Eric and Jarred explain the Orenda Calculator's LSI formula and the research trail behind it, citing all the papers that have evolved the LSI formula into what it is today, and why it is slightly different than the LSI reference chart.
00:00 - Introduction
01:35 - We have learned from past mistakes
04:40 - The history of the Orenda Calculator™ formula
05:51 - Dr. Langelier's original formula = pH - pHs
10:47 - Revisions to the LSI in 1942, 1964, 1965 and beyond
12:32 - Technology is not limited by reference charts
14:29 - The LSI charts today are based on the updates by John Wojtowicz
17:22 - Wojtowicz wrote about the pH Ceiling concept
19:19 - The most precise LSI calculator in the world
22:55 - Wrap up
134. Is the Orenda Calculator™ true to the LSI formula? Or different?
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host Eric Knight, and with me as sometimes, Jarred Morgan. Thanks for being on the show once again. This is episode 134. Jarred, what are we talking about today?
[00:00:11] Jarred Morgan: Today we are going to talk about the Langelier saturation Index in more detail and why some think that our calculator is different, or that maybe we skewed results. Quote, unquote.
[00:00:28] And these are just things that come up, you know, as a routine, running a business, putting products out in the marketplace. Resources, whatever you want to call it. And they come into question. We at Orenda/Hasa have no problem answering questions, being as transparent as we can possibly be.
[00:00:44] And if we mess something up as far as a code or a formula or whatever it may be, in a resource that we're trying to provide, we are here to do the due diligence to figure that out and fix it.
[00:00:55] So this episode is going to go down the rabbit hole of why our Orenda Calculator and specifically the LSI readout in there is what it is and how we got there.
[00:01:08] Eric Knight: That's exactly right. Episode 134. Let's get into it.
We have learned from past mistakes
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[00:01:35] Eric Knight: Do you remember Jarred, back in about 2017? I was pretty new to the company and you had me going to these trade shows and saying, take as many classes as you could? And I was taking all these classes
[00:01:46] Jarred Morgan: Not just take classes. It was read this IPSSA basic training manual. Read the advanced textbook, read the, you know, any PHTA material we read. You read
[00:01:56] Eric Knight: I read AFO, CPO, I read all of the Lowry stuff, all of it. And it was just part of getting the job right? And I'm taking these classes, and I was learning about a lot of stuff. And I sat in, what I did not realize at the time was a competitor's class, but uh, a competitor's class. And I'm sitting in this class and they're teaching about phosphates.
[00:02:16] Of course, I want to learn about phosphates because I'm new to the industry and we have a phosphate remover. And in that class, they said that phosphates weaken chlorine because phosphates take the hydrogen from HOCL and make it the weaker form of chlorine. And we ran with it. because it was
[00:02:32] Jarred Morgan: I said that many times back in the day. No, no question.
[00:02:35] Eric Knight: it was just kind of conventional wisdom. Right. And you remember what happened? We went, we, we even made a video about it. I wrote a blog about it and 6, 7, 8 months later, I don't even remember. This starts going around in these chemistry forums apparently. And word gets to some very smart people,
[00:02:56] Jarred Morgan: people smarter than we are.
[00:02:58] Eric Knight: For sure. Which is a low bar, let's be honest.
[00:03:00] Jarred Morgan: Very
[00:03:01] Eric Knight: We got eviscerated for putting that out. Where did these people come up with this? This is absolutely not true. This is totally fake. They're just lying.
[00:03:12] Jarred Morgan: trash.
[00:03:13] This is an unbelievable money grab. These guy.
[00:03:15] Eric Knight: Yeah, exactly. Like these guys are just trying to sell phosphates. This is total BS. Well, anyways, I learned from that experience because I thought I was teaching it right. Because we did not have any sources that told us what was really up.
[00:03:25] And ever since then, I have been extraordinarily cautious. I mean, I thought I was cautious at the time. But we not only double check our work, we triple check it, and quadruple check it. And we try to cite everything because I am not going through that experience again. That was horrible. But it was a learning experience that if we're going to publish something, it has to be accurate, it has to be factual, and it has to be cited. It's, uh,
[00:03:49] it's
[00:03:49] Jarred Morgan: And reviewed by more than just me or you.
