How can a pool with textbook chemistry on closing be filled with crystals or dust when it opens back up? An analogy is to think of that swimming pool as a grizzly bear. You better feed it because if it has to wake up in the middle of the winter to eat, it's not going to be pretty. In this episode, Eric and Jarred give you a read on water temperature. Water temperature is the easiest factor of the LSI to measure, and yet it is the most neglected (or would ignored be a better word?). Unfortunately, folks just don't know how much temperature affects chemistry - and even the ability to test the water accurately. Almost all damage to a swimming pool happens during the winter. The reason? The lower the temperature, the lower your LSI.
00:00 - Intro
02:52 - Episode Takeaways
06:45 - Demonstration of temperature's effect on the LSI using the Orenda App
11:16 - Why do pools get more damaged in the winter?
17:55 - How does water temperature affect the LSI?
21:08 - Temperature determines where scale forms
22:18 - Acid and trichlor damage
23:39 - Why do salt pools scale up so much?
27:39 - Why you need to dose acid correctly.
29:50 - The Orenda Scale Removal Regimen
31:39 - Water temperature affects testing
Connect with Orenda Technologies
Links
Why Swimming Pool Temperature Matters
Does Temperature Affect CYA Performance?
Pool Winterization Water Chemistry
Orenda App on The App Store and Google Play
Eric [00:00:00] Hey, everybody, this is Eric Knight. Welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast, as always, with me. Jarred Morgan, my co-host. Thank you for being with us here -
Jarred [00:00:09] Happy to be here and don't say I'm always with you. I think you did do maybe one episode without me.
Eric [00:00:14] It was the introduction. It was the introduction. And you weren't available because you never pick up the phone.
Jarred [00:00:20] I know. I'm sorry.
Eric [00:00:20] Well, OK. Well, your loss. Hey, everybody. Anyway, this is Episode five. We've been having a lot of fun with this. We're trying to impart our ideas in audio format because most of our customers in the swimming pool business are out in their trucks driving pool to pool every day. So in the first three episodes, we covered Total Alkalinity and pH. And now we're onto the LSI, the Langelier Saturation Index. And last episode for was just kind of an overview. So now this is the first of going in depth on the rest of the factors. Today's episode is about water temperature and how it impacts the LSI, meaning water balance. The next few episodes will cover calcium hardness and the other ones. But today is water temperature. And there are four takeaways from this episode. Jarred, did you know how important water temperature was before we built the Orenda calculator? I didn't.
Jarred [00:01:16] I did not. The only thing the water temperature really mattered to me was did my spa heat up to the correct temperature. That was about it.
Eric [00:01:26] But now we know it's actually a really important factor. And this is this is a true story to understand. Nobody really knew this in our company and around the industry. Most people weren't aware of it because it wasn't really taught. And that's not an indictment on anybody. We didn't know until we built the LSI calculator. It's on the Orenda app. If you don't have the app, it's just called Orenda O R E N D A free to download. It will show you your LSI in real time.
Jarred [00:01:55] Wouldn't say it wasn't taught because it was taught in CPO courses -
Eric [00:01:59] Yeah, it was mentioned.
Jarred [00:01:59] It was covered.
Eric [00:02:00] But until you could see it on the calculator, I mean Harold had an epiphany playing on our calculator with temperature by dropping the temperature down to winter and it fundamentally changed the chemistry. And that's what we're gonna get in today. So without further ado, this is Episode five of The Rule Your Pool podcast. Water Temperature and the LSI.
INTRO [00:02:47] Welcome to Rule Your Pool, The podcast by Orenda that explains and simplifies pool chemistry so that anybody, regardless of experience, can understand it. I'm your host, Eric Knight, bringing clarity to these subjects so that you can bring clarity to your water. If you're ready to rule your pool, then let's go.
Eric [00:02:52] [00:02:52]There are four main takeaways from today's episode about water temperature. The first one is it is the most easy factor to measure, and yet it is the most neglected. I mean, thermometers are a pretty proven science. It's not like a reagent test kit that needs to be calibrated. [17.2s] I mean, it's a thermometer. It's very easy to measure water temperature. And because of that and because we understand that winter is going to be colder. You can predict which direction your temperature is going. So, you know, in the fall, the temperature is going lower. And, you know, in the spring, it's going to get warmer. Why are we neglecting water temperature? And, Jarred, I would argue that it's just because people don't realize how important it is. Would you agree with that?
