We briefly introduce our incredible people who made Orenda into what it has become: Laura, Kelly, Miguel, Joe, Kathryn, Ryan, Shaun and Tyler. Then we introduce Terry Arko from HASA and discuss how our teachings differ and what we share in common moving forward.
00:00 - Introduction
02:01 - Introducing Team Orenda
10:08 - Introducing Terry Arko, from HASA
13:35 - Terry's role at HASA
16:01 - Bob Lowry's Pool Chemistry Training Institute
17:08 - HASA and Orenda's education conflicts in some ways
22:58 - More in common than in conflict
26:56 - Wrap up. Thanks for listening!
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106. Team Orenda and our integration into HASA (w/ Terry Arko)
===
[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Jarred, can you believe this is the 106th episode of the Rule Your Pool podcast?
[00:00:05] Jarred Morgan: I can believe it. It feels like, uh, number five. I don't know. Have we done 106?
[00:00:11] Eric Knight: Well, I know you don't listen to the podcast, so you wouldn't actually know, but that is the truth. We've done 106. And more unbelievably, I invited you to come back. How about that?
[00:00:22] Jarred Morgan: Well, I am the host, so I would hope I'm included.
[00:00:24] Eric Knight: Oh, let's not say things we can't take back, but in this episode, I want to introduce the rest of Orenda team, in the last one we talked about the acquisition with HASA, and we've got to give credit where credit is due.
[00:00:36] I want to introduce our team. Everybody pulls more than their own weight and now that we're a part of a much bigger team, I look forward to getting to know the HASA folks. And we've got a special one with us today. Terry Arko, welcome to the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:00:50] Terry Arko: Hey, thanks. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Jarred. Good to be here finally.
[00:00:54] Eric Knight: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:00:54] Jarred Morgan: Little does Terry know, this was just a ploy to get to listener number 70, I think. Are we over 70 yet?
[00:01:02] Eric Knight: No, no, no. We're well over a hundred, man. We're at what, 117, 118? something like that.
[00:01:06] Jarred Morgan: Okay. Terry, you're number 119.
[00:01:08] Terry Arko: There we go.
[00:01:09] Jarred Morgan: And hopefully the rest of the HASA crew will...
[00:01:10] Terry Arko: We'll get 120 out of it. Yeah.
[00:01:12] Eric Knight: Yeah, we probably will.
[00:01:12] Jarred Morgan: The rest of HASA team should get us to at least 125.
[00:01:15] Eric Knight: You're, you're already, you already get it, Terry. You've never even been on the show and you already understand it.
[00:01:19] Okay, so in this episode, I want to introduce our team, and then I want to talk about the integration with HASA. And we want to introduce you, Terry, because you've been a figure in this industry for a long time. And then we want to talk about our teachings. How you've been teaching, Bob Lowry's PCTI information, and we want to talk about the common ground that we have between what we've been teaching and the disagreements with what we've been teaching, and our commitment to kind of smooth those out over time. And it's going to take some time because there are some agreements, there are some disagreements, and that's the focus of this episode. Is there anything you would like to say before our introduction?
[00:01:55] Terry Arko: Uh, no. Just ready to go. Sounds exciting. Let's do it.
[00:01:59] Eric Knight: All right, let's go.
Introducing Team Orenda
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[00:02:01] Eric Knight: Let's start by introducing our team. In the last episode, our minds were kind of spaghetti. Wouldn't you agree, Jarred?
[00:02:31] Jarred Morgan: Yeah, we were just running through memory lane and just kind of reminiscing on how we got to where we were. It was just kind of an impromptu thing we just decided to do.
[00:02:41] Eric Knight: There weren't even any show notes. Not that it would've mattered for you, but, um, mm-hmm. We would not be here without the rest of our team. And so I thought, let's give them credit and, and let's start from the beginning. You know, we mentioned Monica in the last one because she was integral in getting Orenda to where it got. But you know, after I was hired, I believe the next hire was
[00:03:01] Jarred Morgan: yeah, Laura.
[00:03:02] Eric Knight: and Laura is our director of marketing and digital marketing. She has been the anchor for everything online that we have. I may create content, but she makes it real. She publishes it. She integrates it. She does. We, we joke and we say she does only the job of seven people, but she does it pretty well and without complaint.