[00:03:52] Eric Knight: right, and we do send these things out for third party review just to make sure that they are precise because we do not want that embarrassment once again. And more importantly, it's not about us and our feelings and our embarrassment. We do not want to publish information that is wrong.
[00:04:06] We only want to publish information that is verified and true. Because if it was wrong, you would find out pretty quick that it was wrong. And that's a really bad look for all of us, and it doesn't do you any favors. So all that is to say, everything since that incident in 2017 that we have ever published, that we've ever talked about, is backed up.
[00:04:24] Now you may not like what we say and you may not agree with it. It may conflict with some of your preconceived notions and what other people say, and that's fine. But those of you who are still listening to this probably already recognize that what we're telling you is working. That's probably why you're still here.
The History of the Orenda Calculator's formula(s)
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[00:04:40] Eric Knight: Essentially why we're doing this episode is people have called into question the validity of our app, the Orenda LSI results, and if they should even be called LSI, because the results differ from what you find in the reference charts in both NPC, PHTA, you know, everywhere else.
[00:04:58] Now, let's go back to 2017 when we first released the Orenda app. The first iteration was based on the same chart. That's what was publicly available and we didn't know any better. We were learning as we went. So we put that in and recognized that there was a lot of rounding when you have a chart like that. You have to round either up or down, we didn't like that. There was not a lot of precision.
[00:05:22] And so we interpolated between the factors. And I'll let Jarred take that because he was kind of instrumental in that. So the purpose of this episode is let's find out how did we get here? Where are these numbers coming from and did we make it up?
[00:05:37] And I'm here to tell you absolutely not. And we did our homework and we, we sure as hell keep receipts. So let's go through the history of the Langelier Saturation Index
[00:05:47] Jarred Morgan: Eric's not smart enough to make this up. Let's just be honest.
[00:05:49] Eric Knight: I can make up some stuff, but it's not going to be this good.
Dr. Langelier's Original Formula = pH - pHs
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[00:05:51] Eric Knight: Let's start from the beginning. Okay. First things first, Dr. Wilfred Langelier. His namesake is the Langelier Saturation Index, which, by the way, Jarred, he was a very humble guy, according to several interviews about him. He did not want his name attached to this thing at all. He had a lot of humility. He didn't want his name on it. He just said, no, it's the saturation index.
[00:06:12] But after he passed away, everybody attributed it to him because he did invent it. And it was published for the first time in 1936, in volume 28, number 10 of the Journal of the American Waterworks Association. And this paper was called The Analytical Control of Anti-Corrosion Water Treatment. Here it is.
[00:06:31] Alright, now we printed it out. We link to this in our website.
[00:06:35] You do need to pay for it. Um, I think it was like $49 to download it. And in this, keep in mind, this was published in 1936. This guy was so ahead of his time. Now, let's give a little background on who Dr. Langelier was.
[00:06:49] He was a professor of sanitary engineering in the civil engineering department at Cal Berkeley. He was really on the forefront of disinfecting water. Because at his time when you read the interviews with him, typhoid fever was a big problem. The Spanish flu came out, and disinfection of water was a huge, huge issue back in the day.
[00:07:10] And so he was on the cutting edge of making sure that water was safe for people to drink. He was on the cutting edge of chlorinating. He actually wrote several papers on flocculation to get sediment out of the water, to enhance filtration, to make water better for people down the line. Specifically for drinking water and other closed water systems. So that's where he is coming from.
[00:07:30] Mind you, this was not for swimming pools. This was for drinking water. And the main reason that he came up with this index was because he was trying to figure out a way to calculate exactly how to treat water, to deliberately put a thin film of calcium carbonate, what we would call scale, on the inside of iron or galvanized pipes.
