Jarred and Eric talk about maximizing chemical efficiency, using the fewest chemicals possible, and having the purest, cleanest water possible with the least in it.
00:00 - Intro
02:18 - Housekeeping: WU class 3611 at the Int'l Show, and swimacrossamerica.org/goto/orenda.
04:55 - The Orenda Philosophy
07:38 - Algaecides (except chlorine) leave behind long-term byproducts that will eventually conflict with chlorine
11:33 - Pools per gallon, starting with Orenda products
11:56 - CV-600/700 pools per gallon
15:45 - PR-10,000 pools per gallon
18:27 - CE-Clarifier pools per gallon
21:05 - SC-1000 pools per gallon
22:06 - Acid pools per gallon
24:47 - Changes to acid dosing in the 3.0 Orenda Calculator
26:04 - Summary. Thanks for listening!
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78. Pools per Gallon | Chemical Efficiency
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[00:00:00] Jarred Morgan: Hey everyone, this is Jarred with episode 78 of Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm here with my cohost Eric... You just did such a great job on the last episode. I feel like I just needed to take over on this one and give you a little bit of a break.
[00:00:16] Eric Knight: Thanks.
[00:00:16] Jarred Morgan: So we had our meetings recently and I'm going to give some credit to Ryan Rickaby. He is our regional manager, one of them, and he was coming up with the idea of how can we clarify our message to people and make it easy to understand. And he mentioned miles per gallon.
[00:00:37] Eric Knight: Let's give credit to Joe Sweazy as well.
[00:00:39] Jarred Morgan: Okay. All right.
[00:00:40] Eric Knight: It was the two of them that came up and led to this.
[00:00:43] Jarred Morgan: Well, they were talking about miles per gallon in gasoline because it's expensive right now. Gas is expensive. And we took that correlation. You said, you know, what else is kind of expensive right now is chlorine. And all of a sudden, I think, I don't know if it was Eric or maybe Ryan came up with that. I'm not sure.
[00:00:59] Eric Knight: Oh it was, it was definitely me. It don't okay. Yeah. I know what you're trying to do.
[00:01:02] Jarred Morgan: Ryan kickstarted the idea of...
[00:01:04] Eric Knight: yes,
[00:01:04] Jarred Morgan: what about pools per gallon? And that's what we are going to talk about today. We are going to talk about chemical efficiency and understanding what are you putting into your pools? How are you buying it? And how many pools are you treating per gallon of our chemicals, bleach, whatever chemical you're buying. How far are you making this stretch?
[00:01:27] Eric Knight: Not bad, Jarred. It only took you 78 episodes, but I think you're starting to get the hang of this.
[00:01:31] Jarred Morgan: Well, I also wanted to bring up the fact that when we had our sales meeting, we had a little competition, everyone.
[00:01:37] Eric Knight: Oh, did we now?
[00:01:38] Jarred Morgan: And too bad. We're not recording it, but I have a bronze little race car in front of me right now.
[00:01:43] Eric Knight: Yeah. Too bad mine's silver. Boom.
[00:01:46] Jarred Morgan: That just means, unfortunately, Eric and I were first and second losers of this thing because above all my brother-in-law Grant came in first place.
[00:01:57] Eric Knight: Yeah. We could talk about that. We could do a whole episode on what that go-karting experience was, but yes, let's get into this. This is episode 78 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. Let's go.
Housekeeping (WU C3611 and Swim Across America)
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[00:02:18] Eric Knight: As we've done in the last two episodes, just a little bit of housekeeping. We are teaching a Watershapes University class at the international pool and spa show in Las Vegas on November 12th and 13th. This is for those of you in the trade that were planning on being at the international show, or maybe you weren't planning on being in it. And now you want to go because you want to take this essential plaster workshop.
[00:02:52] To be honest with you, I'm just really honored that we're even included in this. Watershapes University is kind of cutting edge leaders in education, and it's a privilege to be able to teach with them. We're going to teach water chemistry, startup practices, um, water and cement interaction, things like that.