Jarred [00:03:36] Absolutely. Neglected is the wrong word because you can't change the water temperature. It is what it is. It's a number. Obviously, you take the measurement and it's 82 degrees.
Eric [00:03:47] Well, I say neglected because -
Jarred [00:03:49] It is ignored.
Eric [00:03:50] OK, ignored is a better word. I agree. So it is the most ignored LSI Factor.
Jarred [00:03:56] Absolutely.
Eric [00:03:56] Or forgotten. [00:03:57]I mean, just people just don't know that they're supposed to actually measure that. So that's that's the first take away. The second one is it is the moving baseline for your LSI strategy. Year round. It will go up and down and wherever it is, that is the baseline for how you have to treat that water. [18.7s] If you're going to keep your water balanced all year, that's a very important thing. That's the second take away. [00:04:21]The third take away is other than startup. Almost all damage to your swimming pool is going to happen during the winter. [6.3s] And that's because of cold water. [00:04:31]And the fourth takeaway is water temperature will determine - if you have scale - where that scale actually forms. [7.7s] So if you're going to have scale, if you're going to have a high LSI. That scale will always, always, always form in the hottest places first. It's physics. So let's get into it.
Eric [00:04:52] Jared, good correction on. I always say neglect. So it's always a habit for me to say it's the most neglected LSI factor. But I guess ignored is a more appropriate factor. But it's kind of hard to ignore it if you didn't even know it was a part of it. Now we're teaching it. We're teaching this to the world. The temperature matters and it's still neglected. It's pretty amazing.
Jarred [00:05:13] Well, that's because most of the time in the service industry. When I was doing it, temperature wasn't a factor because the main things that you wanted to cover were my chlorine levels. My pH, my alkalinity cyanuric acid kind of came into play. But those were the main things that we were trying to manage on a weekly basis.
Eric [00:05:36] And we're not there to manage temperature, by the way. I mean, you have heaters for your spa and you have heaters for your pool, but you're not trying to actively manage the temperature.
Jarred [00:05:44] No. If you're heating your pool or spa, you just needed chlorine to make sure that it was sanitary and safe.
Eric [00:05:49] Right. You just have to account for it. That's what we're saying. You just need it in the LSI formulation. And it's the top item on our app for a reason. It's the very first thing at the top of the agenda app. And so when you put in that temperature, which brings us to our second take away, it is your baseline, no matter what it is, if it's cold, hot, whatever, that is the baseline that you have to work around.
Jarred [00:06:11] To clarify here, it's the water temperature, not the air temperature.
Eric [00:06:17] Yes. And actually, I have the beta version of the Orenda app that I'm going to put on the screen right now. And for those of you listening at home, by the time this gets published, it's going to be on your phone, too. It's going to be the net, the normal. For the longest time, we just had temperature written there. Now it says water with degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius, depending on which way if you use the metric system or not. So.
Eric [00:06:45] [00:06:45]Here is the Orenda app. Now, Jared, I'm going to have you. Just for the purposes of illustration. And I will explain to our audio listeners, this is the default setting of the Orenda LSI calculator screen. Jared, how warm is your pool today? [14.6s]
Jarred [00:07:01] My pool is eighty five degrees today.
Eric [00:07:03] Eighty five degrees. So we're just gonna just this dial and we're raising the temperature up to eighty five. Now at the bottom of this entire column of numbers, we have a left side and a right side is the LSI. And right now that number is red. So let's do textbook perfect water chemistry. Jared, what should the pH be.
Jarred [00:07:22] Let's go seven five pH. Let's go. Two hundred and fifty calcium. OK, go. One hundred alkalinity and let's go with - I'm doing a good job of maintaining my stabilizer levels. I'm going to put it at 40.
Eric [00:07:38] Okay. I like that.
Jarred [00:07:41] And TDS is probably gonna be around 400.
Eric [00:07:44] Four-hundred is very, very low. I mean, you have 250, you have at least 350. And in calcium and alkalinity, you probably more like 800 right?
Jarred [00:07:52] Nahhhh Maybe it give it six hundred. I'll be we'll be optimistic here.