[00:03:21] Jarred Morgan: That's just kind of the way the small business runs. You wear the hats of seven people and many hats we all wear.
[00:03:26] Eric Knight: Right. You do what you can when you can.
[00:03:28] Yes. Okay. And so then we hired Miguel as an intern to start because he was still swimming. And, mm-hmm. Miguel basically does everything I do, but he does it better and he does it in Spanish. So Miguel Chavez, he is now in Southern California, but he covers nationwide.
[00:03:43] All of our Spanish training is done with Miguel and he's learned it very quickly and it helps that he's an engineer by education, so that's really nice.
[00:03:53] Um, so we had him and then Joe, our VP of sales, who came in and started managing the personnel and the rep groups. And then we made a pivot, right?
[00:04:04] Because at that point I'd, I'd like you to kind of explain the pivot that we made in terms of how we divide up the country and cover the territories.
[00:04:13] Jarred Morgan: Yeah, so we kind of put it in different quadrants and um, just found that it was beneficial to have territory managers in the different parts of the country that can manage the reps and, you know, facilitate customer interactions and things like that. And I actually think that we hired Kathryn before we hired Joe from my recollection.
[00:04:34] Eric Knight: No. We hired Joe. Uh, that's right, right at the beginning of Covid. Yeah. Kathryn was next.
[00:04:39] Jarred Morgan: So Kathryn, she, she kind of manages our West coast and she's our trade show extraordinaire. She's the secret weapon who just kind of butterflies around and does a great job.
[00:04:49] Eric Knight: Yeah. Nobody likes Kathryn. Everybody loves Kathryn. That's the thing. It's like, oh, no, Kathryn, she's all right. No, they either love her or they've never heard of her. You can't not like Kathryn and we call her the Paper Queen, Terry, because she likes to print everything.
[00:05:03] Terry Arko: I heard that. I was actually with her and Joe in Fresno last week, uh, at an open house. And the, one of the first things she said to me was, she says, I'm the paper queen.
[00:05:11] Eric Knight: Oh, she is. She is.
[00:05:13] Terry Arko: Yep.
[00:05:13] Jarred Morgan: So many FedEx...
[00:05:14] Terry Arko: she gave me a lot of that paper too, by the way.
[00:05:16] Eric Knight: Oh my word. So her photo in my phone as her contact photo is an X-ray that, Jarred, did you snap that photo at the airport? Somebody did.
[00:05:25] Jarred Morgan: Oh no, I don't know. No, so I don't think
[00:05:27] Eric Knight: so.
[00:05:27] It's her backpack going through the X-ray machine at the TSA, and this is, we're talking like six inches of paper stacked up in her backpack and that's her profile photo on my phone. It's hilarious.
[00:05:40] But that's Kathryn. We love Kathryn and she is awesome at organizing things and keeping us on task. So Kathryn, thank you for everything you do. And I mean that seriously, just because we make fun of you for paper, we, we need you. So thank you for being here.
[00:05:55] And then, uh, how could we forget Kelly, I mean, rest in peace, Kelly. But Kelly and you dealt with her every day, Jarred, on the operations side. On the growth side, everybody else was, you know, customer facing like we were. But Kelly was your assistant. She was your right hand.
[00:06:11] Jarred Morgan: Kelly was my right hand and she predated everybody, including you.
[00:06:16] Eric Knight: That's true, but not in our official company, right?
[00:06:20] Jarred Morgan: Correct.
[00:06:20] Eric Knight: Because she was the outsourced bottling manager. But yeah, go on.
[00:06:23] Jarred Morgan: She came in full-time around 2017 probably is when that happened. So, mm-hmm. She was definitely my right hand. And she was awesome.
[00:06:34] Eric Knight: So what did she do?
[00:06:35] Jarred Morgan: She handled all of the administration, processing, shipping, components, ordering raw materials. She literally ran the guts of this thing as far as I'm concerned.
[00:06:48] Eric Knight: Yeah.
[00:06:49] Jarred Morgan: So she was awesome.
[00:06:50] Eric Knight: She was awesome. And sadly we lost her to cancer in, in a short diagnosis too. I mean, we found out what, six weeks before she passed?
[00:06:58] Jarred Morgan: Yeah, it was January she told me, and by I believe April/May, she was gone.
[00:07:04] Eric Knight: Yeah.