[00:03:07] And Jon Temple from Tempool, one of the world's best plaster applicators is going to be teaching plaster application and exposure. And then Bill Drakeley, arguably the most knowledgeable authority on concrete is going to be talking about concrete application. So it's going to be this whole interaction of those three layers, long before the water gets put into the pool.
[00:03:28] And I just have a small role in it, but it's a real privilege to be a part of that. And that class number is C3611. There are only 60 seats available. You need to sign up online, visit the international pool spa show website, and you can do that ahead of time.
[00:03:44] And the other thing that we've been mentioning in the last two episodes, and we'll continue to mention until it happens. We'll probably do an episode to debrief after it happens, is swim across America. We are participating. We are honoring our fallen employee, Kelly. We lost her to cancer this year in just a few weeks. I mean, it was so shockingly fast. We found out the diagnosis and she was gone within two months. It was a horrible way to start the year. And I think most people listening have lost either a loved one to cancer, or know somebody battling it, or know somebody who has lost somebody to cancer.
[00:04:19] We participate in this so you can support our team. Um, Miguel and I are going to be swimming for sure. And if we raise enough money, we're going to convince Jarred to swim as well. And Jarred is not a swimmer. So that should be pretty hilarious. The website, if you would like to make a tax deductible donation is swimacrossamerica.org/goto/orenda.
[00:04:43] We hope to see you as part of our team, and we look forward to swimming on Kelly's behalf. And you can have it in whoever your loved one's name is as well. We'll be happy to put their name on us as we swim across that lake.
The Orenda Philosophy
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[00:04:55] Eric Knight: All right, Jarred, we have three tenets of the Orenda Philosophy. And when we put it into practice, there's four pillars that we talk about, but the three tenets of our philosophy, what are they?
[00:05:05] Jarred Morgan: Proactive pool care?
[00:05:07] Eric Knight: Yep. That's one.
[00:05:08] Jarred Morgan: No long term chemical byproducts.
[00:05:10] Eric Knight: Yep.
[00:05:10] Jarred Morgan: And hmm...
[00:05:14] Eric Knight: Show notes. Jarred. Show notes.
[00:05:16] Jarred Morgan: You make show notes?!
[00:05:18] Eric Knight: You are the worst cohost ever.
[00:05:19] Jarred Morgan: Oh, sorry. I was going to say no chemical conflicts, but clearly I see it now in the show notes, but that's just a given.
[00:05:28] Eric Knight: This is, so guys, we do this in one take. I don't know, like the audience probably thinks this is scripted. It actually is not. There's just bullet points on a screen. And Jarred doesn't even read the bullet points. But we're going to, we're going to push through. We're going to push through.
[00:05:40] Yes. Proactive pool care. No chemical conflicts and no long term byproducts left behind. Now, if we think about everything that we teach at Orenda, it kind of comes back to that same philosophy. We don't want to be swimming in a chemical cocktail. We want the purest water possible with the least in it.
[00:05:58] Why would you want to swim in a very high concentration of chemicals when you could have the purest water possible by taking things out of it? That's really where we come down on this. And so if we're going to be maximizing our chemical efficiency, it's really about maximizing what that chemical can do and using as little of it as possible to still get the job done.
[00:06:19] Would you agree with that?
[00:06:19] Jarred Morgan: I would agree with that. And playing on its strengths and not adding more things to its weakness.
[00:06:25] Eric Knight: That's exactly right. So that involves practices, not just chemicals. It means dosing correctly. Measuring that dose. And in the case of chemicals like acid, diluting it before you pour it in the pool. Or if it's dry chemicals, pre dissolving it, doing things the right way, not just chucking things into the pool.
1. Proactive pool care
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[00:06:44] Eric Knight: So let's break those three tenets down. You got proactive pool care. I think that's self explanatory. Don't react to everything. If you go back to episode 55, decide to remove factors from the equation.
[00:06:56] Jarred Morgan: And proactively understand what you're putting into these pools and what their reactions are so that you could manage accordingly. So be proactive in your education, on the things you're using.
2. No chemical conflicts
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[00:07:08] Eric Knight: Well, we're about to get into that because the second tenant is no chemical conflicts. Exactly what Jarred was just alluding to. For instance, sequestering agents will conflict with phosphate remover...
