For this special Christmas episode, Jarred and Eric walk demonstrate how to use the Orenda App. More specifically, the Orenda Calculator. This episode is also on video and will be published on YouTube and the Orenda website.
00:00 - Introduction
01:22 - Exploring the main menu and features of the Orenda App
03:14 - Blogs, procedures and videos are all shareable on the app
03:50 - App settings allows you to select language, units of measurement, and toggle borate on/off
05:48 - How to use the Orenda Calculator
08:05 - Real-time LSI and color codes
08:28 - How the Orenda Calculator dials work
10:01 - How to get chemical doses
14:44 - Chlorine and phosphates are segmented below the LSI line because they do not impact LSI, but are used in the chemical dosing calculator
15:24 - Sharing results, and an example of a software bug
17:29 - Scenario 1: winterizing a pool
24:35 - Scenario 2: weekly pool service
28:20 - How to contain pH and maintain LSI balance all week (in other words, how to Rule Your Pool)
32:47 - Chlorine dosing
34:35 - Old habits die hard. Kill them anyway.
35:53 - Summary. Thanks for listening, thanks for using our app, and Merry Christmas!
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98. How to use the Orenda App
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Episode 98 of The Rule Your Pool podcast. Jarred, stop squeaking your chair, because the audience is happy to have you back. Don't ruin it. you're going to ruin it for everybody.
[00:00:10] Jarred Morgan: It has been a hot minute, I'm not going to lie. You know, Eric's just been plowing through episodes without me, having all the fun and you know, it's getting later in the year. So we decided it's time to bring me back at least one more time before we close out 2022.
[00:00:25] Eric Knight: That's right. This is a Christmas special. And we wanted to talk about our gift to the pool industry and to pool people in general.
[00:00:32] And that is the Orenda app. this one's actually on video, Jarred. We haven't done a video episode in a long time. But we're going to actually walk through the app in this episode.
[00:00:40] Jarred Morgan: And you know what? I knew it was going to be on video, so I purposely wore our cool new Orenda hat that Eric doesn't have. These just came in like last week.
[00:00:51] Eric Knight: You're really making it sting. Let's get into this episode so that we're not wasting people's time. Episode 98, how to use the Orenda app. Let's go.
Orenda App features (main menu)
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[00:01:22] Eric Knight: So we're going to go to the main menu by touching those three lines of the top left. We have a pool volume estimator. What we can do is we can either slide these dials and get numbers, or we can actually touch the number and type them in.
[00:01:34] Now, this obviously is not perfect. Freeform pools are very different, but it's an estimator. It can get you pretty close.
[00:01:40] So if I know that I've got a lap pool, it's a commercial lap pool, it's going to be 75 feet long because it's 25 yards and it's going to be a six-lane lap pool. So we're going to go to 42 feet, and deep depth will be eight and short depth will be four.
[00:02:03] 141,381 gallons according to this. Now, this doesn't factor in things like steps. It's an estimator.
[00:02:10] Jarred Morgan: The main purpose here is that you have a general understanding of the volume of water you're treating based on the pool, and you're not off, you know, 10,000 gallons. That would be a little problematic.
[00:02:23] Eric Knight: Yeah. It'd be heavily overdosing. And how many times have you walked into a backyard where the homeowner or the customer says, yeah, I've got a, uh, I've got a 30,000 gallon pool. Like, In what universe is this? A 30,000 gallon pool? This looks like it's 18,000 gallons. You know?
[00:02:37] Jarred Morgan: You know, as a pool professional, we see enough pools where I could walk into a backyard, and any service guy who's been around enough time, they can walk into a backyard and have a pretty good understanding of how many gallons a pool is based on. You know, looking at it, uh, I could probably get within 2000 gallons no problem.
[00:02:55] But you're right, there's a lot of new people entering our industry. And there's a lot of homeowners that say, well, I don't know. The store told me I had a 25,000 gallon pool. And we'll go look at it. And it's like, uh, no.
[00:03:09] Eric Knight: Yeah,
[00:03:09] Jarred Morgan: You're, you're about 10 over. So just get an estimate, everybody. It's not hard to do.
Blogs, Procedures and Videos
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[00:03:14] Eric Knight: We also have all of our blogs. And when you see these blogs, there's a share button right here, and uh, you can do the same thing with procedures. How to use our products, et cetera.
[00:03:25] How to do the post fill startup, how to add calcium, how to add acid, all of that's in here. And the same functionality for videos. So if you see a video that you want to use and share it with somebody so that they can watch it,
[00:03:36] everything in this app is shareable. That is entirely by design. We don't want you to be summarizing what we said and then misquote us, and then somebody makes a mistake based on that. Just share the article. That's what it's for.
App Settings (language, units of measurement, etc.)
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[00:03:50] Jarred Morgan: I know there's people that English might be their second language. You can make changes in the app settings right there for Spanish. We've tried to accommodate that as best we can.