[00:07:04] Jarred Morgan: It was crazy.
[00:07:04] Eric Knight: So sad. We swam in her honor at Swim Across America last year. It remains to be seen if Jarred will swim ever again after that incident. But, uh, may, you may just donate, but that's fine.
[00:07:17] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. I made a commitment that after almost dying, that I might just make a donation instead.
[00:07:22] Eric Knight: Aren't you glad that I had you bring that life buoy though? You thought it was stupid and then you realized maybe Eric does know what he's talking about.
[00:07:29] Jarred Morgan: Terry. If Eric ever tries to sucker you into this great charity event called Swim Across America, at least go for a swim before you decide to do it.
[00:07:39] Terry Arko: I swim. I haven't swam in a while because our pool was shut down and had problems, but used to swim every day, so.
[00:07:47] Eric Knight: Well, that's a lot more than Jarred could say.
[00:07:49] Terry Arko: Maybe I'll do All right.
[00:07:50] Eric Knight: I'm not sure Jarred could swim across his own pool after that swim.
[00:07:54] Jarred Morgan: No, no. I, I figured, I, I run, but
[00:07:57] Terry Arko: I'm good for about 20 laps. I think so.
[00:08:00] Jarred Morgan: Oh, you're in then. Eric, you heard the commitment.
[00:08:02] Eric Knight: He's in, Terry's in! That's what I like to hear. Good job, Terry. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, that's great.
[00:08:07] So anyway, that was in honor of Kelly. And then we divided up the country. So the pivot, the decision was made to focus more locally and regionally on rep groups with what I call centurions or regional managers. So, yep, explain the logic behind that.
[00:08:23] Jarred Morgan: Uh, they're extremely high performers, they have a great understanding of not only chemistry, but our chemistry specifically. And they had relationships that were just top-notch. And obviously they're great people. I mean, that's where it starts. Great people make things a lot easier on our part. And that led to Ryan. Ryan Rickaby, our I guess call him Texas
[00:08:45] Eric Knight: Southwest
[00:08:46] Jarred Morgan: Southern California. However you want to talk about Ryan. Uh, which then immediately led to Shaun Mulhall, our Southeast and Florida territory manager. Who we've had on our podcast before. And I know y'all could barely understand him, but we promise he does speak English. It's a variation.
[00:09:03] Eric Knight: If it's slow. He, he has to go slowly. But you can decipher it sometimes if you read his lips. Yeah.
[00:09:07] Jarred Morgan: Yep. Exactly. And then after Shaun, it was, actually, I think Tyler Mills, yeah, in Arizona was before Shaun. Just slightly, maybe like 30 days before.
[00:09:16] Eric Knight: It all happened so fast.
[00:09:18] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. So Tyler, he's our Eric replacement on the West Coast. He's got some big shoes to fill, literally and figuratively. But, uh, I think he's doing a great job out there.
[00:09:27] Eric Knight: He's a real bell ringer. You know what I mean?
[00:09:29] Jarred Morgan: I know that. I mean, he's a Yeah,
[00:09:30] Eric Knight: exactly.
[00:09:30] Jarred Morgan: He's an awesome guy.
[00:09:31] Eric Knight: That's our team. So yeah. Ryan, Shaun, Tyler, Kathryn, Miguel, Laura, Joe. And then we've had rep groups. So contact us at wherever you are. We have some coverage. And now that we're a part of the HASA team, we have even more coverage.
[00:09:45] So that's all I wanted to say about that. Not to make Terry sit uncomfortably through all this, but it's worth giving credit where it's due because these people. Are the reason we are here. And actually Kathryn's calling me right now. I should have it silenced. So I want to show Terry the photo that pops up.
[00:10:02] Terry Arko: I see it
[00:10:02] Eric Knight: That is her backpack. Sorry, Kathryn, I'm on the other line.
Introducing Terry Arko
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[00:10:08] Jarred Morgan: So, so the next natural progression in this conversation is Terry, what do you do at HASA?
[00:10:16] Terry Arko: I'll just start by saying, all those people that you named, they are stellar people. I mean, really. And that's one of the things I told Chris when Chris first opened the can of worms to me about what was going on. I said they have the greatest people in the industry. And I'm not just saying that to blow smoke up, you know, whatever. I'm not. I sincerely believe it. I know all those people you mentioned, and they're all stellar people. They're all great people, and I respect them immensely.