[00:07:19] Jarred Morgan: If they're phosphate based, which, there's a lot of those. Majority of them are, everyone.
[00:07:23] Eric Knight: Not all, but most of them are. Ours is not. SC-1000 is not. Nothing in our line conflicts with something else in our line. That's probably why we have such a small line. We only have what, five main products? Seven total? But those are spa products. We don't have chemical conflicts.
[00:07:38] How about algaecides? Literally every algaecide that's not named chlorine is going to leave something behind that is going to conflict with something else. Usually it's going to conflict with chlorine after the fact. Copper algaecide; ammonia based algaecide; polyquat algaecide; sodium bromide. All of these leave behind long-term byproducts, which brings us to our third point.
3. No long-term byproducts
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[00:08:00] Eric Knight: No long term byproducts left behind.
[00:08:03] Well, that could mean something that conflicts with chlorine or is just toxic in general with long term exposure issues maybe. We're talking things like metals. Yeah, at a low level, they're fine. But over time, these things accumulate. How about bromates? Using sodium bromide a lot. Number one, it's going to conflict with chlorine and eventually it will convert your chlorine pool into a bromine pool, whether you like it or not.
[00:08:25] Jarred Morgan: I had this actually sent to me the other day by maybe a listener. I mean, we're probably up to 35 now, maybe 36.
[00:08:32] Eric Knight: Yeah, at least.
[00:08:34] Jarred Morgan: He put a salt cell on his system and he had a bromine pool. He was using bromine before and he put the salt system on and would not hold chlorine. Which I'm using this as an example, because I don't remember who it was, but you're not alone. Whoever I'm referencing here.
[00:08:52] And he eventually had to drain his pool and refill it because no matter what he did, it would not hold chlorine whatsoever. And that is because you can make a chlorine pool a bromine pool, but you cannot make a bromine pool a chlorine pool. That's a one way street.
[00:09:06] Eric Knight: Yeah. You gotta drain it completely. It's not even just diluting. You have to drain it completely pretty much.
[00:09:11] Jarred Morgan: Which he did.
[00:09:12] Eric Knight: Yeah. He had to. That's something that's rarely ever discussed. I mean, sodium bromide is a really powerful algaecide, but it's still not as strong as chlorine. But the consequences of using it, I mean, especially outdoors.
[00:09:22] Jarred Morgan: Yeah.
[00:09:22] Eric Knight: Direct sunlight can convert this into bromates. And look it up. Bromates are not something you want in your pool.
[00:09:27] Jarred Morgan: They aren't. And people just justify it in my opinion, because you're putting a relatively small amount. But people need to understand, which is why we bring it up, these things build up over time. They accumulate in your water and then you are going to have to manage these things. Eventually.
[00:09:40] Eric Knight: Absolutely. Now it's not just that. It's not just algaecides. We're going to pick on algaecides a lot because they are the main culprit of this episode. But nitrogen compounds that come from ammonia algaecides can also come from other factors like deck cleaners.
[00:09:54] We discussed in the last episode. Decaying organics can have nitrogen compounds in them. Fertilizers. People peeing in the pool. But nitrogen compounds will combine with chlorine. And you're going to have that, that you have to deal with after the fact.
[00:10:08] Um, how about metals other than just copper algaecides, right? You have mineral systems. You've got tap water, well water. Uh, we already talked about bromates. Phosphates that come from sequestering agents.
[00:10:20] All these things interfere with your goal of being efficient. And that's what this episode is about. You're going to have to deal with all the baggage that comes from using these products. And normally I would say, well, I'm not here to bash the product. Yeah, forget that. We're bashing some of these products today, not by name, but by chemical, be of the consequences that they leave behind.
[00:10:40] Jarred Morgan: That's because number one, they cost you money at the end of the day. They do.
[00:10:42] Eric Knight: A hundred percent.