[00:03:59] So All of those things can be controlled within the app settings.
[00:04:02] Eric Knight: Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. You can go metric, you can stay imperial. Uh, so we're in metric right now just demonstrating for our international audience, which is surprisingly big. Of the 90 some listeners that we have now, Jarred...
[00:04:14] Jarred Morgan: What?! Are we up to 90?!
[00:04:16] Eric Knight: I believe we're over 90 now.
[00:04:18] Jarred Morgan: Wow. A lot's happened since I've last been on.
[00:04:20] Eric Knight: I'm just trying to break a hundred by our hundredth episode and then we're going to feel really good about ourselves.
[00:04:25] Jarred Morgan: Good. Okay. Good.
[00:04:26] Eric Knight: Yeah, but we're, we're on pace
[00:04:27] Jarred Morgan: targets. Everybody needs targets.
[00:04:29] Eric Knight: I know. I know. We're on pace. So the point is, we have all this functionality. If you wanted information about products, there they are.
[00:04:35] You want the SDS sheet, in case you need it? If you're transporting our products in your car, like pool pros do. The SDS sheets are in here. They're in the app for you.
[00:04:44] All right. Now training and more. You can request a virtual training with us, which is basically a Zoom meeting with me, or in Spanish, it would be with Miguel.
[00:04:52] All we ask is that you take Orenda Academy first before you do that. Most of the questions we get in these private trainings Are answered in Orenda Academy. Now, this is primarily for people in the trade. We have had a few homeowners do it, but if you have questions as a homeowner, reach out through our help center. ask.orendatech.com, or email ask@orendatech.com.
[00:05:12] Other than request a virtual training, you can contact us, share the app, and we also have a link directly to our help center. Of course, I'm on airplane mode at the moment, but, um, back to the calculator. Let me actually change out of metric. Go ahead, Jarred.
[00:05:24] Jarred Morgan: I was going to say, you can see the app version there on the settings. So if for some reason you're getting wonky readings or something's not updated, or we're telling you something over the phone, right, and it's not lining up, that's probably where you need to start.
[00:05:37] If you don't get regular updates for your apps, you know, on a daily or weekly basis or however that works, check your settings, your, your app just might be old.
[00:05:46] Eric Knight: Yep, that's correct..
How to use the Orenda Calculator
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[00:05:48] Eric Knight: All right, so at the very top right, if you can see my mouse, there is, oh, okay. For those of you listening, we are on the Orenda Calculator screen.
[00:05:57] There is a question mark, and I'm going to tap that question mark. And this is kind of an overview of how the calculator functions. It basically does two things. It gives you a vertical readout and a horizontal readout.
[00:06:09] When I say vertical, I mean when you start adjusting dials of different factors like your pH, your temperature, your calcium, etc., the LSI changes in real time. Because it's a real-time aggregate of that column of factors, but it's not just the LSI that changes.
[00:06:26] If you go back to the app and you push show on secondary readings, which was in our latest app update, All of these factors, these secondary readings, they change in real time too. Like the pH ceiling. So for example, if I change my alkalinity, not only my carbonate alkalinity changes, but so does my pH ceiling and my LSI. Okay? So that's a vertical readout.
[00:06:48] When it works horizontally. If I go back to this question mark, When it goes and works horizontally, it's a dosing calculator. Any difference between the left side, which is the current levels and the right side, which is the desired levels. There's going to be a chemical requirement there or a dilution requirement.
[00:07:07] Jarred Morgan: Let's bring it back to people like myself. Vertically is up and down, horizontally, side to side, everybody. So you're welcome for, uh,
[00:07:16] Eric Knight: I think you're, I think you're patronizing our Rule Your Pool podcast listeners.
[00:07:20] Jarred Morgan: No, I'm patronizing myself.
[00:07:22] All right. I didn't, I didn't understand this until maybe like six years ago, so I just want to make sure everybody understands. Side to side, up and down.
[00:07:30] Eric Knight: You didn't know what horizontal meant?
[00:07:33] Jarred Morgan: Are you, come on, are, are you judging me?
[00:07:36] Eric Knight: A little bit, yeah.
[00:07:37] Jarred Morgan: Okay, fine. All right. Yeah, let go. Lemme go back on mute here. Geez.
[00:07:42] Eric Knight: Yeah. Okay. Good job. Good job, Jarred. Way to, way to bring up our standards as a company. That's great.
[00:07:48] Okay, so we're going to go 20,000 gallons, just as an example for a backyard pool. So if we're going to change chemistry at all, we're factoring in two different things at the same time. Yes, we want to correct our chemistry, but we want to do so within the context of the LSI.
Real-Time LSI, and color codes
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[00:08:05] Eric Knight: So in real time, if I go down and I touch the LSI hyperlink, I get a color code that shows me what good and bad LSI's look like.
[00:08:14] Good is going to be green or yellow. Bad would be purple or red. Now, if you had to be bad, you'd much rather be purple because you can clean up scale than red because you cannot put calcium back into cement.