[00:10:45] Eric Knight: Well, apart from Jarred and I, I agree with you. I think they are,
[00:10:48] Terry Arko: Well, you'll notice I didn't say Jarred or you, um,
[00:10:50] Jarred Morgan: I was going to say we, we just do what we can when we can. We're just here.
[00:10:54] Terry Arko: Yeah, so me getting to me. I'm just, you know, a guy. I've been in the industry for 45 years and, um, I started out in Southern California cleaning swimming pools. And like a lot of people, once you get in the industry, it's really hard to get out. I tried to get out many times and for some reason I ended up back.
[00:11:12] Eric Knight: I think the pool industry has its own gravitational pull. It's a fun industry, everybody kind of knows everybody else.
[00:11:20] Terry Arko: I agree. What actually happened was I was, I was pretty new in the industry. I was servicing pools in Southern California and I was just a young mixed up kid really at that point, uh, didn't really know what I wanted to do.
[00:11:34] One morning I got up in, uh, Santa Ana winds were blowing 90 miles an hour and there were wildfires burning everywhere. And I had to clean up all that afterwards. I think it was that week after I walked into my boss and said, I don't want to do this no more, I'm done. And I remember the words he said to me. He said, you know, if you stick with it and you work hard, this is one of the greatest industries. And you'll prosper, you'll do well if you stick with it.
[00:12:04] Eric Knight: Boy, was he right about you, my word.
[00:12:06] Terry Arko: Yeah, And so I did. And that was like 44 years ago, man. I did that for a long time. I did service for a long time. I always refer to myself as a glorified pool guy because I never went to college, I never learned chemistry. I ditched most of my difficult classes in high school.
[00:12:21] Eric Knight: Um, well in fairness, Terry, I've never taken a chemistry class since high school either. I've been making it up the whole time. People just seem to think we have credibility, but
[00:12:29] Jarred Morgan: You're very convincing.
[00:12:30] Eric Knight: At the end of the day, Jarred, it's just a bunch of tomfoolery. Am I right?
[00:12:34] Jarred Morgan: Absolutely tomfoolery. That's what we are exceptional at. We excel at it.
[00:12:37] Eric Knight: Very good at it. Very good at it, but continue.
[00:12:39] Terry Arko: Well, I have to say I basically learned a lot on my own. I learned a lot by reading. I learned a lot because I had to. I had to, to survive.
[00:12:45] Eric Knight: Well, Jarred can't read, so let's not say that. But I don't want to offend the man.
[00:12:48] Terry Arko: I didn't read too well at that time either, but I had to do that to survive.
[00:12:51] Eric Knight: You do what you got to do.
[00:12:52] Terry Arko: I was on my own. Anyway, I've been through some mergers guys. I've actually been through about six in my lifetime. And
[00:12:58] Eric Knight: Whoa,
[00:12:58] Terry Arko: they're always pretty anxiety inducing. Um, for sure.
[00:13:01] Eric Knight: Let's try to make this one not suck.
[00:13:03] Terry Arko: Yeah, no, I don't think it will. So, at any rate, Just to kind of, uh, complete the story here and then how I got to HASA, I'll try and make it fast. So I worked with SeaKlear as technical director, um, all their technical stuff and everything for almost 23 years.
[00:13:20] Eric Knight: I think that's where I heard of you first because I was reading a bunch of articles that were published in the industry and
[00:13:25] Terry Arko: Right.
[00:13:26] Eric Knight: That's who you're with. Yeah.
[00:13:27] Terry Arko: Yeah. When we had that meeting in Portland with that indoor air quality meeting that I met you at.
[00:13:33] Eric Knight: Right.
[00:13:33] Terry Arko: I was with SeaKlear at that time.
Terry's role at HASA
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[00:13:35] Terry Arko: So, anyway, fast forward, you know, mergers happened. I had a little brief stint in between there and then yeah, I landed at HASA. And so basically my role at HASA is their technical product training, education director, content director. I basically do everything that's related to any technical kind of parts of talking about chlorine, liquid chlorine, muriatic acid. They had a very small ancillary line of some products. But mainly working with chlorine and teaching education, writing articles, all technical articles, uh, tech sheets, fact sheets.
