Eric sits down with a good friend and founder of PersonalizedPool.com, a direct-to-homeowner service that builds upon the Orenda program and Orenda app, giving specific pool chemistry recommendations based on a questionnaire. Is this the future of chemical recommendations and convenience?
[00:00] - Intro
[01:12] - Keegan's Background
[03:45] - Using Engineering to Simplify Pool Care Advice
[05:43] - The Reality of Algaecides
[07:07] - Access to Information has Increased
[08:55] - Personalized Calculations for YOUR Pool
[10:56] - Common Homeowner Questions
[12:31] - Take the Quiz, Order your Kit, and Customize it as Needed
[14:22] - PersonalizedPool.com, and the My Pool Plan app
[21:43] - This is innovative and the first of its kind
184. Personalized Pool Chemistry (w/ Keegan Rivera)
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Eric Knight: 2026 swimming pool season is upon us. This is the first week of March in 2026. I'm your host, Eric Knight, and this is The Rule Your Pool podcast, episode 184. And today I've got a good friend of mine on here. You've probably never heard of him because he's never really spoken to the pool industry before. But behind the scenes, this guy grew up with a pool, he listened to me while I was developing this podcast amongst other things and relating it to his childhood experience of growing up with a pool. And now we've got something to share with you. So I would like to introduce Keegan Rivera, welcome to the show.
Keegan Rivera: Eric, thanks for having me.
Eric Knight: A little more enthusiasm, Keegan, the seven listeners really care about your enthusiasm. Try that again. Hi Keegan, welcome to the show.
Keegan Rivera: Hey Eric, thanks for having me!
Eric Knight: All right. That's much better. So, uh, in this episode we want to introduce what you've been working on. I'm really excited about it. I've had a part in the idea of this, but you've taken it to a completely different level and we're excited to talk about it. So, did you come prepared?
Keegan Rivera: Yeah, you want me to give a rundown on the app and, uh, kind of the, the system we put together.
Eric Knight: Well hold your horses. Yes, I do. But after the intro music. So let's get into it.
[00:01:12] Keegan's background
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Eric Knight: Now that the intro music is done, Keegan, thanks for your patience. Why are you on here? Talk to me.
Keegan Rivera: Sure. So what I've been working on the last, you know, probably like seven or eight months at this point, has been improving on the Orenda system. Right now, you've, you, you built up an incredible platform for Orenda, or at least in your previous role, right? And pros all over the country have been using it. There's quite a few homeowners have found it and have dug into the, the science of it and are loving it.
But there's still a lot of people out there that don't want to be a part-time chemist. But still want to have this professional level of water clarity. You know? So that kind of leaves a, a gap for me to solve. I'm kind of losing my train of thought here.
Eric Knight: that's okay. So let's go back. Let's talk about your background. You're an engineer. You got a job working in the automotive space. Start there.
Keegan Rivera: My background is automotive manufacturing. Particularly class eight off-road semi-trucks. So every one of these trucks is very customized, they're all different. They all have different performance requirements. They have different bodies on them, and so on. So, um, as my career has progressed, I've gotten better at automating some of these processes from a, a quote on paper to a real life built truck. Just flow seem more seamless.
Eric Knight: Give the listeners
Keegan Rivera: I'm, I'm fumbling a little bit.
Eric Knight: that's okay. Well, in terms of complexity, a semi-truck or a big tractor trailer, like what you were doing with your company. That's a lot more complex than a swimming pool. I mean, you're talking thousands of components, correct?
Keegan Rivera: Yeah, every truck has thousands of components. But, the complexity that we're talking about is in the, the configurator or this, this software that puts it together. There's 13,000 selectable options. So there's millions of ways you can build this vehicle.
Eric Knight: Hmm.
Keegan Rivera: Uh, and that also means there's hundreds of thousands of ways you can build the truck wrong. So that's, that's kind of why you need all this complex logic to kind of put guardrails on it and make that process easy for the sales guys and, and so on.
[00:03:45] Using Engineering to Simplify Pool Care Advice
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Keegan Rivera: So in this case, we're dealing with something much simpler. We have a well-defined set of chemistry laws that we're using. You need some inputs about your pool. What size of the pool, what's it made out of? What's the season length? Are you closing? Are you year round? And as you get deeper, we can dive into, you know, what kind of chlorine you're using? What type of acid? What type of pump? Type of filter? And it helps us dial that in even further.
