about how to actually use it. Now we talked in the last two episodes about the purge dose, actually the last three episodes about the purge dose. When you were using enzymes, it is very important to start with the purge. And the purpose of the purge is to clean out the system and deliberately overload it so that you can not only wipe out the existing demand, but leave behind a residual. That's the purpose of the purge.
[00:06:23] The weekly maintenance doses afterward are simply to re-up that residual. Enzymes will get used up. They take a while, I mean, they can eat a lot, but at some point, they're gone. And you have to re-up them. So starting with the purge is how you set that baseline. And then your weekly dose is based on your bather load.
[00:06:43] So if you have a really heavily used swim school, like hundreds and hundreds of kids a week in 40,000 gallons of water, you're going to have a much higher bather load than the backyard pool that might get used once or twice a week. Huge difference in organic demand.
[00:07:02] The actual process of adding the enzymes is very easy. They're a liquid. You just pour them in and it doesn't really matter where you pour them in. Unlike PR 10,000 phosphate remover, which you need to either broadcast across the surface or pour it around the perimeter, you can really put enzymes anywhere.
[00:07:22] You can put them around the perimeter, you can throw them across the middle of the pool. Some people do that because there's a surfactant in it, which will push leaves to the sides so it makes it easier to net. You can do the same thing with CE-Clarifier too.
[00:07:36] Um, if you have a commercial pool, you could put an auto feed into the surge tank. Or if you don't have a surge tank, because it's a skimmer pool you just put it on the suction side of the pump. And that will, or, or actually right after the pump, you could put it on the pressure side too. Right before the filter. Some people put it on the return line. It doesn't really matter where you put the enzymes.
[00:07:57] And while we don't advocate for pouring chemicals into a skimmer, you could do that with enzymes. They are pH neutral. They're not going to hurt anything. And it goes into circulation really quickly. So adding them is pretty easy. We do recommend measuring just so you don't waste product. But again, it's not really going to hurt anything if you overdose, you're just going to have bubbles. And those bubbles are harmless. They're just annoying. So it takes time. Just let the enzymes do their job. And, um, Yeah, go from there.
Dosing
---
[00:08:29] Eric Knight: All right, dosing let's talk about dosing. The purge dose. Is one quart per 10,000 gallons. The weekly dose depends on your bather load. So a lightly used residential pool, you might not even need to dose enzymes every week. Quite frankly.
[00:08:48] You could get away with just using CE-Clarifier, which has CV-600 enzyme in it. A lot of people do that. They'll purge once a year with CV-600 and then they'll use CE-Clarifier for the remainder of the season. Now. It's obviously a lower amount of enzyme because CE-Clarifier, which we'll explain in the next episode, is mostly a clarifier. It just has a little bit of enzyme in it.
[00:09:13] But for the most part on a residential pool, the dose is going to be somewhere between 2-5 ounces per 10,000 gallons per week. Use a measuring cup. If you have a very busy pool, it could be 5-10 ounces. Most commercial pools are going to be between 5-10 ounces per 10,000 gallons a week.
[00:09:36] The average, say it's like a community HOA pool or hotel pool or something like that, is generally going to be about seven. Kind of right in the middle of that 5-10. And seven is a convenient number because if it's seven ounces per 10,000 gallons a week. That's one ounce per 10,000 gallons a day. Nice little math there.
[00:09:56] So it should be pretty easy to figure out what your dosing is, especially if you're using a metering pump. And then you've got the really busy pools. You've got the pools with swim teams, swim schools, water parks, venues like that.
[00:10:12] You know, maybe it's a normal dose at that university pool until they have a swim meet. In which case they have 1200 swimmers in three days. Much bigger bather load. So you would just up your dose to account for the bather load. Same thing that you would do with a residential load. So for instance, if the pool hardly ever gets used, but you know that your client is hosting a birthday party next weekend, you might want to actually put in you know, five ounces of CV-600 or 700 beforehand and after. And then switched back to the clarifier. Just so you can handle that additional bather load.
CV-600 vs. CV-700
---
[00:10:47] Eric Knight: Now, one of the questions that we get quite often is "what are the differences between CV-600 and CV-700?" it's the same enzyme. There's only one difference. And that is CV-700 contains a phosphate remover blended in.
