Eric sits down with Mike Collins from TenJam pool furniture to discuss scale formation and scum lines on plastic pool furniture.
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00:00 - Introduction
00:49 - What is TenJam?
04:08 - Water inside pool furniture
07:33 - Why scum lines and calcium scale forms on pool furniture
14:46 -Clean up and prevention
21:41 - Closing
162. Scum Lines on Plastic Pool Furniture (w/ Mike Collins, TenJam)
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the rule your pool podcast. We have a special guest with us today. This is episode 162. And today we're going to be talking to a pool furniture manufacturer called TenJam. And we have Mike Collins with us. Mike, thanks for being here.
[00:00:14] Mike Collins: Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Eric.
[00:00:16] Eric Knight: Welcome to the show for the first time. And, uh, you know, you have a very low bar. To try to be a better co host than Jarred, who doesn't even listen to our podcast. So the fact that you've listened to a couple episodes before being on here is, is a really good start.
[00:00:28] Mike Collins: I've got that going for me.
[00:00:30] Eric Knight: You do, you do. So in this episode we're going to talk about pool furniture and some of the concerns that Mike reached out to Orenda about. Things that he's seeing that customers are reporting with their furniture that have a lot to do with water chemistry. And I'm going to let him ask the questions and we'll see what we can figure out.
[00:00:45] So, like I said, this is episode 162. Let's go.
What is TenJam?
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[00:00:49] Eric Knight: So, Mike, you reached out to us a few weeks ago, uh, apparently some customers were having some questions about calcium deposits on your furniture. But before we get into that, what is TenJam? What do you make? Uh, and introduce your, your line to the listeners here.
[00:01:26] Mike Collins: Sure. So at TenJam, uh, we're Minnesota based company. We specialize in a process called roto molding. And back in 2013, we launched our company and we're a leader in outdoor education furniture. And then in 2020, when COVID hit all the schools in the country shut down, we pivoted to pool furniture. Specifically furniture that goes into the shallow sun shelf of a swimming pool.
[00:01:50] And we're just been growing that category like crazy. And we focus on developing products that are super comfortable, easiest to put in the pool and easiest to remove from the pool. So we're just trying to be out there solving all kinds of different things that people throw at us.
[00:02:06] And a lot of people have been throwing at us calcium deposits, scum lines on furniture, how to clean it, how to deal with different things. And so that's what leads me to Orenda and trying to figure out some of these things. Because I know no matter if it's our furniture or anybody's furniture that's going to the pool, we're all suffering from that same issue.
[00:02:27] So it's not just trying to solve a problem for our furniture, but just everyone's in general. So people can get a better understanding of just furniture in the pool and how to maintain things.
[00:02:36] Eric Knight: Right. Okay. Uh, now one of the things before we get into the question of scale and why you reached out. One of the things that I have noticed is this plastic is sitting outside all day long, all year long. And plastic tends to wear down and get more brittle. But if you're making outdoor stuff, like outdoor education furniture, I presume that means tables and chairs. Are you doing anything for UV resistance or reinforcement?
[00:03:02] Mike Collins: Absolutely. So that all lends itself to some of the costs that you see in these products. So people will sometimes say, geez, these, these pool loungers seem so expensive. Why more than, uh, some of the kids toys that we bought in the past going out and you can buy a whole cheap plastic kitchen set for a hundred bucks.
[00:03:19] How come this lounger is five, six, 700 dollars? A lot of that does come down to just the slower manufacturing process. But when we do have this plastic material, polyethylene is what we use. We do have additives in it and we have to use the highest grade of UV color stabilizer as an additive in these products. And what that does is it just slows the color fading over time.
[00:03:41] You'll never prevent the color fading. But the degree of the UV color stabilizers that you purchase, the better the performance, the higher the cost, but we have to have that, especially in in-pool furniture. That's just sitting out there in that sun all day long, day in and day out.
[00:03:58] Um, but again, I just want people to know it is expected to fade over time. It's just the better brands, the higher price products we'll use, the better stabilizers that help slow that fading.
Water inside pool furniture
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[00:04:08] Eric Knight: Well, that's a good disclaimer. I think no product's going to last forever. That's for sure. Now I do have some more questions getting into it because this now, now I'm starting to steer into what I think you're going to be asking us. Uh, the first few questions I was genuinely just curious. How do these things not float around?
[00:04:24] If they're hollow plastic, how are they not buoyant?