So once we've got all this data on your pool, which doesn't take long, it's like a five minute quiz. We're able to give you precise dosing for not only the Orenda products, but since we're using the backbone of the Orenda Calculator, we're also getting dosing for all your other sanitizers, the acids and, and so on. Your balancing chemicals.
Eric Knight: Spoken like a true engineer. Now, Keegan, I think when I think of engineering, because my background prior to the pool business was HVAC, I dealt with a lot of engineers. And I, I'm not one myself as you know. But always starts with, you have to clearly define the problem. So go back a little bit and give some context for why you knew there was a gap here. There was a problem. And then the engineer that you are said, let's do something about this.
Keegan Rivera: Sure. Uh, yeah. So growing up my mom had a pool and, you know, she's a flight attendant, so she'd be gone for multiple days at a time. So between that and juggling my five siblings, the pool always took a back seat. So it ended up being me kind of maintaining this thing while I was in high school. So, you know, I was out there 16-year-old trying to test the water and keep it from going green before I had my friends over that weekend.
And you know, I can't say a lot of 16 year olds are equipped to be able to do that. But it's a very frustrating process, because go to the store and they test your water and say, Hey, you need to buy all these things. And you do that and then you run into the same problem over and over again. And you, you just kind of felt you're going in circles a little bit.
Eric Knight: Do you remember some of the things that you would be adding? And then some of the problems that you would be facing?
[00:05:43] The reality of Algaecides
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Keegan Rivera: We, we had a huge tree that kind of spanned halfway across this pool. So twice a season, you'd end up with all of like these pollen pods and then, uh, another part of the year you'd end up with all the leaves. So we had a ton of natural organics in this pool. And it, it led to green water almost, I don't know, once a month we'd have a really bad breakout.
So the
Eric Knight: Wow.
Keegan Rivera: algaecides, I would say were, were something we used quite a bit of.
Eric Knight: Okay. And now knowing what you know now of how they conflict, how they conflict with chlorine. And you're putting chlorine in to try to disinfect the pool, but it's actually also attacking the algaecide if it's nitrogen based
Keegan Rivera: Right.
Eric Knight: carbon based or something like that. And there's so many different variations. We find this a lot.
Keegan Rivera: And like, and like you touched on earlier, my background has been, how do we get to the root cause of this problem? How do we prevent it from ever happening again? Algaecide, you only use it when you have algae, which means you are reacting to, um, a symptom, not the root cause. Like, what's causing this algae to get so out of hand? You're never really addressing the food source of the algae, the environment that we're providing for this algae to thrive.
Eric Knight: Algae is a plant, right? Orenda never made an algaecide. And actually to correct you some algaecides claim to be preventative. But knowing the chemistry, yeah, they just stay in the water long. And they do a decent job of killing algae, just not as good as chlorine.
[00:07:07] Access to Information has Increased
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Eric Knight: In my years at Orenda, one of the things that you picked up on was the frustration from so many pros and even more homeowners. You said some homeowners listen to this and some homeowners use the Orenda Calculator. You know, we estimate in the country there's only about 70 to 75,000 pros, but there's over 10 million backyard pools. And according to most of the data, over 60% of those pools are DIY homeowners. Which means they don't have access to some of these tools that the pros have. Like they, they, once they find this podcast and they find the app, that's great, but most people don't have access to that. So they're stuck in this loop of frustration and going back to the store.
And it's not to knock on the stores. It's, you know, sometimes you're doing the best you can. But I think you recognized a problem here that people don't have time to learn the chemistry in an advanced level. So how can we democratize that? How can we automate that based on a questionnaire instead of people calling in? I mean, I took these calls for years, as you know. Uh, they would just call in, they kept asking the same questions every single week. And I tried to address it with the help center. But if you hadn't found us, you wouldn't know where those answers were. Whereas this is something a little bit different. You're approaching it from sort of a bottom up. And it's something that we never did at Orenda. I'm certainly not doing it with Watershape, my job here is to help and educate the swimming pool pros. My job is to make sure that the pros can have a meaningful career and achieve mastery in what they do.
This is kind of different. I mean, it's still purifying water, but it's helping homeowners who don't have access to that, or don't want access to that, simplify what they're doing so that they can have safe and clear water as well. Did I summarize that decently well?
Keegan Rivera: I think you said it way better than I could have.
Eric Knight: I've been doing this a little longer than you.
