Eric's 8-hour chemistry course, Service 2211: Essential Water Chemistry by Watershape University is now available online on-demand, at https://watershape.org/courses/online/svc2211-260101-enroll. This episode gives another 20 min teaser of the class.
[00:00] - Intro
[02:38] - S2211 - Unit A, part 2
189. Service 2211: Essential Water Chemistry is now available on watershape.org
===
[00:00:00] Industry Standard Ranges
---
Eric Knight-1: Welcome back to The Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host, Eric Knight, and this episode is going to continue what I did several episodes ago where I gave you a little bit of a taste of our eight hour water chemistry certification class called Service 2211 Essential Water Chemistry.
Now that class has become more and more popular, so we had it recorded in Phoenix at our Education Vacation last December. Well, I'm announcing now that that class is now available on Watershape.org. You can sign up today, you can watch it at your own pace, and you can get through that, take the exam at the end. And that is going to be a piece of a larger certification in the service track that we're building here at Watershape.
So I'm going to give you about a 20 minute segment. It picks up from where we left off several episodes ago, sorry for the disjointedness. But I just want to give you a feel for what you're going to get in this class. But before we do that, if you are watching on video. Perhaps on Facebook or YouTube? Actually, no, I don't even put these on YouTube. So really just Facebook. Deal with it.
Um, here's Watershape.org. You can go to education or you can click here and say, find online classes. Either one. It's going to take you to basically the same thing. And we're looking for online on demand.
Well, these online classes you'll see are Construction 2111. That's our main construction school. Engineering 2311, Essential fluid Engineering. Business 3451, which is Essential Cost Estimating. All of those are construction IWI track classes. But the fourth one here is Service 2211, Essential water Chemistry. So I'm just going to click that "see course" and then the big blue button "enroll now". So you just pay for the class and then boom, you're in.
So if you don't have a Watershape login, you'll just create one. That's going to give you a unique Watershape student ID, not that you need to remember that, it'll all be automated at that point. But when you take that class and you finish it, and you take the exam, that will reflect in your record and it's a key part of what we're building in the service track.
So anyway, I'm not going to speak anymore. I am glad you're listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. And thank you to the, I mean, I joke and say it's just a few dozen of you, but thank you to all of you, we'll just say that, that are reaching out to ruleyourpool@gmail.com. It means a lot. I'm so glad to see that people are listening to this again, that it's valuable. And, uh, got a lot of feedback from the last few episodes. So I'll have some more experts on here in the near future. I really like doing this. It's kind of the highlight of my week. So hopefully I'm able to do it. I can't promise it'll be every week because this takes a lot of time. But enjoy this next segment of the water chemistry class. And we're not going to put the whole class on here as you can imagine. Just little bits and pieces. So
Eric Knight: Let's move on. Now the industry standards are acceptable and ideal ranges. This is a good parameter of like where you should possibly be aiming. My issue with industry standards is not that they're not fair. They are fair. The problem is they don't predict where the water's going. How many of you like football in here? Nobody. No? Okay, football. Does a good quarterback throw the ball to where the wide receiver is in that moment? Where do they throw it? Where's going to be where he is going to be, where he is going, right? So why are we treating pools for where the pH is? You know, on a salt water pool, when you come back, the pH is going to be higher. Wouldn't it be nice to know where it's going? You can. You just need to understand the physics. And I'm going to show you how. You can know exactly where it's going. You can get so good at this that you can pull into the driveway of that customer's house, and you will know exactly what the chemistry is. Barring some major weather event like a big flood or a hurricane or something, you're going to know exactly where that pH and alkalinity and calcium should be within a very, very tight percentage. And that's because physics is super predictable. And when you align yourself with physics, water behaves in a very predictable way. And predictable water is profitable water. Unpredictable Water is painful, isn't it?