[00:04:28] Mike Collins: Sure. Different brands tackle that different ways. So the most simple way is you add holes to the bottom and you add a hole or air holes to the top. That just allows the water to pass through it. But it's going to be the plastic that's up above the water line that's going to act as weight to try to hold it down.
[00:04:47] So if, if your method is just holes in the bottoms and holes in the tops, a lot more of that product has to stay up and out of the water to act as weight to hold it down. Another competitor of ours, they have screw plugs on the bottom of their furniture. So their method is you take the screw plugs out, you get it in the water, you try to get as much air as you can out of it, getting water into the core. And then you put the screw plugs back in and trap that water in the core. And that makes the product super heavy. But again, it's a, it's the water filled product above the water line.
[00:05:20] That's going to act as weight to hold it down.
[00:05:22] Eric Knight: Makes sense.
[00:05:23] Mike Collins: Yeah. And at TenJam, we never have the method that. Holds the water inside. So we wanted to get away from that because we liked the idea of the water being able to constantly move through the core of the product to refresh itself. So different products of ours, some of them have just a wide open bottom.
[00:05:39] Uh, they might have cup holders on top of it that have air holes. So we try to kind of selectively hide how that water is going to move in and out. Those products, when you're in a pool, you'll see more of it up above the water line. And then we have on our Shays lounger, we have a patent on a one way air valve system where the whole bottom of the product has holes all through it.
[00:06:00] Uh, and then we have this hidden air valve under an arm rest. And if you watch our videos, you'll just see it's super simple to get the water in, but as the product sits in the pool, the method helps keep water up above the water line. But when it's in the pool, the water can still recirculate through the core to try to resist algae growth is what we're, we're aiming for.
[00:06:22] Eric Knight: I was going to say if water is just stagnant in there, it's getting hot because it's plastic. You would think that the temperature would be much hotter inside that piece of plastic that's cooking in the sun. You're more likely to get something like algae.
[00:06:35] Mike Collins: Yeah. And so with our product, what we designed for was we have methods so it can hold water at certain levels, but allow that water to recirculate. But when you take it up and out of the pool, you can't hold water inside of a TenJam product. It automatically drains itself. Which makes it lighter weight when you go pick it up and take it out of the pool.
[00:06:56] But when you put it on the patio, when that sun's hitting it, there's not also this water element that's trapped inside. Whereas some competitors products with screw plugs are just trapping water inside. When they do remove the products from the pool, you feel this crazy heavy weight that you have to lift to get it out of the pool. But then as it's sitting there as a full, hollow plastic product full of water that's trapped, that water just becomes very stagnant, nasty pretty quick. Um, yeah, so I don't know. But so those manufacturers doing that will just tell their consumers they have to just change out the water frequently.
Why scum lines and calcium scale forms on pool furniture
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[00:07:33] Eric Knight: The other side of heating up water inside of a hollow plastic piece of furniture is not just algae. It's got to be scale. Because the temperature is so much higher. I would think there would be calcium deposits on the inside just knowing what we know about the LSI. And that ties us into what you actually called us about.
[00:07:50] So tell the audience, why'd you reach out to us? First of all, how'd you find us? And why'd you reach out to us? And what is the problem that you're seeing? And then let's see if we can help you figure it out.
[00:08:00] Mike Collins: So how I found you is just different Orenda reps and one specifically, Shaun, down in the Southeast. Just running into him at shows and telling him about different things we see people asking us about, is like how to clean furniture all the time. And talking to Shaun was the first time I really understood that a lot of it has to do with pool chemistry.
[00:08:21] So no matter what kind of, power washing and different things we're trying to tell people to use, a lot of it really comes down to the foundation of the water chemistry. And I never knew that. And so trying to understand that. And then as consumers keep reaching out to us, and a lot of times it's not even TenJam products to reaching out to us about. We make a whole bunch of videos that are on YouTube about our products, other people's products.
[00:08:45] And so what that's led to is a lot of consumers just asking us questions about how do I clean this scum line or calcium line, uh, on the pool products? They'll send you pictures and you'll see every time they send you a picture, just right at that water line.
[00:09:01] It just gets really gross and nasty. And they're asking us how to clean it. And we never have just the perfect answer for that. A lot of times it comes back to our local reps talking to the service companies and a lot of times it comes back to chemistry. They're doing water tests, they're figuring out chemistry, and then that leads me to come back to Orenda because I know you guys, when it comes to water chemistry, you're the ones, so.