[00:10:44] Jarred Morgan: And not just by having to buy them at your local pool store or at your distributor, if you do that. But they also cost you money in what you have to do after the fact. The ultimate goal here is make your water more efficient and treat it proactively so that you can get the most pools treated per gallon of whatever it is you're using. Or quantity of whatever you're using.
[00:11:07] Eric Knight: Right, of any chemical. Let's go back to episode 76. 2 episodes ago. We were talking about disappearing chlorine. Where did that chlorine go? A lot of that chlorine is going to get used up on these byproducts that I'm talking about. It's going to get used up in chemical conflicts. It's going to get used up because you weren't proactive. So sticking to our philosophy is not just a catchy way of thinking. It's a money saving way of thinking.
[00:11:33] Because you're getting ahead of the problems and not letting them start. So let's talk about pools per gallon. We're going to start with our products. Not that we like talking about our products, but we know our products better than most. So we figured we'd just give you a rough idea of what this looks like.
[00:11:48] Have you ever like taken time to sit down and actually measure out the appropriate dosing of each of the chemicals you use? We have.
CV-600/CV-700 enzymes
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[00:11:56] Eric Knight: So let's take CV-600 or CV-700 enzymes for example. If you're using them correctly, after the purge dose, an average 20,000 gallon backyard pool is going to use about 4-10 ounces of enzymes a week. Let's just round up, let's be conservative, let's say eight ounces per week. That's 16 pools per gallon. Now I'm, I'm speaking to the service trade here for a second.
[00:12:20] If you can treat 16 pools, average 20,000 each piece, 16 pools a gallon, you can start to forecast how much enzyme you're going to use for a season. Now, if you're a homeowner, let's say you're in the Northeast or the Midwest. You have a seasonal pool. 16 weeks of enzymes right there. Per gallon.
[00:12:40] Jarred Morgan: Their pools are a little bigger in these areas, which is really weird for people to understand. Like I'm in Texas, you're in Charlotte. Your pools are 20,000 gallons, mine are roughly 20,000 gallons on average. In the Northeast, they're like 30,000 on average. They're big, man.
[00:12:55] Eric Knight: Well, that's fine. Uh, let's say they're 30. Yeah, you can do the math basically. So if, if you're. Yeah. If you're using, uh, an average of four ounces per 10,000 gallons, just do the math. Maybe it's 12 ounces a week, in which case, you know, you're at 10 weeks as a homeowner. 10 and a half weeks, whatever it is.
[00:13:13] The whole idea is you don't want to be using a lot of the chemicals. Not ours, not acid, not chlorine. You want as minimal as possible because we want the purest water that we can have.
[00:13:24] Jarred Morgan: And buying right. If you know, you're going to use X amount of gallons or X amount of ounces, why would you buy eight ounces at a time? Sometimes it makes sense because you don't have a lot of water. You don't have a lot to treat or so forth. But when you know you're going to use it, plan accordingly.
[00:13:40] Eric Knight: A lot of retailers will stock smaller quantities of especially the phosphate remover, because you're not using a lot at a given time. But if you know you're going to use it, you know there's phosphates in your tap, and you know your pool. And for lack of a better sentence, you are trying to Rule Your Pool, prepare for it.
[00:13:58] You can forecast what that pool is going to need. So an average 20,000 gallon pool, maybe not in the Northeast, but an average 20,000 gallon pool is going to get about 16 weeks out of a gallon after the purge. That does not include the purge. Okay. But on the route, think about that kind of chemical efficiency.
[00:14:16] Now, I don't know other enzymes, I haven't compared it to other enzymes. Just be aware that you can go a long way with a gallon, but you need to measure it. You need to apply it correctly.
[00:14:24] Jarred Morgan: To achieve this efficiency in savings, if you want to look at it that way, and get the most pools per gallon, everyone has to measure their chemical usage. Or else you have no idea.
[00:14:37] Eric Knight: You're going to waste product and use more of it than you need. And you're probably going to have great water. Don't get me wrong. But you could've had great water for a lot less money.
[00:14:46] Jarred Morgan: And on top of that, people that just assume they know how much goes into treat, let's say you're lowering the pH from 7.8 to 7.5. You don't really know until you punch all the numbers into the calculator, because it will tell you exactly what you need. And that number varies depending on your alkalinity and a bunch of other factors. So you need to know. Is the bottom line. To achieve max efficiency of max pools per gallon, you can't shortcut it.