[00:07:51] He starts talking about a lot of complex stuff in this paper, you know, he's talking about ion pairs and super saturation and thermodynamic constants and all sorts of stuff that's over my head. Then he gets to this page and he says, I love this. An equation has been obtained, which is, I'm quoting here, extremely simple to use and which is believed to be entirely rational in its development. Okay. His words not mine.
[00:08:20] And when you look at the math on here, I'm going to make sure I can see the screen to make sure if you're watching on YouTube, you tell me if that looks extremely simple to use. I, I can't even speak this in English, but there's a lot of multiplication, there's a lot of symbols that I'm not familiar with. I mean, it's extraordinarily complex. If you don't have a PhD in physics and chemistry, good luck.
[00:08:41] Like I have no idea what I'm looking at here. It might as well be in Chinese. His formula is pH minus pHs.
[00:08:50] Jarred Morgan: simple. Yeah, sounds simple.
[00:08:52] Eric Knight: It sounds simple. The LSI is pH minus pHs. Now the pH is what we test. That's the pH, actual. The pH s, and I quote: is the pH at which a water of a given calcium content and alkalinity is in equilibrium, neither over nor undersaturated with calcium carbonate. It is based upon three well-known mass law equations and one stoichiometric equation as follows, and then it goes into the crazy math.
[00:09:20] Alright, let me just distill this down. We keep seeing these words, ions, constants, all these things that honestly, Jarred and I do not really understand. And we recognize nobody was going to do this by hand. Jarred, do you think you know anybody other than maybe Richard Falk that could do this by hand?
[00:09:39] Jarred Morgan: Um, no, honestly, I mean, I'm sure there are some out there, but you'd have to have a lot of paper and a lot of time.
[00:09:46] Eric Knight: I'm showing it. If you're watching this on YouTube, I'm, I'm just showing just a taste of what this math is. I mean, it's, it's three pages of subsequent equations to get this thing done. Okay so now we go through the history of it. Now that we know where he was coming from, it has gone through several iterations since.
[00:10:04] Okay. Because it's so complicated, it was not practical for people to use in the field, but it should be noted that there was no rounding involved in this. There was no need to estimate high or low. You could put in incredibly precise values for temperature, calcium, hardness, alkalinity, whatever, because they were variables that you just plug into this massive equation and you would get an extremely precise answer for the saturation index.
[00:10:28] Jarred Morgan: Based on the information at the time
[00:10:30] Eric Knight: Right. It was based on the best information he had in 1936. Believe it or not, those thermodynamic constants have changed a little bit by, you know, a few decimal points
[00:10:40] Jarred Morgan: You mean we've learned things over the past 88 years? Yeah. Okay.
[00:10:44] Eric Knight: 88 years, science has evolved and we've learned more things.
Revisions to the LSI in 1942, 1964, 1965 and beyond
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[00:10:47] Eric Knight: okay. Enough About that. I'm going to put that paper aside. In 1942, this was revised and adapted to parts per million. Because it was based on molar weights, which we talked about in a previous episode, which I think was, uh. What episode was that? 131 maybe? Where I talked about molar weights? Yeah.
[00:11:06] Jarred Morgan: that I would know. I didn't listen, but 131.
[00:11:09] Eric Knight: Yeah. You don't listen to any episodes, Jarred. So if you go back and listen to 131, don't be driving. It will put you to sleep. But Langelier's was all about molar weights and ratios in the water at these temperatures, at these, blah, blah, blah. The 1942 paper by Larson and Buswell included appropriate factors to convert this into parts per million, and it also created ionic strength corrections.
[00:11:34] And that mattered because again, we're talking about ion pairs. In 1964, Van Waters and Rogers published a technical bulletin called FK-41464, called scale formation and pH control in swimming pools.
[00:11:47] This adapted the formula for open water systems like swimming pools. This was the first time it was adapted to pools. Now, back then, it did not include cyanuric acid yet, but it was getting there. A year later, Carrier takes this formula and they create a reference chart so that it's basically usable, right? Anybody can use it if they have a reference chart. And then you start getting these paper slide rules and things like the wheel. All of it is based on these reference charts, which makes it accessible to everybody.