God, I got to go back to this pool. Ugh. And you load up on the shelf and you buy all sorts of stuff because you just don't know what you're walking into. There is a better way. But I promise you, if you're focused solely on trying to hit ranges without the bigger picture of the physics involved, you are going to exhaust yourself. Because what you're actually going to be doing is trying to force water to bend to your will. You think water cares about you? I know it doesn't care about me. I have experience with this, I was a swimmer. Trust me, it is relentless. Okay? But water doesn't care about us. It cares about one thing only: getting back to balance. Getting back to its natural state, okay?
If water wanted to be 7.4 to 7.6, it would be. But it doesn't want to be there, does it? Nature has a different plan. You will find out, and I found this out, I've tested on over a dozen pools. It, yeah, small sample compared to how much water's out there. But I have tested over a dozen green pools, and for some reason with a digital probe, digital pH probe goes way higher than 8.0, like a drop test. Okay. Measured it, it is almost always 10.3 something pH. Almost always. The only exception to that, it was 10.41. So 10.3 to 10.41. In my experience, a dozen green pools. I'm talking swamps. How is that possible? And by the way, they weren't all in Charlotte where I live. They were all over the country. Florida, Michigan, California, Arizona. Every green pool I tested was 10.3 something, except for one that was 10.41. That can't be a coincidence, can it? No, it's not a coincidence.
It's environmental. It has to do with the amount of CO2 in the air, and we're going to get into that in this next chapter. But there's a reason for that because algae is a plant and a plant has to grow based on the amount of nutrients it has, and it consumes carbon dioxide. And the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the same here as it is where I live, and where you live. That's a constant. It doesn't matter what else is in the water. If you leave water to its own devices, it will balance itself. And you're not going to like how it gets there.
So either you give it the balance it craves, or it has to do it on its own. And it doesn't have the same abilities that you have. You have all these options. You literally have millions of ways to balance the LSI in terms of all the parameters you can adjust. Water has two: eat or scale. We'll get into that in Unit B. It's not that the ranges are bad, it's that they don't predict where it's going to go. It doesn't take into regard things like water temperature. Do you think you should be treating a pool in January the same way you do in July? The temperature could be 50 degrees different depending on where you are. You guys are in the Hamptons, right? Yeah. Your pool's freeze, don't they? Yeah, quite a bit different. Temperature's a massive factor that people don't think about. And you can't put a standard to it, right? Because if your pool's seasonal, guess what? That's out of your control. Now, you could heat it, but your customers don't want to pay those high energy bills in the wintertime.
You have to prepare for it instead. So instead of thinking that we can beat water into submission, that we can control it, that we can overpower it. That's temporary at best. You can't do that sustainably. Instead, we have to understand the physics that are at play, because they're not going away. I can guarantee it.
You can only be there, what? On a service route, 20 minutes a week? Maybe 30? Something like that, depending on the service you provide? Realistically, on a cleaning route, it's something like that. So that means for six days, 23 and a half hours, you're not there. But physics is. Physics has your back. It never left. But if you violate it, and you push water, and you force water into an unbalanced position, physics is mad. Well, I guess it's not mad. It's just going to be like, well. There's this German phrase, "Wie mann sich bettet, so liegt mann." The way you make your bed is how you need to lie in it.
If you force water out of alignment, you're going to have to deal with the consequences. It is going to come back to you. It is going to etch that plaster if you have it. It is going to fade that vinyl liner over time. It's just physics. Now some of these don't even make sense, frankly. Like 1500 part per million over startup. That's the maximum TDS? How much do you need to put in on a salt pool?
What's the ideal salinity for a salt pool?
3,500.
3,500? I've heard. 3000 to 3,500. Okay. That's more than that. So we're just going to exempt salt? No, no, you can't exempt salt. Now there are two types of pools though, I would say. Salt pools and everything else. In terms of how you need to think of them because a salt pool is a fundamentally different pool. But realistically, if you're focused on ranges individually, you're focused on individual trees and you're missing the forest.