[00:14:13] Also representing them on the PHTA recreational water and air quality committee. Um, which basically all we do on that committee is write documents and review standards. It's, it's pretty exciting stuff. Um, so that's,
[00:14:28] Eric Knight: It's riveting. Riveting. Absolutely. Let, let's see what, just in the interest of time here, let's see if I can summarize it. You've basically done pretty much everything you can in the industry.
[00:14:36] You've worked for manufacturers, but you started as a pool cleaner. Yep. Started from the bottom. Yep. Worked your way through the store, sold different things, worked for multiple different manufacturers. Understood the technical stuff.
[00:14:47] At HASA, what would you say your mission is?
[00:14:51] Terry Arko: One of the main reasons they brought me in was they really had not a very good education arm, there.
[00:14:59] They had some people that did some presentations, but it, it wasn't a whole lot. Um, there was no publication in any way, shape or form going out from HASA. So promotion was not real big and there wasn't any sort of real technical representative. And the other thing is on the PHTA level, at the recreational water quality committee level where, you know, you have, fact sheets and tech sheets. They had fact sheets on trichlor, cal hypo, I think even lithium hypo, all these things... nothing on liquid chlorine.
[00:15:35] Eric Knight: You would think that that'd be the first one they would write around. Yeah. Because that's the most common chlorine.
[00:15:39] Terry Arko: And I was brought in to be a representative for HASA in those boards also, because they had no one. And so that was one of my first missions too, was to get something on sodium hypochlorite published on the PHTA website and also it was to somehow develop some sort of education arm which they didn't have, uh, but they wanted.
Bob Lowry's Pool Chemistry Training Institute
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[00:16:01] Terry Arko: So that's what led to Pool Chemistry Training Institute and Bob Lowry's organization becoming a part of HASA. At that time, I mean, I could have tried to develop something, it would've taken a lot of work and a lot of time, and I don't know how long it would've taken, how well it would've gone over or whatever.
[00:16:21] But Bob was having discussions with me about wanting to sell off PCTI. Uh, and mainly it was because, you know, his health was bad. And mm-hmm. He knew his days were numbered. Um, and they were, literally. And I was just like, man, I'm going to go to HASA and just say, you want an education arm? This is a good one.
[00:16:41] Eric Knight: Yeah. Oh, it's probably the best one in terms of depth of material. I mean, multiple textbooks. Talk about a strong brand in education. Jarred, what was the book that we had to read in order to get hired at Orenda?
[00:16:53] Jarred Morgan: That'd be the IPSSA Basic Training manual. And then we delved into the intermediate training manual and then there was a supplemental training manual. So we read all of the IPSSA books.
[00:17:03] Eric Knight: We read all of them. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, great education stuff. So yeah, smart move on HASA's part.
HASA and Orenda's education conflicts in some ways
---
[00:17:08] Eric Knight: A lot of the questions I've been getting ever since the acquisition is you guys teach very differently. We teach different things from HASA. We conflict in some ways with PCTI, which for those of you not following, that's Pool Chemistry Training Institute, which was Bob Lowry's IP, which is now owned by HASA and taught by Terry.
[00:17:26] So you're continuing on Bob Lowry's legacy.
[00:17:28] Terry Arko: Yes.
[00:17:29] Eric Knight: There are some disagreements with what we teach. I'm very open about it. I even tell people in the class how we differ. But I want to hear it from you... Well, let's start with the common ground.
[00:17:38] What do we teach in common? And then let's talk about the disagreements and wrap this episode up.
[00:17:43] Terry Arko: I think what we teach in common is good water chemistry. And a good system of water chemistry. And having a system of water chemistry, um, and doing the right things. And I think there's just different approaches to that.
[00:17:56] As far as Pool Chemistry Training Institute goes, I know that with Orenda, it's LSI first, range chemistry second.
[00:18:04] Eric Knight: Correct.
[00:18:04] Terry Arko: I think that with Pool Chemistry Training Institute we might be closer to range chemistry, but we're really not teaching range chemistry either. In fact, what we're trying to say is that range chemistry can be too broad at times. So what we teach in PCTI is we teach targets. We take range chemistry, but we say, look, um, Example, if you go all PHTA standard minimum, and you think, Hey, I'm in the PHTA standard. Well, if you're at minimum, if we want to go to LSI, you've got corrosive water according to LSI.