[00:09:27] Eric Knight: I wouldn't go that far, by the way, but, well, I appreciate that. Um, I'm going to bet that you're seeing a mixture of oils and organics, which we would call a scum line, and calcium. Which would be scale.
[00:09:42] And Harold, our old owner, used to call this the peanut butter and jelly effect. So you'd get oils, because oils float. You know, water is the universal solvent, except for oils. So oils and organics float. That's why the scum line is always at the water line and it sticks to the primarily the tile line or the inside of the skimmer throat or wherever the water surface is. And then that includes furniture.
[00:10:04] If you've got furniture half submerged in water, whether it's six inches or 10 inches or whatever, at that water line, oils are going to stick to it. Especially if it's hotter. And so in my mind, you've got this furniture that's baking out in the sun. That temperature differential is going to be very different because it takes a lot less energy to heat up plastic than it does to heat up tile that's mortared to the wall. And that's why I would think, at least if the sun is on it all day, a plastic chair is going to get calcification sooner than the tile line because the temperature is going to be hotter on that plastic. Is that what you're seeing?
[00:10:44] Mike Collins: That is what we're seeing. questions first arise like in our Arizona areas and Southern California areas, and then as the season progresses it becomes more like everywhere. And then now it's kind of coming back to where it's like, you know, our people back in Arizona, Southern California is our, where, where the questions are coming from right now.
[00:11:05] Eric Knight: Well, it ties back to another analogy I'll give you since you, and by the way, kudos to you for exploring and learning more about the industry that you were relatively recent in. If it happened during COVID.
[00:11:16] Think about your shower at home. I use this analogy a lot when I teach classes. Why is it that the shower head can have calcium scale on it, but the tub doesn't? It's temperature. It's hotter there. And then it cools down as it hits off your body and, you know, evaporates and all that stuff. Um, yeah, over time, yes, you can get calcification on the floor of your shower, but it's usually going to be more like soap scum that's on the bottom of the shower. It's not going to be calcium.
[00:11:42] Now, it can happen. Depends on the hardness of your water and all that. But generally, if you have hard water, you're going to see it on the shower head first. And that's because the temperature is so much higher there, Which means the LSI is higher and water will always precipitate in the highest LSI areas first. Normally that's higher temperature areas.
[00:11:59] So, swimming pool audience, this is why you're more likely to get scale in your heater and your salt cell before you actually see it in your pool. So if you have a heater, if you have a salt cell, you're going to have it in there before you're going to see it on the spa tile line or the spillway or the whatever. You're definitely not going to see it on the bottom of your pool as real scale.
[00:12:20] Now it can be forced there. Like you could force a localized LSI violation with not diluting acid or something like that, which would then pull hydroxides out of the cement and force scale to be on top of the pebbles. We've seen that a lot. It looks like a white line and discolorations.
[00:12:35] Real scale is an oversaturation of calcium carbonate. And so, Mike, just so that you can know, and I'll repeat it for the audience. The way that we quantify the saturation of calcium carbonate, which is the main substance that you're referring to here, is using an index called the Langelier Saturation Index. And that's what the Orenda Calculator calculates. It's the LSI.
[00:12:58] I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's the best thing that we know of right now, and it has been adapted to pools. It is the best way to predict if water is going to be aggressive and looking for calcium, like etching cement and stuff like that, or oversaturated and having to get rid of calcium. Because water is always trying to return to its natural state. So if you have this plastic piece of furniture in there that's a much higher temperature, right there you could have an LSI violation, but two feet away you don't.
[00:13:27] Now, generally you're not going to see scale on your tile line if your pool is LSI balanced just because that chair is not going to make that much of a difference. But if you're on the threshold and you are in a, on the calculator would be a purple number. If you are in an oversaturated high LSI condition, water is going to have to get rid of calcium so that it can get back down into LSI balance, which is its natural state. It has to get rid of calcium. So where's it going to do it? It's going to do it in the highest temperature places.
[00:13:54] Mike Collins: hmm. Okay.
[00:13:54] Eric Knight: Your chair. Does that make sense?
[00:13:56] Mike Collins: Makes sense.
[00:13:57] Eric Knight: Now I'm curious, have you ever seen calcification on the inside of your furniture?
[00:14:02] Mike Collins: Not that I've ever seen, and not that any consumers ever reported to us.
[00:14:07] Eric Knight: I'd be curious to find that out because theoretically, you should. But it depends on how the temperature transfers too. Because you've got, you know, it sounds like you have air in the top of it, and then you have a little bit of water above the water level thanks to some, um, air valve you talked about.