Eric [00:07:56] Wow. Zero point zero zero perfect water. Now that's at eighty five degrees. [00:08:02]Now to illustrate just how important water temperature is on the right side, I'm going to lower it down as if this exact same pool with this exact same perfect water chemistry. [8.1s] I mean, this is textbook perfection. What you just listed, seven point four to seven point six on pH is what the textbook says is ideal. You're right in the middle at seven point five. Same with alkalinity. One hundred. That's great. Watch what happens when I lower the temperature. We're at zero point zero zero right now, which is perfectly balanced. I'm going to drop it down to 60 degrees right there were it negative zero point two three in the yellow. Now we're still technically safe, but we're getting close to that minus point three o, which is etching. And at 51 degrees, we start etching. Will your pool get below 51 degrees in the winter?
Jarred [00:08:52] Absolutely. The floor where I am in Texas, north Texas, is about 40 degrees.
Eric [00:08:58] OK, so let's go down 40 degrees. Minus zero point four three in the red etching. Now, you cannot maintain these exact same numbers in the winter, so this demonstrates the importance of using temperature as a baseline. And fortunately, it's not going to plummet from eighty five degrees to 40 degrees overnight. This is going to happen over several months. So the strategy that we recommend is to use temperature, like I said, and this is the second of our four takeaways. Use it as the moving baseline. Use it to predict where you're going. So every week or, you know, if it's winter, maybe you're going once a month or if you're a homeowner. Just don't helicopter parent your pool. But you know about where that temperature is headed. Adjust accordingly as it's moving. So I'm just going to reset this back to eighty five and let's say it's about to drop five degrees. Well, that's no big deal because you're still pretty well balanced. But you might want to raise a little bit of calcium for the winter. And then it drops down to, say, 70. We're going to raise our calcium from to 80 until it gets to zero point zero. Now we're at about 350. Eventually, you're going to get all the way down to... Forty degrees. And now we're right on the cusp of etching. So we might need a little bit more alkalinity and let the pH naturally rise up and it'll probably get up to about eight maybe. And you're going to be able to stay in the green. You may not even need 120. There's a lot of different ways you can do this. So play around with it on the app. When you get a chance. But there's a lot of different ways to predict what you're going to need to do to keep your water balanced as the temperature plummets. Would you agree with that, Jarred?
Jarred [00:10:54] I agree. And this comes into play most of the time. Not that it doesn't where I am. We don't close pools in North Texas and really kind of lower. But I know like in the Northeast, the Midwest, the Northwest. When you close a pool down, you know it's going to get really cold. So when you close the pool plan for it.
Eric [00:11:15] Yeah. [00:11:16]The analogy I give is if you know your pool is going to freeze or get really cold, even if it doesn't quite freeze, I think of that swimming pool as a grizzly bear that's going into hibernation in the fall. You better feed it because if it has to wake up in the middle of the winter to eat, it's not going to be pretty. It's going to be eating your surface looking for calcium. [19.3s] Of course, if you have a plaster type finish, pebble, quartz, normal plaster, whatever it is. Well, there's plenty of calcium for that water to take. And it'll etch your pool and it'll cause issues that'll cause discolorations. It can cause calcite crystals to form. It can cause winter dust. All of these are an LSI Consequence. And it's just a consequence of your water trying to balance itself. The alternative is to predict where your temperature is going to be and build a strategy around the LSI so that you are going to feed the water what it needs going into the winter so that it doesn't have the physical ability to feed on your walls. That means more calcium. That means a higher pH. Good luck trying to keep a seven point four pH when it's 40 degrees in your water. That's 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Seven point four pH almost guaranteed to etch. So look at the LSI first as your main strategy. Nobody's swimming in 40 degree water. At least they shouldn't be. And the other thing is, in 40 degree water, you're not really going to have much contamination that can survive. It's not going to be able to reproduce. So you don't - Chlorination is no longer the top priority. We should say. It is in the summertime. Absolutely. It's very important. Keep your water safe.
Jarred [00:12:53] You still need chlorine there, especially with pools that don't close, that have hot tubs, because-
Eric [00:12:58] Sure.
Jarred [00:12:59] We use hot tubs in the wintertime pretty frequently. But you need a very moderate level of chlorine for that.
Eric [00:13:06] Yeah, well, but again, you're heating up the water to use it, which is a temperature change. So be aware of that.