Keegan Rivera: But I, I think you,
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:55] Personalized Calculations for YOUR pool
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Keegan Rivera: I think you, you touched on something interesting that we didn't really dive into yet. The Orenda app is so good for pool pros because they knew what their targets were supposed to be for each pool. You know, they, they see 10 pools a day. They can set those targets pretty easily, but a homeowner going in there? They have to learn a good bit of knowledge just to kind of meet that baseline of using the app.
So My Pool Plan is built on that same logic, but we set those targets for you based on all the information we just learned about your pool. So it should be way easier. And then once you have those targets, you have your water sample and you hit calculate, you now go to a next step that gives you each one of those steps in order with a little bit more of a description on how to do that dose, not just here's your value of your quantity of acid or, you know, whatever you're needing to add. So it's a little more intuitive. It's a little more handholding, but it's exactly what I think most homeowners are going to need.
Eric Knight: Well, it doesn't really even feel like handholding, because I think this is more one directional of like, let's just take the guesswork out of it. I mean, you built this. So your vision for this was fill out a questionnaire, automate the instructions based on all of the program that I helped build when I was with Orenda. And still believe in, by the way.
If we can take that information, you can build an actual plan and a roadmap. I'm fascinated by it. I love this. It, it kind of builds on top of what we created. And I'm really proud of what we created. But I look at you and I look at these service softwares that are out there that have just taken what we created at Orenda to another level. That's exactly what you're doing. You're building on the same platform just like the other apps.
And we were constantly updating and we were constantly thinking, how can we make this better for the users? And that was not just pool pros. I want to purify as much water as possible. So yes, we had thousands of homeowners. Thousands of homeowners that subscribed to this podcast, by the way. Let alone the ones that use the app. And so had a very common question that would reach out. And you picked up on this because they kept asking a few questions.
[00:10:56] Common Homeowner Questions
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Eric Knight: Number one, what should I be aiming for? This app is great, except I don't know what I'm supposed to be aiming my alkalinity to be. And they didn't understand the pH ceiling concept, where should my calcium be? And the first question there was always like, well, where do you live? You know, what's your temperature? like? The calcium in Michigan's going to be different than Miami. If it's a salt water pool, how much CYA should you have?
These were the questions that we got all the time. But furthermore, was like the, the conceptual theory of it. The practical was, okay, I want your products. Where do I get them? How do I buy them? They're not in the retail store.
I can buy them on Amazon, but then I don't know what to buy. I don't know how much to buy. I don't know how to dose it. I don't know how much to predict for my season because there was just never that information around. And you identified that. That was a problem. And to an engineer like yourself, you said, well, we can just automate that. Let's just build a quiz. So tell us about what this quiz asks for and what, you know, don't tell me the, the proprietary stuff you've developed, but basically what does that quiz or that questionnaire do to the software? How is this different from Orenda as people know it?
Keegan Rivera: Yeah, and it, it's not that complicated either. The quiz takes your pool size and a couple factors that kind of determine how much of the Orenda products you're going to need throughout the season, and combine that with your season, so the number of weeks that you're open. And then it just kind of extrapolates those weekly doses, adds in your closing and your purge dose for the beginning of the season. And it comes up with a total of product that we suggest that you need.
[00:12:31] Take the Quiz, Order your Kit, and Customize it as needed
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Keegan Rivera: So when you first take that quiz, it's going to say, Hey, here's the kit that we put together for you. This is what we recommend. You have the ability to go and adjust that, to, to kind of maybe match what you've been doing. Um, but you know, this math is all based on what Orenda recommends. So, um, and then the other cool part is that we can set this up as a subscription as well. So you can build this kit, and we'll deliver it to you the same time every year at the beginning of your season. And you don't have to worry about going on Amazon and Picking out the individual bottles and ordering them, or doing it four times a season as you need them. We'll kind of dial it in and we'll, we'll take your feedback as well, you know, maybe you had too many bottles of this, or not enough of this, and we can adjust that for next season. And then that kind of eliminates that entire task for you.
Then you're really just worrying about your commodities. Your chlorine and your acids and your pH adjusters. And the, the reason we don't ship those is because, one, they're hazmat. So it's expensive to ship them. It's a little more dangerous, and it's better for you to purchase those locally. That way they're as fresh as possible and you're probably going to save money doing that anyway, versus us, you know, trying to ship it across the country.