How the Orenda Calculator dials function
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[00:08:28] Eric Knight: When we're doing corrections on the app, if you touch the left dial, you will notice that the right dial changes automatically to synchronize to it. That is by design, because we had a lot of issues in the earlier versions of the app that when you would touch one side or the other, the other side was independent and people were getting really crazy readings because they were overlooking a certain factor, and then one would be higher than the other one. It didn't make any sense.
[00:08:55] How you use this is you test your pool, you adjust the factors at the current side, which is the left side. And let's just say you get there, the pH is 8.0, so we're going to make it 8.0. Your total alkalinity is 80. Your calcium will leave it at 350. Cyanuric acid at, I don't know, 60. And it's not a salt pool, so we'll say our TDS is 1100.
[00:09:19] I'm making up these numbers, as you can tell, but as I change these factors, you can see that the LSI has changed. It is now a green number, 0.29.
[00:09:28] So Jarred, what are your thoughts on these numbers as you're looking at them?
[00:09:32] Jarred Morgan: The call that I get a lot of is, you're right, clarify the left side and the right side are two separate functions, but they end up synchronizing when you're messing with the left side. You can make changes to the right side and that's how you get your dose to make those changes.
[00:09:47] Because if you just sync everything up on the left side or the current side and you press calculate, nothing will... they're synchronized. They're the same. So you will have no dose rate.
[00:09:58] Eric Knight: That's right.
[00:09:59] Jarred Morgan: And I get that call pretty frequently.
How to get chemical doses
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[00:10:01] Eric Knight: Yeah. So do I. They call the hotline. I don't think your calculator's working. Yeah, because you have the same exact number, so you get no dosing answers. We actually have an article for that in the help center too. So yes, you're only looking for the difference between the left and right.
[00:10:13] Now, few things to note here. I'm going to make a correction. I'm going to lower the pH and the alkalinity. It is just a computer. It's only going to tell you the difference between left and right.
[00:10:23] , I'm dropping the pH from 8.0 to 7.6, and I'm going from 80 down to 70 alkalinity in this example. So when I push calculate for 20,000 gallons I get two muriatic acid doses. Now we have a toggle at the top. If I don't use muriatic, and let's say I use sulfuric. Now I get two doses of sulfuric, or dry acid, which would be sodium bisulfate. Whatever you use, I'm getting two acid doses. One is to decrease the pH and one is to decrease the alkalinity.
[00:10:54] A very frequently asked question that we get is, do we add them together? Which one do we do? So we added these hyperlinks. So I'm going to touch decrease alkalinity and a little note pops up. And we even have a help article at the very bottom, to learn how to properly lower alkalinity, read this help article. And it tells you dilute your acid, etc.
[00:11:14] So anytime you're going through the Orenda app, look out for these hyperlinks. If there's a hyperlink there, we put it there for a reason. Take the time to read it. They're pretty short.
[00:11:23] I'm going to tap the decreased pH one. This pop-up says this calculator only calculates between current and desired levels, left and right sides.
[00:11:33] If you are making a pH and alkalinity adjustment, only do the alkalinity adjustment, as the pH will be affected by that adjustment. In most cases, raising pH with soda ash is unnecessary because pH naturally rises due to CO2 loss.
[00:11:49] We made this note because we get so many questions about it. Yes, I have two acid doses, but again, the calculator only knows the difference between left and right. If I'm lowering alkalinity and pH, I'm only going to be lowering alkalinity in reality because when I do that, it will lower the pH as well.
[00:12:08] So I'm going to add, in this case, 51.27 fluid ounces of muriatic acid to that pool to lower it from 80 alkalinity down to 70. Now, if I were not changing the alkalinity, Jarred, I'm just going to leave it at, let's say 70, and I'm only going to correct the pH. A different factor comes into play.
[00:12:29] You see that little blue number under decreased pH? Parts per million of future alkalinity. So I'm going from 70 parts per million total alkalinity down to 66.12 future alkalinity. That means this 19.88 ounces of muriatic acid is going to lower my 70 down to 66.12.
[00:12:51] This is a very helpful feature for those of you who are on weekly service.
[00:12:55] Jarred Morgan: That 66.12 in future alkalinity, is that correlating to the total alkalinity? Or the carbonate alkalinity?
[00:13:03] Eric Knight: Great question. It is your total alkalinity that will be reduced because when we were on the calculator, we're actually calculating the total alkalinity as a dose.
[00:13:13] The LSI is using the carbonate alkalinity. And the pH ceiling is using the carbonate alkalinity, but the dosing calculator is using the total.
[00:13:20] Not to be too confusing. We have plenty of articles about this and several other podcast episodes. The point I'm trying to make here is think of the calculator as a machine that is just taking your inputs on the left to your desired levels on the right and you have to push, calculate to get the difference and the chemical prescription to make that difference.