[00:15:15] Eric Knight: We're in a good flow here and I have to take a step back and just acknowledge once again, Jarred is not reading the show notes. Because if he were, he would know that that's coming up next. I caught you red-handed dude. I know you're not looking at the show notes.
[00:15:26] Jarred Morgan: We still have show notes?
[00:15:27] Eric Knight: You, you, you closed the window, didn't you? Oh, I love you so much. You've gone from worst. Co-host ever to best co-host in just one smirk. That's great. If you all were watching us, he just gave me this look of, did I do that?
[00:15:41] Jarred Morgan: We're not recording this one. So this is all good.
[00:15:43] Eric Knight: I know. No, it's perfect. It's perfect.
PR-10,000 phosphate remover
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[00:15:45] Eric Knight: Okay. Let's move on to PR 10,000 phosphate remover. An average 20,000 gallon pool is going to use about 16 ounces per season. So we advise typically open with eight ounces, close with eight ounces. But some people will do it weekly. Maybe that's one ounce a week, or maybe two ounces a week, depending on what you need.
[00:16:05] So if it's one ounce a week, think about that for a second. One ounce per week is a 16 week season in the Northeast, maybe more, right. You're just going to be using a pint for the year. But if you use two it's a quart for the year.
[00:16:18] Jarred Morgan: I would still recommend eight ounces up front, eight ounce of closing and an ounce in between.
[00:16:22] Eric Knight: Yeah. You could justify a quart but you're not using a ton of product is the point. You're not, no, you're not spending hundreds of dollars on phosphate removal each season. No, you shouldn't be anyway. Now, there are some exceptions to this.
[00:16:33] Um, for instance, if the phosphates are really, really high out of your tap, maybe you're going to use a little more. The big one is wildfire areas. So the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, if there's soot and stuff getting in, your phosphates are going to be like absolutely sky high. You're going to need a lot more phosphate remover for those. But those are exceptions.
[00:16:52] Jarred Morgan: For the homeowners listening. If your service guy is treating phosphates, and let's say he does use a quart or two quarts to get these high levels down, this will load up your filter. Which will require a backwash or cleaning of that filter, which is additional labor. That's not included in this calculation of cost, just FYI.
[00:17:10] Eric Knight: Right. I'm speaking to the service pros now, if you're using say one ounce a week, maybe two ounces a week, if you're doing one ounce, that's 128 pools per gallon. If you're doing two ounces, it's still 64 pools per gallon. Now most pool professionals are going to be somewhere around that 50 to 60 pools a week.
[00:17:30] Jarred Morgan: Depending where you're located and how close they are.
[00:17:32] Eric Knight: Okay. But that being said, it could still be less than a gallon for your entire weekly route, if you maintain using it every day.
[00:17:40] Jarred Morgan: Sure.
[00:17:41] Eric Knight: In small amounts. So these are just rough approximate numbers based on a 20,000 gallon pool. And the reason I'm bringing that up is some people say, oh, your stuff is just so expensive.
[00:17:50] Well, you're not looking at the dosing. You're looking at the size of the bottle. Understand that these chemicals we make are concentrated. And you're probably not measuring them or you're overdosing them. And therefore it seems a lot more expensive. These should not be compared to competitor products or other practices that you may be used to doing.
[00:18:06] You may be stunned to see what two ounces of PR 10,000 does in a 20,000 gallon pool. Go ahead, Jarred.
[00:18:13] Jarred Morgan: Well, I was going to talk about our next product, Eric. But I'm going to wait for my show notes to get to this next product. So I'm just going to keep my mouth closed for now.
[00:18:21] Eric Knight: No, you, you already derailed me. Might as well go on what's what's the next product, Mr. Show notes?
CE-Clarifier
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[00:18:27] Jarred Morgan: Well, I was going to say, you might be surprised at our CE-Clarifier. It's not as well known, but you might be surprised with how well it works and check out the pricing on it. Compare it to what you're using right now. It's not something we really push, but I guess we should, shouldn't we?