[00:18:35] If you go the other way and everything's maximum, again, you're going to be scale forming according to LSI. And that's not good. And so where Bob took it was, look, I'm going to develop these targets.
[00:18:45] And actually, he took a lot of time with this, and LSI was a part of this. And I should point out that what we do in PCTI is we're strictly looking at operational pools. Pools that if you want to say in season and operating and at the pool temperatures of 75 to 85 degrees.
[00:19:07] Eric Knight: And this is a huge point you're making here. You're talking about pools in year.
[00:19:12] Terry Arko: Yeah. Right. And I think this is where people see the disagreement maybe, and they think we're disagreeing, but we're really not. Because what we're teaching is we're teaching operational pool standards and we're taking the best settings that we can, that are going to even agree in an LSI in that scenario. And
[00:19:31] Jarred Morgan: So to clarify that statement right there, you are basically excluding closing a pool if you were in the Northeast or the Northwest, that's not an operational pool. And you're also excluding pools that, let's just say for convenience purposes, are lower than 55 degrees, because unless you just really like swimming in 55 degree water, yeah,
[00:19:52] Eric Knight: You could do a cold plunge.
[00:19:53] I guess a cold plunge would be like that,
[00:19:54] Jarred Morgan: but if the water's cold enough, that would not be considered an operational pool in your opinion, correct?
[00:19:59] Terry Arko: No, this is strictly, I mean, if you look at the course, and if you were at the course, the primary purpose of this is for the backyard service tech who the pool is up and operational and they're weekend and week out or however they're going, having to care for that pool.
[00:20:15] And that's what the system is. Eric, you and I had this conversation before, but to keep that pool, more sustainable, predictable. Not to where you're going to come in and, and the, and the pH is going to be way off, or the alkalinity is going to go down or whatever.
[00:20:31] Jarred Morgan: So, on that note too, like, I'm in Dallas, so we don't close pools here. We have weekly maintenance that's year round.
[00:20:39] Terry Arko: Right, right.
[00:20:40] Jarred Morgan: Well, there's a good chunk of the winter from December, January, February, where that water temperature's definitely in the fifties, probably in the forties.
[00:20:50] Eric Knight: Um, couple years ago it was a block of ice.
[00:20:53] Terry Arko: Well, yeah, I know about that. And look what happened in California too.
[00:20:57] Jarred Morgan: Exactly. So in those scenarios, would you even say target chemistry? Or would you just say, Hey, your targets are just shifting?
[00:21:04] Terry Arko: We do allude to that though, um, because we teach a whole segment on LSI in the class. And, we also talk about if there's a shift in temperature, how's that going to affect the LSI? We teach that. Um,
[00:21:18] Jarred Morgan: So you have to have offsets, right?
[00:21:20] Terry Arko: Right, right. And we teach that.
[00:21:21] Jarred Morgan: I'm just kind of giving you a hard time here because
[00:21:23] Terry Arko: No,
[00:21:24] Jarred Morgan: Eric and I
[00:21:25] Terry Arko: Gimme a hard time. I don't,
[00:21:26] Jarred Morgan: Well, we get questions all the time on our side with people will take a piece of what we say or a piece of what we teach
[00:21:34] Eric Knight: Out of context.
[00:21:35] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. And they'll say well, you're doing it all wrong. It's like, well, no, no, no, no. You can't ignore what we said over here and just take this piece. You have to take all of it in totality. Oh, the guys that Orenda said we could run a 60 alkalinity. Well, hold on. We said that, but you have to offset it with something else. If you're going to do that, you got to account for it somewhere else.
[00:21:57] Eric Knight: With calcium usually.
[00:21:58] Jarred Morgan: Yes. Well, and, and that taking the whole picture.
[00:22:00] Terry Arko: And we say the same thing. For example, the target's 90, we say 90 alkalinity. Okay. But if you have a pH that's constantly drifting up, then we say, go down to 70, go down to 60 to offset that. Now, the one thing we'll never do and you know, I don't want to say that you guys do it or, or don't do it, um,
[00:22:17] Eric Knight: Well, we probably do. Just based on what you just said, just the premise, I don't know what you're about to say, but we probably guilty of it.
[00:22:23] Terry Arko: We're very careful not to tell anybody to go outside of standards. You know, so take it as,
[00:22:27] Eric Knight: Oh, we do that routinely.