[00:13:41] Jarred Morgan: But there has to be be a difference in order for it to pick up a dose rate.
[00:13:45] Eric Knight: That's exactly right. That's why right now if I push calculate, you don't see anything for calcium. You don't see anything for salt. You don't see anything for cyanuric acid. But if I made changes to all of them, let's say I start at a lower CYA and I want to raise CYA. Or I want to raise salt, make it salt pool. Raise calcium. I push calculate now. Now I have a whole bunch of other doses.
[00:14:06] Conversely, if I want to reduce those things, some things require diluting water.
[00:14:11] So let's say I want to reduce my calcium hardness, and I want to reduce my cyanuric acid, and I want to reduce my TDS. What's going to happen is I'm going to get a bunch of prescriptions to dilute water, because that's how you reduce those factors.
[00:14:26] So anyways, that's the Orenda calculator on the dosing results. If you want to use Orenda products, those are also at the bottom, but you don't have to.
[00:14:34] We just recommend sticking to the basics. Measure your chemicals. If you're using acid, dilute it after you measure it and then pour it in properly.
Chlorine and Phosphates do not impact the LSI
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[00:14:44] Jarred Morgan: I do have one more note on the home screen there for the calculator. Can you go back to that? Yeah. So people see the numbers and there's a line down there by the LSI readout that's segmenting the two chlorine and the phosphate levels on this screen.
[00:14:59] Eric Knight: That's correct.
[00:14:59] Jarred Morgan: The reason they're segmented is because those two factors do not account for the LSI. Yeah. So therefore, they're not going to be included in that readout. Your chlorine level's not going to have an impact in this equation at all, because it's not a factor. Same with the phosphorus. Phosphorus revolves around our product's dose rates. And then the chlorine is obviously for sanitizing and so forth, so you do need chlorine in there. So just want to clarify that.
Sharing results, and app bugs
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[00:15:24] Eric Knight: Yes. Now, when you're done with these results and you want to share these results, say you want to email them or you wanted to keep them for your own records. You can push this share icon at the top and you can email them to whoever you want. Send them, text them, etc.
[00:15:38] At the time of this publication, iOS 16 has made this a bug. And that's one little note I want to talk about before going further.
[00:15:46] This functionality was working for years and right now we're trying to get it resolved, but this is just a good lesson learned on how software actually works. iOS changed iOS, meaning, um, iPhone software. They changed in their update, which made a function that worked for six years break. We had nothing to do with the break, but Apple changed how they do things.
[00:16:09] Google does the same thing on Android sometimes. So when things bug out on the app, Please let us know. You can email me directly, podcast@orendatech.com. If you find a bug in the app, please let us know. We might not be aware of it. There's a lot of little functionality things in our app that we may not see cause we don't use them all the time. A lot of things happen because they're out of our control, but we need to be aware of them so that we can resolve them.
[00:16:33] Jarred Morgan: We wear a lot of hats around here, no pun intended, but being software engineers and app developers is not one of them. So..
[00:16:40] Eric Knight: Yeah, we're a chemical company.
[00:16:41] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. Whenever you, uh, run into a bug like that, understand that we're going to send it off to our partners and try to find answers, but it could take a little time, but we are working on it, I promise.
[00:16:52] Eric Knight: Right. And in this case, we've been working on this one for three weeks. The problem is we're at the mercy of Apple. They changed their protocol. There isn't a workaround right now until Apple puts out a patch. That's the first time this has happened in six years, that we have a feature that simply does not work. And we are fortunately in communication with developers with Apple to get it resolved. They're aware of it, they're trying to change it.
[00:17:15] So the point is, we're a chemical company. Sorry for the frustration, we've had many bugs in the past, as you know.
Common Orenda Calculator scenarios
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[00:17:21] Eric Knight: Now, Jarred, we're going to end this episode with a few scenarios in the app. I put them in the show notes, but since I know you don't read show notes, you're just going to have to wing it.
Scenario: Winterizing a pool
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[00:17:29] Eric Knight: Let's give an example of winterizing a pool. Give me some factors.
[00:17:35] Jarred Morgan: All right. I'm closing my pool. It's probably October, that water temperature's probably 72 degrees.
[00:17:41] Eric Knight: in October? No way. Yeah, man. Early September maybe, but let's say it's like mid 60's in early October.
[00:17:48] Jarred Morgan: Hey, you told me to give the example. Now you're just hijacking this?
[00:17:52] Eric Knight: Well, it depends on where you're winterizing. Are we winterizing a place that is going to freeze? Or winterizing in a place like the Carolinas?
[00:17:58] Jarred Morgan: I was shooting for maybe Virginia.
[00:18:01] Eric Knight: Okay. It's not going to be 72 the first week of October. Not without a heater. I'm from Virginia.
[00:18:09] Jarred Morgan: You know what, Eric? I think you want to take this segment. Okay, fine. We'll go with 65 degrees. Okay.