[00:12:13] Jarred Morgan: To simplify.
[00:12:15] Eric Knight: It was absolutely simplified. And to their credit, this is when it actually went mainstream. Because before this, it was really not accessible to normal people that didn't have a PhD. And by the way, Jarred and I are not criticizing these charts. They're phenomenal. I'm really glad they exist.
Technology is not limited by reference charts
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[00:12:32] Eric Knight: But in terms of an app, when we were developing the app, we have technology on our side.
[00:12:37] Jarred Morgan: We have spreadsheets and pivot tables and all kinds of things we can build into a formula that make it more accurate or more precise.
[00:12:48] Eric Knight: Exactly. We don't need to be limited by reference charts that can fit on a page that we can read. And that's really the main difference that we had originally. So we started with the charts and then we interpolated between the factors. But we still weren't precise because we weren't actually true to the original formula.
[00:13:07] Jarred Morgan: What he means by that, interpolated, is on the charts that we all have looked at, we all have seen. A quick example here is, uh, let's just pick calcium hardness. Well, if you go from 25 parts per million the factor is one. But if you went to 50 parts per million, calcium hardness, the factor is 1.3.
[00:13:30] So what if it's 45 or 40?
[00:13:34] Eric Knight: Yeah, well actually is on this one. It's 1.2, But to your point, let's go from 75 to 100. 1.5 to 1.6
[00:13:42] Jarred Morgan: yeah, I mean, do you round up or you round down? Which one do you pick?
[00:13:47] Eric Knight: And now you got six factors that you're talking about now that it's adapted to swimming pools to include cyanuric acid. Seven if you use borate nowadays. Because all of these affect the carbonate alkalinity. This was really important to Dr. Langelier. The carbonate alkalinity is what mattered.
[00:14:01] Total alkalinity, he didn't, cyanuric acid didn't exist in 1936.
[00:14:05] Jarred Morgan: Nope.
[00:14:06] Eric Knight: They weren't putting that in water, so it didn't matter to him, but to make sure. adapt to the spirit of what he was trying to do and what he declared he's trying to do. You have to take these things into account, and it's not us doing it. Trust me, this is not coming from us. This is coming from people like John Wojtowicz, who published three papers, all of which I have right here. Way over our heads.
The LSI charts today are based on the updates by John Wojtowicz
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[00:14:29] Eric Knight: But here's what matters. The ANSI 11 standard in the pool industry, they cite Wojtowicz. They cite these papers. And if that's the case, those charts are based on this. In fact, here is the chart, page six of one of his papers, and
[00:14:43] Jarred Morgan: Now
[00:14:43] Eric Knight: Let's see which paper it is.
[00:14:45] Jarred Morgan: to clarify on that, specifically. In that standard that is referenced that I was reading yesterday that you so blatantly took away from me.
[00:14:53] Eric Knight: Sorry,
[00:14:53] Jarred Morgan: Um.
[00:14:54] It specifically says there are multiple indices used and that the Langelier Saturation or LSI, and then in parentheses it says, (SI). So these terms are used interchangeably.
[00:15:07] People understand and they see the acronym LSI and they know what it means. If somebody just sees SI, it's not as clear as to what that means. So it's a interchangeable thing that is used in our industry to provide clarity to what we are trying to accomplish here. Which is to determine the calcium carbonate equilibrium. Which everybody refers to as the LSI.
[00:15:31] Now, there are other things out there, which is why this is important, because you have the CSI, you know, the Crime Scene Investigating unit.
[00:15:41] You have.
[00:15:42] You have, whatever these acronym words that they have different factors that are used that are not under the same, guidance of Dr. Langelier. Correct?
[00:15:54] Eric Knight: Correct. That's right, so youhave like the Hamilton Index, you have the Ryznar Stability Index. Those are actually different formulas.
[00:16:00] Jarred Morgan: We are basing our information on Langelier's Saturation Index, which is why we call it the LSI in our app.