I can predict, using physics, and I'm going to teach you how to do that today, I can predict where my pH is going to go, and that's power. Because if I know where the pH is going to go, I know where my LSI is going to be when I come back. My LSI, which we're going to cover in the next chapter, is what water cares about. And if we can predict that, now we can make a plan. Now we can make a plan that I know that water is going to be balanced when I'm gone. Because if it's balanced when I'm there and it's balanced when I come back, it had to be balanced in between. And that's power because you know you're not going to have an etching pool, and you're not going to have a spiking pH, and you're not going to have plaster problems if that's what you have. Any questions on these individual parameters? because we're going to start listing them individually. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have one, and if it's a little off topic, I apologize. But the, the cyanuric acid mm-hmm. Uh, it's been going around that, you know, you use a multiplier now 0.075, of your cyanuric should be your chlorine, uh, in order to avoid, uh, chlorine lock.
Eric Knight: Well, chlorine lock's a myth, but I know the question is correct. I know what you're asking. Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: uh, are these charts going to change soon? I mean, because that's, that multiplier has been around and it's proven. But yet we still give a range.
Eric Knight: Which camera's looking at me? I hope so. Yeah. I've been working a lot to try to get it to that point, but I hope so. Okay. I don't have any control over the standards. But, um, here at Watershape, we don't necessarily follow the trends. We try to set them. Right. We don't aim for the standards. We try to aim way higher. We try to set the bar, not the standard. So we're going to aim higher. We're going to dial in. But thank you for that. And we're going to get to CYA quite a bit in this class.
There are limitations. Like I said before, if water wanted to be in that pH range, it would be. Water is super predictable. Think of it this way. We think in this industry, not necessarily you, all of you entirely, but just generally as an industry, we seem to think that we do the same thing every single week to water, and water is the variable. Water just, it's unruly, it just keeps changing. I can't get control of it. In reality, water's the constant. We are the variable. Water is always doing the exact same thing, the exact same way, in the most predictable way possible. It's always trying to get back to its natural state.
That's literally all it's ever trying to do. Now there's contaminants that get into it, but water didn't do that. Nature puts stuff into water. There's a difference. Now we have a very hard job in this role of our industry. Because if we are building pools, that's one thing. We turn it over to a service company. But if you're a service company, you have a closed system, meaning you have to reuse the water. As opposed to like drinking water, which is a single treat and pass, that's a pass through system. You get one shot at it and it's gone. No, you have to recirculate water, but it's also open to contamination that you don't control. You have different types of trees. You have different types of pollen. You have different types of bathers. You don't know if they had a birthday party. You don't know if they spilled beer in the pool. You don't know if a dog uses it. All of these contaminants change water quality, which is what reflects poorly on you to the customer. If the water's cloudy, they have a scum line, insert problem here.
The homeowner calls and says, Hey, my water looks like blank. Well, they're probably not calling because the water's not balanced, because you don't see that initially. Eventually you'll start seeing things like plaster discolorations and you'll start seeing scale on tile, but it's not like overnight. Okay? Unless you really do something wrong. But they will see water quality problems, won't they? They'll see a cloudy pool. They will see the water turning green. They will see stains. And so we rightfully prioritize water quality.
Obviously we want the water to be safe. That is our number one priority. I was a swimmer. Trust me, I care deeply about the safety of swimmers. The safety of water is the most important part. But I'm here to tell you, if you want to have your cake and eat it too, you're going to have to be thinking a little bit differently. You have to give water what it wants, so it chills out and lets you have what you want. It will not fight you if it's happy.
Now, unlike me at the buffet, water cannot eat more than it can hold. When it's saturated, it chills out and stops. Get it happy, and it will stay happy. Then you can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want with chlorine. You can do whatever you want with water quality. Because it doesn't care. It cares about its balance. So I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive. I'm thinking think holistically of both of them together. There is a way to do this. Just remember this water is controlled by physics, not you. We don't have the ability to control water.