[00:18:15] Eric Knight: All right. Thank you.
[00:18:16] Jarred Morgan: Geez. And people have been following our Rule Your Pool podcast, and so they're maintaining their pH at 7.7.
[00:18:23] Eric Knight: Yeah, I'm sure.
[00:18:24] Jarred Morgan: And then their total alkalinity is probably going to be 80 because you know, having it at 120 is not ideal. Depending on the season. Uh, and, you know, we've pushed people at a 300 calcium. That's good. Uh, cyanuric acid, let's say they're following the rules and they have 35.
[00:18:39] Eric Knight: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:18:41] Jarred Morgan: I know they're being good. Uh, TDS, this is not a salt pool, so let's say 1200. There it is.
[00:18:49] Eric Knight: Okay. So that's when you come back after a week, that's the chemistry you're going to see? Because you're coming back after a week to close the pool. You think the pH is going to be at 7.7?
[00:19:00] Jarred Morgan: Well, no, it's pH is going to be 8.27 according to our pH ceiling. Mm-hmm. Okay?
[00:19:07] Eric Knight: So somewhere between there and there. And the point I'm trying to draw out of Jarred here is, there's a lot of predictive AI in this calculator. A surprising amount because of physics.
[00:19:20] The pH ceiling is a very powerful function that's going to tell you exactly where your pH is going to be when the CO2 and the water equalizes with the CO2 above the water.
[00:19:30] It's not just for winterization. It's for weekly service. It's for every other time of the year unless you have a solid auto cover on your pool.
[00:19:38] So I'm kind of drawing that question out because when you come back, there's no way you're going to be at 7.7 unless you have an auto cover or an acid feeder or trichlor feeder on that pool.
[00:19:47] If you do, okay, something's up. So anyways, you're going to get there. The pH is over 8.0. It may not be exactly at 8.2 yet, but it's on its way to it. So we'll just say it's at 8.2. We want to winterize this. It's at 65 degrees. How big is the pool, Jarred?
[00:20:02] Jarred Morgan: Uh, Northeast has pretty decent sized pools, let's say 30,000 gallons.
[00:20:06] Eric Knight: Okay. How would you winterize this pool?
[00:20:12] Jarred Morgan: Well, what I would start with is knowing that I'm closing my pool at 65 degrees, according to Eric, but maybe 72 degrees according to me. Um, it's going to get down to 32, 33 degrees in the end of January for sure. So take the temperature all the way down. You can see what your LSI is, now it's green. That's good.
[00:20:31] But I would want to bring that pH ceiling down slightly so that I know that I'm not going to pass the the 8.2 mark.
[00:20:39] Eric Knight: Okay. So drop the alkalinity a little bit
[00:20:41] Jarred Morgan: slightly. So you're going to take it down to maybe 65.
[00:20:45] Eric Knight: Okay.
[00:20:46] Jarred Morgan: And then I would bring that calcium level up to 350?
[00:20:52] Eric Knight: Oh, I think it's going to be more than that, you Texas boy.
[00:20:54] Jarred Morgan: Look at that! 0.01.
[00:20:57] Eric Knight: Here's the problem with this logic. See, we have to put some of our own experience and apply it to this calculator. Again, the calculator's just a computer. We know that the type of cover matters a lot for winterization.
[00:21:10] If you have a mesh cover, 350 calcium to winterize is not nearly enough because of dilution. Rain and snow have zero calcium. So you're not going to have 350 calcium for very long, are you, Jarred?
[00:21:23] No. It'll probably be diluted out pretty well by the time you get to January 28th.
[00:21:28] So what we should really do is load up that calcium in the fall, ideally over multiple visits. If you can do a winter watch, ease your pool into winter, that would be smart. If you can't do it, go ahead and load it up anyways.
[00:21:40] Just make sure that that calcium is chelated ahead of time so that it doesn't scale. But get enough calcium in that pool so that when that temperature does drop, you're going to be able to do it. So I'm going to raise my calcium up to about 500. Now I'm in the green there, but it may not be fully 500, but as long as it's over 350, as we just saw, we're still going to be LSI balanced at 32.
[00:22:03] Jarred Morgan: I have a concern here. That works at 32 degrees, but how does that work at 65? Because we're only making changes right now on the desired side.
[00:22:12] Eric Knight: That's true. At 8.2, you are slightly scaling. So what I would suggest is we lower our pH, we have to get it below 7.8 so that we can dilute and dissolve chemicals in it anyway. Because if you have an 8.2, well actually anything over 8.0, it's going to be more difficult to dissolve something like bicarb or calcium chloride, or even chlorine.
[00:22:33] So we want to lower that pH when we're there, just slightly. We're not going to 7.4. If we go to 7.4, we're going to have a red number.
[00:22:42] Jarred Morgan: That's a very common mistake that I get calls on all the time. Or, and it's from pool professionals as well as retail stores and homeowners that are closing their pools down.