[00:18:45] Eric Knight: Well, this podcast is not to push product.
[00:18:47] Jarred Morgan: No, I'm not saying push it here. I'm talking about just in general. We should probably make more of an effort to let everyone know we have a clarifier. Hey everybody, we have a clarifier.
[00:18:57] Eric Knight: Yeah. Most people don't know we have one. And it does have CV-600 enzymes in it. And it's a really strong clarifier. That said, it's basically the same price as every other clarifier out there. And you use less of it.
[00:19:07] Jarred Morgan: It's a great maintenance product to use to help manage these non-living organics and oils. And these things that the residential pools specifically battle. You know, on a week to week basis, especially in the summer. Like we talked about the last episode. Party at the house, we got usage, sunscreen, and these things that are hard to manage. Hey, let's make efficiency where it needs to be.
[00:19:29] Eric Knight: Yeah. During my slog of a series on our products, episode 67 was CE-Clarifier. We talked about chitosan and chitin and how it works. But that, that dose is one, maybe two ounces per 10,000 gallons a week, depending on how you want to use it. That's a little less than most clarifiers take, especially polymer clarifiers.
[00:19:50] Some will be two, some will be three, some will be four ounces per 10,000 gallons a week. We're one or two. So right there, you got a little bit more there as well. And once again, uh, two ounces a week is 64 pools per gallon. And one ounce a week is 128 pools per gallon. So if you're a homeowner, that's 128 weeks.
[00:20:08] That's two years per gallon. If you're just doing one ounce of clarifier a week. Now we do strongly suggest starting with a purge at the beginning of your season, because you want to re-up the enzyme residual. But that being said, it lasts you a long time. We're not talking about a ton of product.
[00:20:22] Jarred Morgan: Well, and I was going to also put in there that we have these dosages and these recommendations. Right. But these things require tailoring it for your specific pool. Every pool is different. Every bather load is different. Vegetation around a pool is different. So just because we put on there, two ounces or three ounces does not mean that's it. No, sometimes you could need five or six ounces depending on your specific pool.
[00:20:48] So if you add chemicals, not just ours, honestly, this is any chemical, you need to adjust accordingly based on your situation.
[00:20:56] Eric Knight: Right. And these are based on 10,000 gallons or 20,000 gallon size pools. Jarred is absolutely correct. This is just a general concept conversation.
SC-1000
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[00:21:05] Eric Knight: Uh, the last one's SC-1000. SC-1000 after the purge, which is a quart for 10,000 gallons, just like enzyme, that's only three ounces per 10,000 gallons a week. For a 20,000 gallon pool, that's six ounces a week, half a beer, basically. Call it 20 to 21 pools per gallon. Pretty good efficiency.
[00:21:23] If you're a homeowner and you get a gallon of SC-1000, you're getting through 21 weeks. Not bad.
[00:21:29] Jarred Morgan: Well, the knock on that just to be very apparent or, or not apparent. Very...What's the word I'm looking for? Well, it's not a...
[00:21:37] Eric Knight: transparent?
[00:21:38] Jarred Morgan: Transparent! There we go. It'd be very transparent.
[00:21:40] Yes.
[00:21:41] Eric Knight: Teamwork makes the dream work, Jarred.
[00:21:42] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. When you add SC-1000, it depletes my chlorine level. Well, yes it does. But we're telling you that right now. And we've told you that pretty much, every time we've talked about SC-1000,
[00:21:52] Eric Knight: The purge dose does. The weekly dose doesn't.
[00:21:55] Jarred Morgan: Yes. Very minimal impact on the chlorine. Just understand that this is part of planning accordingly, and knowing what you're doing and what you're adding and what the impact it's going to have on your body of water, so that you can plan accordingly. That's it.
Acid
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[00:22:06] Eric Knight: Yeah. Now I'm going to turn it back over to Jarred. Since now he is aware there are show notes. And we're going to talk about acid.
[00:22:12] Jarred Morgan: Yes!