Eric [00:13:16] [00:13:16]Most pool damage. That's the third takeaway. Most pool damage happens during the winter because that bear was not properly fed before it hibernated. [7.9s] And it has to find equilibrium. So as the temperature drops and that number, like we just showed you, goes into the red. That means it's starving for calcium. So the water's going to go and find it in the most readily available place first. And that's going to usually be the surface. So it will take that into solution. Now, when it dissolves your plaster type finish. It has a very high pH. If it's pulling calcium hydroxide or calcium carbonate that it breaks down. That is a high pH. Calcium hydroxide has a twelve point six pH. It pulls that into the water and spikes the pH of your pool. For those of you listening, who winterize swimming pools, you probably already know when you come back that pH is sky high. You can't even measure how high it is. It's way over eight. And the reason for that is the water - that's evidence - the water. Etched. It found its way to equilibrium in the coldest months and the only way that it could do that on the LSI is by having a very high pH. So, you know, the water will eat until it can't eat anymore, it cannot oversaturate itself with calcium. [00:14:32]But if you're at 32 degrees, freezing that water will eat until it's zero point zero on the LSI at 32 degrees. [6.7s] Worst case scenario, but here comes the second wave of problems. Let's say you're in January and your pool's frozen and it's a perfect LSI equilibrium because it etched all the way going into the winter. And you have this, you know, I don't know, a 10 pH, let's say nine and a half. Very high pH, whatever it is, that water probably looks pretty good at that time, but then the temperature starts going up again. And as that temperature goes up, if you follow along on the LSI calculator, you will see that a degree difference of thirty two to forty two may not be a huge deal. But go up to 52 degrees. Now you're talking about a 20 degree difference and it's going to start scale forming. 50, 60, 70... By the time the service company comes to open that pool, that water temperature is going to likely be in the 60s. That's a huge difference from 32. [00:15:36]And this is when you get conditions like crystals and winter dust, [2.5s] because now the chemistry has radically changed once again. Jared, you haven't experienced that in Texas. But again, I'm in the Northeast and we can both speak to the fact of how many customers we've gained from this issue, just teaching them that this is not scale. This is not a scale problem. This is actually the opposite of scale. Your water was undersaturated and it had to eat.
Jarred [00:16:01] Now, a lot of times when I get calls on the help line, it's always know where it's going to go. Somebody calls me, they say, 'hey, I just opened my pool and I just replastered it within the last year or two.' Every time somebody says, 'I just replastered my pool and I just opened it,' I automatically know where this conversation is going. They say, 'it's really rough.' Well, that's that's exactly what happened. Your roughness is the crystals that are cutting people's feet at times. And and fixing that problem is not an easy thing to fix. You cannot put calcium back into the surface once it comes out. And, I know we keep referencing plaster finishes just because that's where this is most prevalent. Obviously, vinyl liner and fiberglass pools. They're impacted by the water temperature just in different ways. But the most dramatic change or difference is on plaster finishes. That's why we keep referencing it.
Eric [00:17:06] And plaster finishes. That's any cement based finish. That's a pebble finish. That's a quartz finish, too. So let's not fall victim to semantics there. If you have cement based even an all tile pool has tile grout. So, what you'll notice in those pools is the pH is very, very high and it's probably going to be pretty rough or you'll have white dust everywhere in it. Look like your pool, your beautiful dark blue pool faded to gray and there's little tiny rings around every little pelt, sorry, every little pebble of aggregate. And all of that is evidence of an LSI violation in the wintertime because temperature was ignored.
Eric [00:17:47] The way to prevent all those issues is simply to not ignore temperature and prepare for it. And I will tell you, it's going to need more calcium. [00:17:55]The lower the temperature, the lower your LSI. It is a direct correlation. So what that really means is let's give a real world example. If I had sugar and I was dissolving it into my drink, then just for conversation's sake, it's just a glass of water. I can add some sugar I stirred around. [18.0s] It will dissolve. All add more sugar and it will dissolve, but at some point I had too much sugar, and no matter how hard I stir, it's not going to dissolve. Right, and just settle to the bottom. The reason it can't dissolve. You're probably thinking at home as well. Clearly, the water can't hold anymore. And you would be correct. Replace the word sugar with calcium. And that's basically the LSI. Too much sugar in your drink, i.e. too much calcium carbonate in your pool means a high LSI. And the water has to precipitate it out or it just has to be. It just can't hold it anymore. So you get scale. The difference here. There's two main differences between sugar and calcium. Water doesn't care if it doesn't have sugar. It's fine, it doesn't really need sugar. Water will stop at nothing if it's hungry for calcium. It needs calcium. Bad. Because calcium carbonate in particular is what we're measuring the balance on. So, if you're measuring the balance of your water and its saturation point, that's the saturation of calcium carbonate. If you don't have enough, the water will stop at nothing to get it. It doesn't care about sugar. It absolutely cares about calcium and the other big difference is. If you want it to dissolve more sugar and water, all you have to do to that water is heat it up.