[00:16:10] Eric Knight: Exactly. And so we're following the trail of what has been referenced by our industry. So if you read what was cited and you read what they cited to get to where they are, because you know, peer reviewed journals, they include all of their citations. I mean, take a look at this. If you're looking at it, he has, show you just quickly if you've, by the way, if you've never read scientific journals, it's not exactly reading Harry Potter. It's quite dense.
[00:16:36] Jarred Morgan: mean, I will say I, I actually did enjoy reading those documents because they shed light on a lot of things that we talk about that I clearly glossed over at the time. But it just really reinforced our position on what we teach, what we say, and it made me feel great.
[00:16:53] Eric Knight: yeah, this challenge to our credibility last week on social media, I welcome it because it forced us to go in and make sure, Hey, do we have an error? We're looking into it and if there is an error, we're going to call it out
[00:17:06] As part of this research, just so you know, the depth that Jarred and I have gone through, as if we have nothing else to do. John Wojtowicz cites 15 different papers on this one paper of his. Just for fun, Jarred, you just said we glossed over a lot of stuff.
Wojtowicz wrote about the pH Ceiling concept
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[00:17:22] Eric Knight: I've heard that people think that the pH ceiling is theory. Now granted, we did coin the name pH ceiling. That is our term. The concept is not because in this Wojtowicz paper on page 66, Loss of carbon dioxide.
[00:17:35] And I quote, swimming pool water continually loses CO2 because it is super saturated with CO2 due to periodic pH adjustments with acid. The loss of CO2 causes the pH to increase, but does not affect alkalinity. This is shown in the following carbonic acid equilibrium, and then it goes to show what we have in a pretty chart.
[00:17:55] Jarred Morgan: Would that be the same term as the pH ceiling? We coined it the pH ceiling. He's calling it the carbonic acid equilibrium. Is that a fair statement?
[00:18:03] Eric Knight: Well, it's, it's just quantified there, but yes, basically he's saying water turnover rate a function of pump duty cycle and pumping rate is a major factor of increasing the rate of CO2 loss. While the use of a pool cover is a significant factor in decreasing the rate.
[00:18:18] Sound familiar? This is what we teach. The CO2 loss rate also increases with temperature alkalinity and bather load. This is a calculated pH drift based on the test data for an outdoor pool without bathers.
[00:18:31] This was the origins of where we got that lesson from. All that is to say what we teach in our classes and on our website and what we talk about on this podcast is not coming from our heads. We're not just making it up. Here it is.
[00:18:47] Jarred Morgan: I think that's kind of the point. We don't make it up. We are referencing something that is actually a scientific document or something with teeth, right? We're not going to go to Wikipedia and say, oh this is great. We don't do that.
[00:18:59] If there's new information out there that, like Eric said, causes us to revert back or look at the things we put out in the past because it's new and relevant? Absolutely, we'll look at it. And if it needs to be fixed, we will absolutely fix it. But in this instance, in this case, uh, not warranted.
The most precise LSI calculator in the world
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[00:19:19] Eric Knight: What is cited in the ANSI 11 standard and in certain charts, and you know, basically what's out there, that chart that everybody sees that you're comparing and calling the LSI. Okay, that stuff cites this Wojtowicz paper right here. Okay? It's called a revised and updated saturation index equation. By John Wojtowicz, and if you want to look it up, it's on our site. We do link to it in our help center, ask.orendatech.com.
[00:19:46] It's in the Journal of the Swimming Pool and Spa Industry, volume three, number one, pages 28 through 34. He has ionic strength corrections. We even circled it. The problem is the charts that are used in this industry do not account for those.
[00:20:03] Our calculator does. So Jarred, you know, I don't want to lose everybody on science, I think we've proven our point. What was your order to me when we updated our LSI formula?
[00:20:13] Jarred Morgan: It was to be the best. It was to be the most accurate. That was the initiative when we went down this path. If we are going to be giving you a resource and a tool, we want it to be the best tool that we can give you.
[00:20:26] And part of that included being the most precise and accurate LSI formula and dosing calculator in the marketplace. We wanted to give the professionals a tool that they could absolutely lean on and use to help them improve their businesses, improve their confidence. These things go hand in hand.