[00:22:51] They feel like they need to drop their pH down to 7.4 because that's what we're supposed to do in range chemistry. Drop it down, get it efficient because we know it's going to rise so well, let's just get it as far as it can go, going into the wintertime. Well, all these things come into play, everybody. So we need to pay attention to what and why we are doing this.
[00:23:09] Eric Knight: Yeah. There is no reason to go to 7.4 when you're winterizing a pool as if you as if it's going to stay there for more than a few minutes anyway. It's not, it's going to rise. And if you go that low, you're actually going to etch if you have a cement-based surface. Or you're going to damage the vinyl liner or fiberglass of your pool, and the pH is going to come back up anyway.
[00:23:29] So there's no reason to go down there because you make the water aggressive. You just want to get under 7.8 so that you can put your chlorine in and you can get this other stuff to dissolve knowing full well that the pH is about to rise back up.
[00:23:40] Now, as I was saying before, the type of cover matters in winterization.
[00:23:43] A mesh cover allows CO2 to escape, but dilution to come in. But a solid cover does not allow CO2 to escape or dilution to come in. So one of the little life hacks you can do if you understand Henry's law like we do. If you have a solid cover, it would behoove you to actually allow CO2 to escape. So maybe you put a little one inch PVC pipe as a snorkel under that cover for a few weeks so that CO2 can escape through the pipe, get your pH back up to its ceiling so you have that extra insulation for the winter.
[00:24:15] Just a thought. That's just an idea, but it works.
[00:24:18] Okay. Calculate. Now we get our doses and we know how to do it. We can follow the procedure that's shown in the main menu. If you go to procedures, find how to winterize a pool, now you have your chemistry prescription. Follow that procedure and you're good to go.
Scenario: Weekly pool service
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[00:24:35] Eric Knight: Now one more scenario and then we're going to wrap this episode up. Let's do a summer, weekly route. Let's say our water is, I don't know, 86 degrees Fahrenheit. And you get back after a week. And according to range chemistry, we're going to do range chemistry here Jarred. You know, textbook ranges. What should the alkalinity be in a range chemistry pool?
[00:24:57] Jarred Morgan: You know, let's shoot for perfection at 100.
[00:25:00] Eric Knight: Mm-hmm, because it's 80 to 120. Let's go right in the middle.
[00:25:02] Jarred Morgan: It's right in the middle. If, if you don't know which way to go, just shoot for the middle.
[00:25:05] Eric Knight: Okay, calcium? 200 to 400 would be 300.
[00:25:08] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. Let's go three. Let's shoot it right in the middle. That's perfect.
[00:25:11] Eric Knight: Perfect. Cyanuric acid?
[00:25:13] Jarred Morgan: We'll just leave it at 35. 45. I mean, it's, let's say 40. Okay.
[00:25:19] Eric Knight: Now we could leave it here and we're balanced on the LSI at a 7.7 pH because we're between 7.2 and 7.8. But what's the ideal range chemistry pH supposed to be?
[00:25:30] Jarred Morgan: Well if its 7.4-7.6, let's shoot straight for 7.5.
[00:25:35] Eric Knight: Okay, we're slightly below 0.0, but we're well within parameters. We're minus 0.05 in the yellow. That's great water. There's a few things we can do to this to screw this pool up.
[00:25:48] Now we're in perfect range chemistry right now, but what if we made this a salt pool? We're just going to take the same parameters and make it a salt pool. What happens there, Jarred?
[00:25:58] Jarred Morgan: The LSI is going to go down. Very important thing to touch on there is when you make it a salt pool, you're adding the salt plus the other TDS to that number.
[00:26:08] Eric Knight: Yeah. We'll say it takes you from minus 0.05 to minus 0.20. Now, that's not quite etching yet, but that's at 86 degrees with 100 alkalinity. If you are used to having perfect range chemistry, it can keep you balanced at some times of year. But not all the time.
[00:26:29] We're going to use this example of what Jarred just did, and we're going to say we're not at 86, we're actually at 68 degrees. And all we did was make it a salt pool. So if you can see this, all I did was drop the temperature and at completely different time of year with the exact same chemistry parameters, I have a red number.
[00:26:47] So it wasn't actually balanced. It's not to say that range chemistry cannot balance your LSI, it's to say that it doesn't always do it. Be flexible on what those ranges are to make sure that you are accommodating LSI balance year round.
[00:27:01] Jarred Morgan: And just to understand, this is almost at perfect cyanuric acid maintenance levels and all these other things are just spot on.
[00:27:10] Right. This is not the reality we live in. I mean, sure we can have pools at 30, 40 parts, but it takes some diligence to get those numbers there or keep them there, right? Most of the time when we run into pools, the cyanuric is getting up around 50, 60, 70, 80, even over a hundred parts.
[00:27:24] And it's because the tablets and dichlor have stabilizer in them which is causing these numbers to continually rise. And that's where this LSI violation comes into play pretty easily. Even though we have textbook chemistry ranges that are quote unquote perfect. Mm-hmm. But we have etching like nobody's business.