[00:22:12] Eric Knight: Because we've covered the Orenda products, now let's talk about chemical efficiency on chlorine and acid. Acid specifically because acid is the most abused chemical in pool care. So are we actually measuring our alkalinity before we dose our acid?
[00:22:28] Jarred Morgan: I feel like I've already talked about this.
[00:22:31] Eric Knight: Eh, you made mention of it.
[00:22:32] Jarred Morgan: Awesome. I'm so glad.
[00:22:34] Eric Knight: When you have your correct dose based on your alkalinity and your pool volume, are you diluting it? Are you measuring that dose and then diluting it? We have to think about habits. We cannot just be pouring acid into a pool. And when I was teaching for the last, I don't know, two, three years about containing pH, Henry's law, all this stuff, I always ask the question.
[00:22:57] Average 20,000 gallon pool. You want to reduce the pH from 8.0 down to 7.5. Very common correction. How much acid does that take? Almost everybody says half a gallon. Some people say three quarters of a gallon. Some people say a gallon. Very, very few people say less than half gallon.
[00:23:12] Jarred Morgan: Oh. But if it's a salt pool, they're going with definitely half a gallon or a gallon.
[00:23:16] Eric Knight: It's all based on habits, right? It's not based on facts. It's based on in the field experience. And what happens is a lot of our habits are formed based on experiences that might not actually be correlated to reality. Like you're seeing something and you may think something else is causing it, but you could be wrong about the cause. But what you're seeing is real.
[00:23:36] For instance, you may think that it's just your salt cell that is causing the pH to go up every week. Well, that may be factoring into it, but if your pH is way over its ceiling, the salt cell didn't do that. Abusing acid did that. Because the salt cell could only take you up to the pH ceiling where your pool CO2 is equilibrium with the CO2 above the pool. That's what salt cell's going to do. It's not going to take you to 9.0. It can't do that.
[00:24:04] Jarred Morgan: No. Or you're maintaining your alkalinity in that ideal range of 100, which is smack dab in the middle. That's going to put your pH ceiling way too high, everyone. And I know as we've already talked about, which is probably why you're listening here honestly, is we don't stick to range chemistries.
[00:24:21] We're going to recommend to get the most pools per gallon out of that acid. You're going to want to run closer to a 70 alkalinity.
[00:24:30] Eric Knight: We are range chemistry heretics here at Orenda. And we are not ashamed of it. We focus on the LSI. And so should you, if you want to Rule Your Pool... but that's your call. It's your pool.
[00:24:40] Jarred Morgan: And getting the most pools per gallon, Eric.
[00:24:42] Eric Knight: That's right. Pools per gallon, baby. Pools per gallon. We're we're going to drive on this. It's a good concept. I like it.
Orenda 3.0 acid doses have changed
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[00:24:47] Eric Knight: There's one other thing I want to mention when you're using the Orenda calculator, whether you're using it on the app or on our website, you're going to notice that if you change factors, like we talked about in the last episode, we added borate. If you change your CYA as well, your alkalinity. All of those will impact your acid dose.
[00:25:06] If you go to the previous app that we had before this update, changing the CYA did not change the acid dose. And I want to explain why that is. That's because we used to base our calculator on dosing charts. And then we would extrapolate between those factors on those charts for more accuracy.
[00:25:24] Now we are accounting for a lot more in the equation. So don't be alarmed if you get a slightly different acid dose week after week, because what probably changed was your CYA level or your borate level if you use them, or your alkalinity. So just be aware that it may not always be the exact same weekly acid amount.
[00:25:43] That's why you should use the calculator that week. Use it. Find out in these given parameters of what I have today, what is my acid supposed to be? Measure it. Dilute it. And you'll get a lot more chemical efficiency and you'll be able to treat a lot more pools per gallon of acid.
Summary
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[00:26:04] Eric Knight: All right. I'm your co-host, Jarred has decided he's the host. This has been episode 78 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. Jarred, take us out.
[00:26:12] Jarred Morgan: Thanks everybody for listening. As your host, Jarred, maybe next time Eric can pull his weight and, um, be the host. Uh, until next time. See ya.