Eric Knight: Yeah, it doesn't make sense. The whole idea behind this is to save people money. When you were explaining the idea to me
Keegan Rivera: Yeah.
Eric Knight: I was like, man, I wish we did that. But you know, then again, when we were integrating with the routing softwares, you know, this is before this of course. Um, they were explaining what they wanted to do with the Orenda Calculator, and I loved it. And that's why we worked with every single one of them. So it's building, it's kind of like Orenda is the Febreeze of different cleaning products. I mean, I have Febreeze in my trash bags to make sure that the scent goes away, right? So now Orenda's Calculator, that is the known standard now for LSI to the pros and to the homeowners is the basis of this as well.
[00:14:22] PersonalizedPool.com and the My Pool Plan app
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Eric Knight: So you're taking friction out of the transaction. Because instead of people having to wonder where to aim and how much they're going to need to do it, at least of the Orenda products, this is about creating something that solves a bigger addressable problem. Which is basically automating the chemistry that's super personalized to that pool based on its size, its surface type, its location, its temperature extremes, its sanitizer type, filter type if you want to get that granular. And it can be really, really precise. That's the real problem that you're tackling. The added benefit of the subscription just makes it easier for you to be able to execute on that plan. Do I have that correct?
Keegan Rivera: That's exactly it. Yep.
Eric Knight: Nice because that was another question, just where do I get it? You know, how much do I need? How do I dose it? All that stuff. This will all be explained in it. And version one of the app, uh, I've played around with it. It looks very similar to Orenda, because it's built on Orenda. But what you'll see on the right side for the listeners who are familiar with Orenda, What you'll see on the right side is after you take that questionnaire, A, your pool volume is already populated, but B the right side is filled out based on your temperature. So it'll already have a recommended, 'cause it knows what your sanitizer is, it knows what your pool surface type is, it knows your volume, it knows your current temperature when you put it in. You have to put that part in.
Then it just adjusts it and it tells you on the right side exactly where to aim. And all you have to do is push calculate. And then instead of showing you kind of a, a list of everything, like Orenda did, it shows you step-by-step with a checkbox that says, you know, step one, adjust your alkalinity. Do this. And then you push this little arrow and it, and it opens up and it tells you, you know, dilute your acid, measure it this way, pour it around the perimeter, here's a link to learn more. You push the checkbox, you go to the next thing.
And I love that. I really wish that we thought of that. And I want to be very clear to the listeners. My focus is serving the pros. But I serve everybody who listens to this podcast, and that includes homeowners as well. Keegan has identified a difficulty that homeowners have. And most of these homeowners, they don't have a pro. Or they don't have access to a pro. Or some people, they just genuinely like taking care of their pool. And I remember at Orenda, we had so many of them. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds that would call in and they would ask these questions. And so I think this is going to automate a lot of that, and hopefully it's a really good user experience for them.
Keegan Rivera: Yeah, that's kind of the goal. I mean, we're not, we're not making any new products. We don't have this magical new system we're trying to sell. We're just building on what already works and making it easier to, to use. And enabling people to use these tools a little easier.
Eric Knight: a really important thing. It's not a silver bullet. It's not a single bottle. It's not a single scoop or it's not something magic. It's something that's proven. It's a system. The problem is the system as we built it at Orenda, it's... It's not something that's easily learned at first. It's easy to do, but you have to have some foundational knowledge to understand why you're doing it. This takes that guesswork out of it, and it just tells you, here's where you aim,
Keegan Rivera: exactly.
Eric Knight: And if you want more explanation, you can read about it, but just follow the system. It's based on your pool, not your neighbors, not somebody across the country. And it. I it's super precise. I've played around with what you built and it's incredible. I really wish that we had done that when I was at Orenda. But awesome, man. And, um, if you,
Keegan Rivera: Yeah, we're, we're pretty excited about it.
Eric Knight: yeah. How can people learn about it? This is your actually first time starting a business. So this is a little startup for you.
Keegan Rivera: It is.
Eric Knight: That's exciting. So how's that been? Other than stressful?
Keegan Rivera: Yeah, it's cool. I've been forced to do a lot of things that I have never done or am bad at. I've never built a website before. I'm working with developers to build the app, but I'm still having to learn, like, you know, how do these features work with a database and so on. Um. I've been using AI to code part of the website for, you know, the quiz and the, the kit generation for that whole algorithm. So that's been a lot of fun.