[00:27:45] Eric Knight: Oh yeah. When you have super high cyanuric acid, you can see the carbonate alkalinity changes, the pH ceiling changes. All of these things change. So play around with each of these factors, and if you're looking at the screen, you'll notice the CYA number went red when we went too high.
[00:27:59] That's us telling you something. If it's a color coded factor,
[00:28:03] like calcium is a color coded factor, carbonate alkalinity, pH ceiling. If you have a red number on there, pay attention to that number. It's red for a reason.
[00:28:12] We're trying to tell you, you do not want this number in your pool. Do something about it. You know, a little subtle hint I will say.
How to contain pH and maintain LSI balance all week
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[00:28:20] Eric Knight: What I want to do to wrap this episode up, is show how we would maintain a pool. And I'm going to go back to the eighties. What were we? 86 degrees? After a week, you're going to be at 8.3 in these parameters, because that's the pH ceiling. You may not get all the way to 8.3, but the worst case scenario is it's going to 8.31.
[00:28:38] Jarred Morgan: Question.
[00:28:39] Eric Knight: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:28:39] Jarred Morgan: Why does our desired side pH stop at 8.2?
[00:28:42] Eric Knight: That is by design, because you never want to actually force your pH to go over 8.2. If you do, you're going to scale.
[00:28:49] Because at 8.3, bicarbonate and ions convert into carbonate ions, and you get free carbonates in your water. You're going to get calcium carbonate precipitation pretty much no matter what.
[00:29:01] That's a feature. That's not a bug. And you're right, Jarred. That is a question we get. That the right side of our calculator only goes up to 8.2. You would never want it to go over that anyway.
[00:29:12] Okay? So we have after a week in those given perfect range chemistry parameters. The reality is you're not going to have a 7.5 pH after a week, and you're going to have about an 8.3. That's a scale forming condition.
[00:29:25] If I go back and I tap LSI, that's a purple number. Purple means scale forming. That's going to be a problem. What I want is to have a green LSI number after seven days when I come back.
[00:29:37] A pool service company is coming once a week for 20 to 30 minutes a week. You need to know where the LSI is going to be.
[00:29:45] So after a week, that perfect range chemistry is scale-forming. Very common issue. You'll see it on the tile line, starts in the spa, spillway. You'll see scale all over the place. Flakes in your salt pool if you have one.
[00:29:58] So Jarred, what can we do to contain the pH so that we are always staying within the context of the LSI and staying LSI balanced?
[00:30:08] Jarred Morgan: Number one thing to adjust here is your total alkalinity down, so that way you can put a cap on your pH ceiling and you know where you're going to be.
[00:30:18] Eric Knight: Okay, so where should I go?
[00:30:20] Jarred Morgan: I take it down to 70.
[00:30:22] Eric Knight: All right, I'm going to 70, and now the pH ceiling is 8.13. I'm still scale forming here.
[00:30:28] Jarred Morgan: Then you need to go to 60.
[00:30:30] Eric Knight: Okay, now, 8.04 is the pH ceiling, and now at that pH ceiling I'm in the green after a week. We're going to get our dose and we're going to get our two acid doses as we discussed before. We're going to ignore the pH one because we're doing the alkalinity reduction.
[00:30:49] So we would make the change.
[00:30:51] Jarred Morgan: By the way, if you're watching on YouTube, it says 2.4 gallons to lower your alkalinity that much. Do not add 2.4 gallons at one time.
[00:30:58] Eric Knight: Yeah, if I tap on this, decrease alkalinity, it says How to decrease alkalinity. Never go more than 20 parts per million at a time. So since we're going from a hundred down to 60, we're going to need minimum, two different, separate occasions where we reduce our alkalinity.
[00:31:12] So this is done over several visits or several days, not in one day.
[00:31:17] The reason for that is you don't want to drop out your pH to nothing, and you want to dilute your acid enough that it kind of matriculates through the water, neutralizing, alkali in the water instead of going to the bottom of your pool and etching it.
[00:31:30] Good call Jarred. I can't believe I just said that out loud. But you actually had a good point there.
[00:31:36] Jarred Morgan: Don't worry, it's recorded. I can replay it.
[00:31:38] Eric Knight: So let's go over to the other side, back to the left side, as if we've already made the correction. So this is the next visit.
[00:31:45] Now we're going to be at 60. When I come back, I have an 8.04, worst case scenario. 60 alkalinity. Calcium is at 300. CYA is at 50. It's 86 degrees, summertime. I show up there, Jarred. According to the LSI, I've got nothing to fix.
[00:32:04] Jarred Morgan: According to the LSI you do not. But what I would do in this situation is I would add a little acid. I don't like maintaining a pH at 8.0. I'm not saying you can't, but I would take it down to like 7.8, 7.7 on the pH for the desired side.