[00:11:04] This is a good thing if you are trying to not let your phosphates climb or, you know, you have some phosphates in your tap water, and you just want to stay on top of them. It'll reduce phosphates gradually over time, but it's really good at just making sure that the phosphate levels don't creep up on you.
[00:11:20] It is not made for wiping out really high levels of phosphates. That's a PR-10,000 thing. So CV-700 will actually create some phosphate dust just like PR 10,000 creates a lot of it. CV-700 we'll create some of it. Which is why we do not recommend using CV-700 on D.E. Filters. Cause if you're not careful, that dust can build up the pressure in those D.E. filters and potentially cause pressure damage. Like breaking a grid or something like that. Especially on commercial pools with regenerative D.E. filters. That pressure could build up too much.
[00:11:56] So we do not recommend that we would much rather you use CV-600 if you have a D.E. filter, and then time your PR 10,000 treatments as needed with a filter cleaning. So that's really the only consideration. Uh, for which product to use some people. I mean. Some people just prefer one over the other. I know a lot of swim schools that'll use CV-700 with a sand filter because they're concerned about phosphates and CV-700 is plenty strong to deal with their bather load. But it's the same enzyme is CV-600.
[00:12:28] Are you getting a noticeable strength difference between the two? Generally, no. And they're about the same price. So it really depends on, "do you have a lot of phosphate concerns?" And if, so, maybe you should consider CV-700. If not, stick with 600, that's the pure enzyme.
FAQs
---
[00:12:44] Eric Knight: Let's cover the frequently asked questions. I hope we're doing justice for most of the questions that we get. So let's just go through these. And if you have further questions, feel free to reach out podcast@orendatech.com, but hopefully it's answered in this and in Orenda academy and on our website and in the app. Got this stuff published everywhere.
[00:13:05] Question number one. How long until it's safe to swim after using CV-600 or CV-700? You can swim immediately. In fact, you could add enzymes while people are in the pool if you wanted to. There'll be some bubbles, but it's totally harmless. All of our products, as you know, at Orenda are NSF 50 certified. In fact, CV-600 and CV-700, before we let the certification lapse, were NSF standard 60 certified as well, which is the drinking water standard. We didn't really need that for the swimming pool business. So we just let it lapse, but we never changed the formula.
[00:13:40] So you can have great faith that the products that we have in the water? They're safe to use. They're non-toxic, non-hazardous. So you can use it. And you don't need to wait at all. Now we do recommend if you've never purged a pool. You're going to probably want to purge in the afternoon or evening so that it can do most of its bubbling overnight, because if people see that, like at a commercial pool, we typically purge overnight because if people see it, they might see some nasty stuff coming out of that water converting into CO2.
[00:14:09] Well, that's part of the process. You got to get that crud out of the water. That's what an enzyme purge does. It strips things out of the pipes, it cleans out your filter. And you may see some nasty stuff float to the surface. Especially if you're cleaning up a green pool.
[00:14:24] All right. Do CV-600 and CV-700 leave behind a residual? Absolutely. That's what the purge dose is for. You need a residual, so that enzymes are in there to defend you against future non-living organics. So you want enzymes in a residual circulating around the pool alongside chlorine to handle future bathers, leaves that get into the pool or specifically the oils in those leaves, et cetera.
[00:14:51] What else can CV-600 or 700 be used for? Uh, honestly, Our enzymes are used in almost every Orenda procedure. We use them in our startup, the green pool cleanup process, the filter purge, um, gosh, I don't even have the procedures in front of me, but there, there are a lot of them. The enzymes are the foundation of our whole program.
[00:15:11] You know, every time I do these episodes, it seems so mechanical because I'm reading from a list of frequently asked questions that we get. And I just feel like I'm just reading off a sheet and it's not as personable. So I apologize for that. Uh, I hope this episode has been helpful. We're going to get through this. We only have one, maybe two more to go, and then we'll get back to the chemistry questions that you all send us through our email. So thank you so much.
[00:15:34] Again, that email address. If you have episode requests, is podcast@orendatech.com. This has been episode 66, how to use CV-600 and CV-700 enzymes. Thanks for your time.