The marketing part is hard. I'm just not naturally a, uh, I guess a salesman or, um, comfortable in front of a camera. So it's a new challenge for me that I'm embracing, um. But yeah, so if, if people want to get involved or try it out, our website's up and live. We are selling kits now at Personalizedpool.com.
You'll be able to go in and take a quick quiz, and you'll see the kit that we, you know, kind of build out for you. You can adjust it if you need to. And then the app is also, I think by the end of this week we should be live. Uh, there is a version on the app store, but it, it doesn't have any of the extra features that we're talking about. We're making a couple improvements, uh, fixing a couple bugs and it'll be ready to rip. Um,
Eric Knight: You're always going to be making improvements. There's always things that are not quite right and you have to keep going back and tweak. So don't stress too much about that. The key thing is to push publish. Get something out there. I've played around with it. It's incredible. It's very familiar if you're used to Orenda, but now by having that direction where it's telling you exactly where to aim, and then you push calculate, and it tells you in order exactly what to do, and exactly how to do it too. I mean, it's, it's an amazing adaptation and expansion on the Orenda Calculator.
So that app is called,
Keegan Rivera: right. The, the business is Personalized Pool, and then the app itself is My Pool Plan. That's kind of the, the package of the, the, the kit subscription plus the app. But the app is the app is free for anyone that fills out the quiz.
Eric Knight: Okay. Right on. Well, Keegan Rivera, I'm excited to see what this does for the summertime. I hope it goes well. I hope it helps serve a lot of these listeners on here who don't have access to it. And in terms of the pricing, I, and I know I filled it out as if I still had my pool, which I don't. And the price tag looked big at first until I did some math and realized this is actually basically Amazon pricing, except you're front loading it because you're getting your entire season up front. So it's all shipped to your door, so you don't have to keep going back to the store. Do I have that right?
Keegan Rivera: That's exactly it. Yeah. There's, I mean, if you've never bought all in bulk at the beginning of the season, there's probably going to be a little sticker shock. But at that result page, we also give you a breakdown of your dosing so you can see exactly how we're calculating that and kind of our, our reasoning there. You can see, you know, I'm not actually using that much every time or every week, and you can kind of play with it. That's by the label. That's what we're, we're, uh. We're estimating that you need for the full season.
Eric Knight: Your value difference is the logic. It's the actual instructions. It's that. Getting the Orenda, the convenience is there for sure, but you're not reinventing the wheel, you're just delivering it a lot more efficiently. So
Keegan Rivera: Exactly, and, and we're not marking it up. These are the, these are roughly the same prices as Amazon. It's tough to compete with their shipping discounts. But, um, we're within, you know, a dollar or two, I believe, on every product. So it's not a huge jump, uh, in any direction.
Eric Knight: Right. Well, homeowners listening to this and, uh, anybody else who is looking to have these instructions and have Orenda water, of course I'm not with Orenda anymore, but if you want this, you want to support a small business and see what it can do. Based on what I've seen, Keegan, you're going to do some great things. I don't know what's next, but, um, this
Keegan Rivera: I appreciate you gassing me up.
[00:21:43] This is innovative and the first of its kind
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Eric Knight: Yeah. No, I know. I'm serious. Like it's, it's something that would, nobody's doing this. We'll put it this way. At least from what I've seen, this is so much different than a retail store printout. It is so much different than anything Orenda did. And it's different than what the pros get in these service softwares, which is great for what they're doing.
But again, they're treating, like you said, 40, 50 pools a week. 10 a day, sometimes, maybe more. That's not what this is for. This is for one person with one pool. To know exactly what their pool needs. That's cool. I haven't seen anything like this. So I hope it works really well. And I mean, playing around with it, it sure seems to. So that's personalizedpool.com, uh, the, uh, the app is My Pool Plan. You'll recognize it. Sure looks like Orenda 'cause it is built on there, but it's a licensed version of it. And yeah, if there's any questions, how can people reach you?
Keegan Rivera: keegan@personalizedpool.com, or I believe help@personalizedpool.com is kind of our, our help desk.
Eric Knight: Awesome. Everybody, thank you so much for being back at this show and let your friends know that this show is back.
Keegan, thank you so much for being here. This has been episode 184. If you have any questions, ruleyourpool@gmail.com is how you reach me. keegan@personalizedpool.com is how you reach Keegan. Thanks for being on the show.
Keegan Rivera: Thank you. See you guys
Eric Knight: Yep.