[00:32:19] Eric Knight: Primarily because we're adding chlorine.
[00:32:23] Jarred Morgan: Uh, yeah, whatever it may be. I want it a little lower but traditional maintenance says drop it down to 7.4 because I know it's going to rise and it's going to get up over 8.0 by the time I get back here the following week. But now we know it's not going to.
[00:32:36] Eric Knight: Look at this. If I go to 7.4, I'm not in the green anymore, I'm in the red.
[00:32:41] Jarred Morgan: That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't take it down to 7.4 anymore knowing what we know now. I'm going to go to 7.7.
Chlorine dosing
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[00:32:47] Eric Knight: All right. So we get under 7.8, which is great because we're about to chlorinate. Whether it's cal hypo or liquid. We can add chlorine if we're at 7.8 or below and it's not going to cloud up if you add it correctly. So I'm going to calculate and I get a chlorine dose. This one's for liquid, but I could also do cal hypo or even trichlor. And it'll tell me exactly how much chlorine I need. And then I get a very small 16.11 ounces of muriatic acid for a 30,000 gallon pool.
[00:33:15] That's it. That's how much acid you're using. We're not talking half a gallon, we're not talking three quarters of a gallon. We're talking a pint in this pool. And that's because we are containing pH. And here's the lesson here. The worst case scenario at the top is when you come back and the pH has naturally risen.
[00:33:32] It's going to get up to its pH ceiling and your LSI is still balanced. It's going to be 0.12 according to this. Awesome. It's not going to scale.
[00:33:42] Jarred Morgan: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you Rule Your Pool.
[00:33:46] Eric Knight: Oh, good. Good. Closing. You know don't, you don't derailed me. I actually had a point there, and now I got to say this again.
[00:33:54] Yes. That's how you Rule Your Pool. All you have to do. Once you've contained the high end of the pH, which Jarred so eloquently did here, is not go red and overcorrect with acid.
[00:34:06] As long as you don't do that and you stay in the yellow and you don't over add acid week after week.
[00:34:12] You're contained you because if I do add too much acid and go to 7.4 or below, and I etch that surface, now that surface releases calcium hydroxide, which has a 12.6 pH, the pH spikes. I have a problem and I'm back in this chase mode to get control of the chemistry again. You cannot control pH, but you can allow physics to contain it for you.
Old habits die hard
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[00:34:35] Jarred Morgan:
[00:34:35] I've come to the realization that at the end of the day, we keep talking about these things on this podcast and in our education material, and it's the equivalent of basically telling people to just take the pacifier out of your mouth.
[00:34:48] I know it's comfortable, I know it's what you like. You know, it's, it's your safety blanket. But at the end of the day, there's reasons why you don't need it. Same thing for this pH. You don't need a 7.4 pH. In certain cases, if there's no cyanuric acid in your commercial pool, we understand there's different scenarios that come into play here. But in general, for a residential backyard pool service company, homeowner, that's who we're speaking to.
[00:35:12] If you're in the commercial trade where you're at a, you know, aquatics facility or so forth, you have a different set of rules and standards that you're following, and we get that. Call us, we'd be happy to answer your question specifically.
[00:35:24] You've done the research, you've put in the time to have an understanding for why we're telling you to do these things. We're not just making it up. And we appreciate it, you know. Thank you.
[00:35:33] Eric Knight: Actually, I've been making up the whole thing the whole time. How did I sound?
[00:35:36] Jarred Morgan: I knew it. Well, anyway, you don't read this show notes either, even though you write them.
[00:35:40] Eric Knight: I write them, but I don't read them. It's like Orenda Academy. We wrote it but never took it. Right.
[00:35:45] Jarred Morgan: I still don't have a certificate. I know.
[00:35:48] Eric Knight: we only watched the videos eight or nine times while editing them. Anyways, this has been our special Christmas episode.
[00:35:53] This was our gift to the industry and, um, It's been a lot of work. It, it's something that kind of transformed our company and we have to express our gratitude to you, our listeners, the people who watch our videos, the people that use the app, people that buy our products, all of you. We couldn't do it without you. We do it for you and we're so grateful that you use this tool.
[00:36:15] We hope this helps and have a very merry Christmas, and if you have any questions, Find us at ask.orendatech.com. Hopefully we have an answer for you.
[00:36:25] You can always reach out to us directly, podcast@orendatech.com is the email address. And I'm your host, Eric.
[00:36:31] And actually, I guess I'm kind of a co-host now that Jarred's back. So
[00:36:37] Jarred Morgan: I'm a co-host at best. Yeah. Let's at best's best just get that understanding at best. But we really do appreciate it, everybody. Thank you. Thank you all. And if you're going to trade shows this next year, that's about to kick off. Hopefully we see you! Come say hi. We'll pretty much have a booth at every show moving forward in the spring, in the winter, and, uh, see you next year.
[00:36:56] Eric Knight: Absolutely. Happy New Year everyone. Take care.