[00:20:47] And we love this industry. We've poured so much time, effort, and money into propping up the industry as best we can. it's a devotion for us.
[00:20:59] Eric Knight: When We went to our developers, we told them this needs to be the most accurate, true to the formula LSI calculator in the world. There may be some that are the same, but nobody's going to be more precise than this calculator. It is going to be the most accurate.
[00:21:15] Jarred Morgan: Not just that, I'm a pool guy, all right? Harold is a pool guy. We know how pool guys operate. I love calling people out for rubbish. And if we were to put something in the marketplace along those lines, we knew we were going to get called out for it. So we had to be dotting the i's crossing the T's. And not that it's a bad thing, like I said before,
[00:21:46]
[00:21:46] Jarred Morgan: yeah, bring something to our attention. but we just said, Hey, we're just going to put in the extra work to do these things right on the front end so that if we ever get to this point, we're confident in what we put out there. And like I said, sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're wrong. And we're happy to address it.
[00:22:05] Eric Knight: So then the question is, can we call this the LSI? In that Dr. Langelier's stuff did not account for cyanuric acid, but if the industry's calling the charts the LSI, can we call ours the LSI?
[00:22:17] Jarred Morgan: And that's my stance is if the information in the marketplace is, in my opinion, semantics on recognizable acronyms and what things are trying to accomplish. By the charts saying that it's the LSI formula based on these factors, when in reality they're using Wojtowicz's information and factors. If they're calling it the LSI, then we absolutely have every right to call it the LSI, because we are building the calculation out of the same information. And we're just making it more precise. That's it.
Wrap up
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[00:22:55] Eric Knight: Yep. So I hope this puts that issue to bed. If you do have concerns about it, feel free to bring them up to us. Like Jarred said, we'll talk to you just understand we did our homework on this and we wanted to make sure that it was right, and if there was a bug, we were going to find it.
[00:23:11] if we do make changes in the formula in the future, it is not to change the LSI. It is only in the interest of precision. Something that might cause that would be maybe another paper comes out where someone's like, well actually, you know, this, this ionic pair is actually different now because, you know, who knows?
[00:23:28] I have no idea what could happen, and maybe it's 30 years from now. Whatever it is. Uh, that could happen in the future, but it's all in the spirit of faithfully implementing the Langelier Saturation Index to the best of our ability so that you know what water wants.
[00:23:43] We tie everything around this concept. This is water's natural equilibrium. This is what water craves. And when you understand that you are in line with physics, that is water balance.
[00:23:53] We don't own any of the information we've shared. We're just explaining it differently. Like Henry's law, we didn't come up with that. And heck, it's, you know, it's in these papers explaining the loss of CO2, but using an analogy like beer. We're just making it practical so you can use it. We can't create the physics, we can't do any of this stuff.
[00:24:11] What we are trying to do is put it in your hand so that it's usable. Because otherwise, you know, good luck going in the backyard every day and using reference charts and doing it all by hand. Nobody was doing it.
[00:24:22] Jarred, you were a pool guy. Did you ever do that in the backyard?
[00:24:25] Jarred Morgan: I honestly didn't even know what the wheel was when I saw it, so...no.
[00:24:30] Eric Knight: Most people didn't. And most of our customers tell us they only know about the LSI because of us. We have been talking about it so loudly. Of course it was out. I mean, it's in the CPO book and it's in the wheel and all that stuff. But most people didn't realize how important it was until we started telling people, this is what water's after.
[00:24:47] Well Anyway, thank you for your time. This is episode 134 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host Eric Knight with Orenda and HASA.
[00:24:54] Jarred, that hotel room is looking mighty fine. We appreciate you being here with us.
[00:24:59] Jarred Morgan: Well, don't get used to it. That's all I gotta say.
[00:25:02] Eric Knight: I know. Trade show season. We're doing our best. We do what we can when we can. Take care everybody.
[00:25:07] Jarred Morgan: Thank y'all.
[00:25:08]