[00:22:27] Terry Arko: Take it as low bottom, bottom it out. But don't go beyond the standards because that just gets us in trouble, you know?
[00:22:34] And the fact that I serve on a board where it's, uh, yeah. If I say anything like that, whether it's right or wrong, um, I'll get crucified. So,
[00:22:43] Jarred Morgan: You know, you know what? I don't worry. Terry.
[00:22:44] We're here to help change the industry hopefully for the better.
[00:22:48] Terry Arko: Sure.
[00:22:48] Jarred Morgan: And that is just part of this equation, and we will get there. So, right or wrong, we understand the political side.
[00:22:54] Terry Arko: Everything is theory and everything is subject to change.
[00:22:57] Jarred Morgan: Yep.
More in common than in conflict
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[00:22:58] Eric Knight: Well, at least our theories work. For the most part, theories do work. So do yours. Yeah. So do yours and, and, and Bob Lowry's as well. I look at it like this. The books are great information and there's nothing wrong with the books. I'm referring to Bob Lowry's books, by the way. Sure. But we have to factor in time, right? Yes, you can set your pH to a target of 7.5. No problem. But it's not going to be 7.5 forever. It's going to rise.
[00:23:21] And what we are saying is you need to know where it's going. You need to understand Henry's Law because the pH is going to rise, and unless you're feeding trichlor nonstop, which has other consequences, or you have an auto cover or an acid feeder to suppress the pH, that pH is going to rise. This needs to happen within the confines of the LSI or you will have a scaling problem at the end of the week. That's what we're saying.
[00:23:43] Terry Arko: Well, and in today's world, it's definitely going to rise. I mean, you know, hell, you've got pools now that have waterfalls and fountains, and bubblers, and negative edge that drops 10 feet and a raised hot tub, you know, that's got a waterfall that's going into the pool while it's bubbling and
[00:23:59] Eric Knight: Exactly. Physics is always going to be the same. It's a constant.
[00:24:02] Terry Arko: I mean, I'll just tell you, I mean, I did pools in the late 70's and the early 80's when the backyard pool was just as flat as could be. It was a square or a kidney in the backyard with a skimmer and a, and one return. And I didn't struggle with pH rising. It was, they were pretty consistent. But again, like I said, today's world, it's, I mean, I watch these videos and these installs and I just, I go, yep, there it goes. The pH. It's going up right now while I'm watching this.
[00:24:28] Eric Knight: Well, we can use physics to our advantage.
[00:24:29] So I think if I can summarize the disagreement in my take is, we are looking at the holistic balance of water from water's perspective, meaning it is always craving equilibrium. So it is craving LSI balance. Either you give the water the balance it craves, or it's going to have to get its own balance by either eating the plaster or depositing calcium carbonate as scale or cloudy water.
[00:24:52] And then air physics is also looking for equilibrium with gas in the water and gas outside of it. And the one we care about is CO2 because with alkalinity in your water, CO2 determines the pH. Yes, technically it's hydrogen ions, but because of alkalinity it's just easier conceptually to think about CO2.
[00:25:10] And targets are fine. I don't disagree with some of those targets. Like on a saltwater pool, I wouldn't put 90 because we know the pH is going to rise, so we can disagree about certain things, but what I want the audience to know is, It's not like we're not paying attention to other opinions in the industry. We've known Bob Lowry's opinion on this.
[00:25:28] We've known your opinion on it, Terry, because we read everything you publish and we've been doing that for years. We're taking things into consideration of, okay, there are a lot of good things here and there, but we're looking at the aggregate. What is going to work in all of these pools?
[00:25:41] And the fact is, when you lean on physics and don't violate it, physics always pull through. And it works really, really well for our customers, and we want to continue that.
[00:25:52] Terry Arko: We're dealing with something that's called the universal solvent. And that's water.
[00:25:55] Eric Knight: Yeah.
[00:25:55] Terry Arko: What's the number one initial law of physics? For every action, there's a reaction.
[00:26:00] Eric Knight: There's an equal and opposite reaction.
[00:26:02] Terry Arko: Right! And that's water chemistry. I mean, that's basically what water chemistry is. Everything you do or don't do in that pool is going to cause some sort of a reaction that's um,
[00:26:13] Eric Knight: Amen, Terry.