[00:14:21] So that air temperature in that furniture has got to be hotter than the air temperature around it, because it's just cooking all day. I'd be curious to see if there's scale on the inside. That'd be a good experiment, if you ever get a piece of furniture and you test it out and you're. Uh, well, you're in Minnesota, but get a customer, send them a test unit in Arizona for a year and then give them another one and cut it up. And let's see if there's calcium in there, because that would be an interesting thing.
How to clean up and prevent scale and scum lines on pool furniture
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[00:14:46] Eric Knight: And I bet I'm just thinking out loud, with LSI balance, and if you chelate calcium with SC-1000, that should be preventable.
[00:14:54] Mike Collins: Yeah. We have certain products like a product called a moon chair or a dash table bench. Those products, they just let the waterline be exactly what, what the waterline is in and out of the product. But it's also one of those where it'd be easy for consumer just to see inside and let us know if they're seeing the same thing inside. So we'll track that.
[00:15:16] Eric Knight: Yeah that'd be great. And the other side of this is not the calcium. This is going to be the oils. So we make an enzyme called CV-600. And that enzyme is blended into several different products. We have CV-700, which has a phosphate remover in it. We also have CE-Clarifier, which is a chitosan clarifier that has CV-600 enzyme in it. And I'd be curious to see if you have a customer, in Arizona or anywhere else, that is struggling with this. Um, let's purge it. Let's get some enzyme in there and SC-1000 in there, balance the LSI and let's see if it goes away. And how long does it take to go away? That'd be an interesting experiment that I'd like to participate in because I'm pretty sure just knowing what we know about how water behaves, we should be able to prevent that.
[00:15:58] However, I will say this, uh, we can't do it all. This hinges upon having LSI balance. Now, of course, the oils are independent of the LSI, that's just contamination. And that's what enzymes get rid of. But the calcification, LSI balance, and SC-1000 should prevent that from happening.
[00:16:16] Mike Collins: yeah as we see that i'll notify you and we'll we'll try to tackle that with the homeowner or the service company
[00:16:22] Eric Knight: Yeah, and that'd be great, I'd love to have you back on, let's see what we can figure out about it. Of course it's theoretical now, but I'll give you an example, we were just talking to a fiberglass pool manufacturer. And they're dealing with the chalking issue, and kudos to them for doing all this research and sending samples to a lab. We're really trying to figure this problem out. But it's not just fiberglass pools. It's anything fiberglass. And why? Same reason as this. Fiberglass heats up a lot faster than masonry.
[00:16:47] So if you have something fiberglass like a table or something like that in the pool, and a lot of people put like pool furniture in there, Or in above ground pools, it's stairs, believe it or not, that enter and exit. Those get hotter and they tend to have scale on them for the exact same reason. So I have to believe that's probably what's going on here. I strongly doubt there's a chemical reaction going on between them. I think it's just pure temperature and oil sticking to it.
[00:17:14] Mike Collins: Now if people already have this issue their furniture has the calcium deposits that's got the scum, is there any specific cleaner that you think might be a good thing to try? I mean they're already this far down the path. We're trying to solve the pool chemistry going forward. But they're trying to get their furniture back to some state of, you know, original
[00:17:35] Eric Knight: Yeah, sure Yeah, there certainly is. There's two ways to go about this. You could let the water chemistry do it gradually over time, which is going to be the most innocuous way. You don't have to lift the furniture or anything. And the way you would do that is you would plug the overflow valve, a lot of pools will have like an overflow grate just to make sure their pool doesn't flood. You have to raise the water level above the pool The affected area, meaning add an inch, inch and a half of water above the scum line. SC-1000 and LSI balance is going to start working away at that scale and just brush it regularly with, I would imagine on your furniture, you don't want a wire brush, but maybe a green scrubby or whatever you recommend. I can't make a recommendation on that.
[00:18:15] Mike Collins: Yeah, a scratch free pad.
[00:18:18] Eric Knight: yeah, something like that. Friction, but not enough to destroy your product. And that will handle that. Uh, but the main thing is LSI balance. It's not SC-1000. SC-1000 will help, but it's, it's really LSI balance. And then just purge with CV-600 enzymes or 700 enzymes if you haven't put them in. And the scum line will be gone probably depending on temperature, probably within 10 days. Two weeks for sure. If it's above 75 degrees Fahrenheit. If it's colder, it's going to take a lot longer or the enzymes go dormant. So don't expect this to work in 50 degree water. If that's the case, the other option, if you want to take this stuff out of the pool and it sounds like your furniture drains easily, and it's easy to do that, I would take a very diluted acid, but this is really up to you, because you're the manufacturer and I don't want to make recommendations
[00:19:02] Mike Collins: Okay. No problem. Yep.