[00:13:21] Chemistry Ranges in Context of the LSI
---
Eric Knight: Now let's put the ranges in context. This is page 13. I'm going to show you in the book, it's not on the presentation. But I'm going to show you what all of the ranges look like when we aggregate them into the LSI. Okay? We're going to go all maximum values, we're going to go all minimum values, and then we're going to show you right in the middle, like the ideal values.
Turn the page, go to page 14. For those of you online, if the page number changes, this is the graphic that shows the three calculators. Range chemistry versus the LSI. At the very top, we look at all minimums. So what I did on the left side of the calculator, this is the Orenda Calculator if you don't already have it. Does anybody not have it? Get out. Just get right out.
Okay. All minimum on the left. I have, based on the industry standard ranges, 7.2 pH, 60 total alkalinity, 150 calcium, zero CYA, and 400 TDS and salt. The reason it's 400, because there is no minimum on TDS, but the reason there's 400 is because when you add all these things up, if you have under 400, it's got to be brand new water. Because you're going to have chlorides in there from chlorinating, you almost never have below 400, which is why I put it in here. I think it's a fair number as a minimum.
Now on the left, it is a red number, isn't it? That LSI is -0.72. That is very aggressive. That is going to be hurting your equipment. That's going to be hurting cement. That is going to be hurting your pool in general. And so what's going to happen is you're going to, if it's a plaster or cement based pool, whether it's pebble or quartz or whatever, if there's cement available, water is going to steal that calcium, because it's hungry, because it's just trying to balance itself. It's not mad at you, it just, it's starving, so it's going to take. Pulls it out. It's going to pull out something that's the most soluble form of calcium in that cement. Remember solubility, the easiest stuff to dissolve? That's called calcium hydroxide. We teach this in the plaster class, C3611, which is going on two doors down.
It's going to pull out calcium hydroxide. That has a 12.6 pH. Very basic. What do you think 12.6 pH is going to do to your water? pH spikes. You come back, the pH is off the charts. If you're using a drop test, it's like purple. Does this sound familiar? Okay. Probably because it was too aggressive to begin with and it pulled out something that was not supposed to be there. It wasn't supposed to be there. Show of hands, who does plaster startups? Or has?
Okay, you show up the first day, the pool was just filled. Where's the pH? Loud for the cameras. Sky high, right? Okay, cool. What do you add?
Acid.
Acid, sure. You show up the next day. Where's the pH? Oh, it's sky high again. Okay, so what do you add?
Acid.
Acid? Interesting. Okay, so day three, you show up. Where's the pH?
Sky high.
Timeout. Why do you think that keeps happening to you?
Because you're not using pool wash.
Yeah. You're not using pool wash. That's it. Different thing.
Not adding sodium bicarb?
Partially, but I think you're saying something really, um, at the tactical level. More strategically, why does that keep happening? Bicarb could be a solution to the real problem, but it's not the answer to the problem. What is the problem?
The water's reacting to the new plaster. The water's reacting to the new plaster because it's not balanced. If the water was balanced, it wouldn't care about the plaster. It's happy. It can't eat more than it can hold. It can't dissolve more calcium if it's happy. Look, I can eat more than I can eat at the buffet healthily. It's not a great idea. I regret it later sometimes, but only sometimes, eh? Okay. Point is water can't do that. If water is saturated, it can't eat anymore. It's physically impossible. Physics right? That's where we get that phrase, physically impossible. It cannot eat anymore.
So you know it can't go after your plaster if it's happy. And if that's the case, you can't lose calcium hydroxide, which spikes the pH, so your pH should not spike. Now, it will naturally rise through physics, but not because you forced it high. So this first all minimum is going to cause etching, and you're going to have a spiked pH, and you're going to be on the rollercoaster. And you're going to use a lot of acid and you're going to have to buy a lot of bicarb to offset the alkalinity you took out from that acid to try to get back to a range that is actually too much alkalinity to begin with, because you're over carbonating the pool. So you had to buy more acid to try to keep it down. And now I'm out of breath.