[00:26:14] Terry Arko: Either positive or negative. So
[00:26:16] Eric Knight: When you say water being the universal solvent, it'll dissolve anything it comes in contact with... Jarred, I think you know where I'm going with this. When Jarred jumped in that lake to swim, it dissolved away his ego pretty quick. I think your confidence water, your confidence that I was swimming again.
[00:26:33] Bro, your confidence evaporated so fast.
[00:26:36] Jarred Morgan: No, it didn't initially evaporate. It evaporated after I swam about 30 feet that felt like a quarter of a mile. And then when I looked up and saw that I was 30 feet from the dock, I knew I was screwed. So,
[00:26:49] Eric Knight: mm-hmm. No, it was great. Don't ever, don't ever change. I want you to know I'm, I'm never going to forget that swim.
Wrap up
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[00:26:56] Eric Knight: Okay. Let's wrap this up. I want the audience to know that HASA and Orenda are committed to unifying this message so that it's the most accurate message possible. There may be some disagreements on specifics, but not conceptual disagreements.
[00:27:13] There's no fundamental disagreements that I can think of. I personally don't necessarily agree with all of the standards, but I will make the effort to try to evolve them, um, because I think they're the right thing to do. But that's my opinion. I can't speak for HASA and I can't speak for Bob Lowry. I can't speak for Terry Arko.
[00:27:33] All of these opinions that align, everything shares one thing in common. In my opinion. They're all trying to help you. So if we can come together with common ground, that's going to establish, hey, there is something that everybody seems to agree on. I mean, nobody disagrees that physics are real.
[00:27:52] Nobody disagrees that pH matters. Of course it matters, but we have to put these things all into the context of the bigger picture. So we are committed as a larger company. To having that unified message to help you out, to supporting you guys in the field, because what you are seeing, you are not alone. Everything happens for a reason. Would you agree with all that, Terry?
[00:28:14] Terry Arko: Absolutely. And when I started out, I said what we agree on is we want the best for the pools. We want sound chemistry. Uh, we want to help the pool tech to have the best pool and the best water chemistry.
[00:28:26] Eric Knight: All right. Awesome. Jarred, anything else you want to add before we wrap this up?
[00:28:30] Jarred Morgan: Yeah, I do, and I think at the end of the day, I think we want to talk to, you know, our 125 listeners now, that if you do have a question about what we teach or what HASA teaches or whatever they believe and we believe, reach out.
[00:28:46] We don't own this information. We're just trying to distill it down to a understandable form that makes it easier to be better. If we're wrong, please reach out, ask the question, we'll have an answer, or hopefully get an answer, and we'll clarify things if we have to. We're always making changes. I can assure you of that.
[00:29:04] Eric Knight: Or if you have a salient point, I'll just pretend it didn't happen and delete the email.
[00:29:09] Jarred Morgan: Bingo.
[00:29:11] Terry Arko: I've always said I do not want to be the smartest person in the room. I don't. Because if you're the smartest person in the room or you think you're the smartest person in the room,
[00:29:19] Eric Knight: You're in the wrong room,
[00:29:20] Terry Arko: there's a good chance that there could be somebody else in there who's going to show you they're smarter than you. And that's not a good thing. Uh, you know, like that could be humbling. We get knowledge everywhere and we just need to be open to sometimes thinking somebody we maybe don't agree with, just might know more than we know about something.
[00:29:40] Eric Knight: Always assume that whoever you're talking to knows something that you don't.
[00:29:44] Anyways, This has been the 106th episode of The Rule Your Pool podcast. Just one more time. I want to say thank you to the Orenda team. All of you matter so much to us, and I'm so sorry that we got caught up in the last episode and did not give you the credit where it's due, because we cannot do what we do without all of you.
[00:30:01] And like I said earlier, we don't just have employees. Terry, you recognized it. We have great people. Everybody pulls more than their own weight. And I think that's unique in most companies, but everybody believes in the mission and we want to continue that. So thank you all to my fellow employees and I look forward to meeting our new coworkers at HASA.
[00:30:21] Terry, of course, we've already known you, but, uh, thank you so much for being on this podcast, and, uh, we'll see you next time. Great. Take care.
[00:30:27] Terry Arko: Thank you.
[00:30:28] Jarred Morgan: Thanks everyone.