[00:19:04] Eric Knight: Very diluted acid, not anything that contains nitrogen though. So you're not going to be putting 409 on there because that's dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. You don't want to do anything like that. Just very diluted acid to take the calcium off and then you can either use CV-600 on a rag and get the oils right off and they will come right off. It takes a little bit of elbow grease for a couple minutes and it's off.
[00:19:27] You could also use a degreaser, but if you do that, you got to make sure you rinse that entirely in a area away from the pool. Because if you're going to put like a commercial degreaser from Zep or whatever that you get at Home Depot or Lowe's, don't put that in your pool. You're going to have a chemical conflict with chlorine. CV-600 is totally compatible. Dawn dish soap, you could, but again, you're going to have a chemical conflict, even though it's minor. Just rinse it thoroughly away from the pool if that's the case.
[00:19:57] Another thing you could consider is vinegar. I think white vinegar would probably do very well, but not against the oils. It'll do well against the calcification. But you're going to want to make sort of a vinegar cocktail with enzyme, I would think, so that you have acidic CV-600 that's going to go after it. And, uh, yeah, that should take it off pretty easily.
[00:20:15] Mike Collins: Okay. Great. We'll, uh, we'll do some experimentation and then go forward with that recommendation if we find it works
[00:20:21] Eric Knight: You know, if you document these things and video, hey, here's a chair that's been scaled up and it's got a scum line on it. And we're going to experiment on this half. We're going to try this method. And on this half, we're going to try this other method. And then just compare them and see what's easier. And then you can make a recommendation that's best for your customers. when I'm giving recommendations, Mike, I'm saying how to get rid of that stuff. I don't know the material of your product, and I don't want to give advice that's going to hurt your product. So that really has to come from you as the manufacturer.
[00:20:49] Mike Collins: Yeah. So through this conversation, I will find a product that has this issue. We do a lot of informative YouTube videos for consumers. And again, just not trying to just solve it for us, but trying to solve it for everybody that owns in pool furniture. So that's a good suggestion. We'll make a video, we'll try a couple of these different things. And then people just have like the real deal. And what we recommend.
[00:21:12] Eric Knight: Awesome. Well, let's collaborate on a blog as well and get some answers out to the customers, because I'm sure this is a bigger problem than we, cause we often don't hear about something like this. When we hear about it, it's like it's, it's the plasters failing or it's all over the tile or something like that.
[00:21:27] People don't really think about furniture cause you could just pull it out and clean it. So I'm glad you brought this to our attention and I appreciate you being on the show.
[00:21:34] Mike Collins: Hey, thanks a lot for having me. Very informative and look forward to trying these different things.
[00:21:38] Eric Knight: Okay, cool. Well, I just made it all up. Did it sound convincing?
[00:21:41] Mike Collins: great.
Closing
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[00:21:41] Eric Knight: Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Well, this has been the Rule Your Pool podcast, episode 162. That's right. 162 episodes still going strong amazingly. And we have to thank you, the audience for that. If you have any questions, reach out.
[00:21:53] My email is podcast@orendatech.Com. A lot of you do email me there and I read every single one of them. I might be slow to respond because I get a ton of emails, but I will see them. And if you have any episode requests, put them on in there. Uh, I do want to say this is being recorded a few days before the first ever water shape university service 1211 course, which is basic water chemistry.
[00:22:16] That's my eight hour course that I wrote all summer. Um, we're going to be teaching that. We, meaning me, I'm going to be teaching that in Atlantic City and the Florida show and the Western Show. So if you want to get an eight hour course, it is accredited. It is a massive undertaking and you're gonna learn some things. That's for sure.
[00:22:35] Uh, sign up for it. You can go to watershape.org or you can go on to the websites for those shows, sign up ahead of time. There's limited space. Uh, but we're really looking forward to that. And by the time this comes out, it will have already happened. Because this is coming out the Wednesday after that.
[00:22:50] So, anyway, I really appreciate you being on the show, Mike. Take care.
[00:22:54] Mike Collins: All right. See ya. Bye bye.
[00:22:56]