Does this sound familiar to any of you? This is the traditional way that pool chemistry has been done. I don't agree with it. That's why I'm teaching this class. You can get all that same information in any other class in the industry, but I don't teach that because it doesn't work. Ask yourself, honestly. Don't answer, but ask yourself honestly, has it ever worked? Has it ever done what is promised? Because if you are trying to take control of the water, you can't do it. And that doesn't mean you're bad at your job. Nobody can do it. I don't care how good you are. You're fighting physics. You're saying, ah, gravity, I don't care about you. Yeah. Good luck with that. It's the same laws of physics. They're not suggestions.
You're pushing against something and it's a futile battle. You can temporarily get it, and we'll go into this quite a bit in the next unit. You can temporarily gain control of it, but only temporarily.
Now let's look at the maximum ranges. The color coding on the app is red is aggressive, yellow is okay, but it's acceptable. It's within the parameters which we'll get into soon. Green is ideal and purple means it is an oversaturation of calcium, meaning it's a scale forming condition.
So all maximum at a 7.8 pH, 180 alkalinity, 1000 calcium, it's literally in the standard, 1000 calcium, 100 CYA, which is astounding to me that that's in the standard, but okay. And 1400, because they say 1500 over startup is too much. So I'm going to just go to 1400. We're already scale forming. In the next unit, I'm going to explain what scale actually is, because there's a misconception. We think that any white deposits in a pool must be scale, but that's not always true.
So right off the bat, there's nothing we can do. But look at the right side. Only one factor changed. It went from 7.8 to 8.5. Technically up to 8.47 because we have to think about the predictability of where it's going. I forgot to mention that on the all minimum, if you look at the first calculator at the top left, the pH is naturally rising up to 8.23, which brings the LSI back into balance, which is great.
At 82 degrees.
At 82 degrees. Good point. At 82 degrees it does that. But either way, it's balanced when you come back. But how many of you are actually testing for the LSI? My guess is most of your people are probably testing for the pH and not thinking too much about the LSI. So you see an 8.2 pH, oh, wait a second. Most people don't use test kits that can read that high. So they just see a pH that's off the charts. Sound familiar? Like I don't know, every week on a salt water pool? So what do we add?
Acid.
Acid. But wait a second. If you do that, you just piss the water off again because you're not listening to what water cares about. You're trying to make water fit into a box. You're trying to make it conform to what mankind thinks. Do you think water ever read the textbook? No. You got to think about what water wants. Same with a startup.
Now let's look at the ideal, it's the last one. On the left side we've got 7.5 pH, right in the middle of 7.4-7.6. We have 100 total alkalinity, right in the middle of 80 to 120. 300 calcium, 40 CYA, and 500 TDS and salt, and it is 0.00. That is perfect balance.
But wait a second. You think that pH is going to stay at 7.5? Think again. Physics has a different plan, and we'll explain this in the next unit, but that pH is going up to 8.35. What color does that LSI change while you're gone? And there is nothing you can do about it unless you have chemical automation to feed acid or CO2 or automatic pool cover. To some degree a trichlor feeder can do this too, because it's acidic. But that's going to change your alkalinity because it will chew through alkalinity as well. But you get my point. It's not going to stay there. So the quarterback is aiming where the wide receiver was like, it's already too late. By the time you get to your truck after you did all this, and you're like, yeah, perfect. By the time you're at your truck, it's not perfect anymore. The pH has already risen. Not all the way, but like if I open a beer, it's going to show a lot of bubbles at first. But if for some reason that beer is still sitting there 10 minutes later, it's a lot less bubbles. We'll explain this in the next unit, but physics never quits. This is going to keep happening to you until you start thinking about what's actually controlling water.
And we need to humble ourselves to realize we can't beat this. But guess what? You can bring it on your team. Physics can be the best coworker you've ever had because physics doesn't ask for a paycheck, does it, Kristen? Never does. And does physics ever take a sick day?
Nope.
Nope. Never does. So ideal balances temporarily make you look perfect... until physics has its way, and it's not perfect anymore. Any questions on this?