Eric [00:19:35] If you've ever cooked and made cranberry sauce or something like that, you you actually heat up water to almost a boiling point and you can dissolve a lot of sugar in hot water. Calcium is the opposite. [00:19:48]The colder the water, the more calcium it can hold. And that's why it lowers the LSI cold water more aggressive. It is hungry for more calcium. [10.1s] And that's something that we did not understand until we made our own app and played around with temperature and had this epiphany of, oh, my God, this is why those problems keep happening. So keep that in mind that it's a moving baseline and that when it's cold, that is when your pool is most vulnerable. And I know that sounds crazy because nobody's in it. Everyone, you know, we just covered it up for the winter. We shouldn't have to think about it till the spring. And in an ideal world, you'd be right. But in the real [00:20:32]world, there's a lot going on under that cover if you didn't feed that water properly. [4.0s] Whereas if you did, you're right. You don't have much to worry about if you winterized it The Orenda Way, we have that procedure in the app. We also have it on our Web site. It's a pretty simple procedure. You feed the water, the LSI balance it will need at its coldest and you get rid of nutrients and all sorts of organics. And that's a separate conversation. You can look at that procedure online. But almost all the pool damage occurs during the winter.
Eric [00:21:06] And finally, to our fourth take away, [00:21:08]Jared. Temperature determines where scale forms. [4.7s] You've probably seen this before, haven't you?
Jarred [00:21:17] [00:21:17]Spillways, timeline's salt sells and heat exchangers. [3.6s] All the hottest points of your pool. Period.
Eric [00:21:27] So let me give a real world example for those of you listening here. Let's get out of the swimming pool for a moment and let's think of our house. My old apartment had scale like thick calcification on the showerhead, but I never saw it in the bathtub. And I learned since being at Orenda that that's a temperature violation of the LSI. It was way hotter at the head of that shower, and because it was hot scale formed there. But it wasn't in my bathtub. And that's because it lost so much temperature by hitting me, aerating out, you know, it had plenty of place to release heat. So it didn't precipitate scale all over the tub. It did in concentration because the pipes got so hot. So, temperature - the high temperature is going to be the first place for scale forms. [00:22:18]If you have an LSI violation, it's almost always local. It's localized. It's not everywhere in your pool at one time. This is the same on the high end of the LSI with scale and the same at the low end with etching. Like, for instance, if you have a Trichlor floater and you've got tabs of chlorine with a low pH floating around in your pool... If that floater hangs out on top of a step, that step is going to etch. Or if you have a vinyl liner, is going to fade faster than anything else. Because the pH around that is so much lower that it is now a localized LSI violation. And that water around that floater is hungry for calcium. So it's gonna etch. [43.2s]
Eric [00:23:03] It's the same on the high side of the LSI. Scale cannot form in colder water if there's hotter water nearby. It will only form in the hottest place first, because if you take the calculator and you raise the temperature, you're gonna see the LSI goes way up. And it's temperature driven. So we know the first place you will have scale in your pool is going to be the hottest place. Almost always, if you have a salt cell, it's going to be in the salt cell for two reasons: heat (they get very hot) and number two is the high pH generated through electrolysis. [00:23:39]Yes, salt pools are chlorine pools, site generated chlorine. [4.0s]
Eric [00:23:44] So right there, you have all the makings for an LSI violation. But as we've learned recently. And Gerard can attest to this. Most scale doesn't actually form very fast. You have to have a very, very high pH. It forms over time. Jared, when do you think most scale actually forms an a salt cell? Is it when the water's running or when it's not running?
Jarred [00:24:12] That's when it sits there with a higher temperature at a higher pH for an extended period of time and just happens over and over and over again. And then eventually it forms a thick enough piece of scale, that it builds up. Most salt cells have a cleaning function now. And that's where we begin to see those flakes, the flaking. A lot of questions. A lot of questions about flaking.
Eric [00:24:34] Oh, boy, do we. [00:24:35]We get a lot of questions about "calcium snowflakes" that blow out through the inlets from a salt pool. [5.2s]
Jarred [00:24:41] Which technically that's a good thing because that means your salt cells cleaning itself how it should.
Eric [00:24:48] Yeah, I guess. Well, the reason it happened there is the scale really didn't form that much while the water was flowing. It didn't have much time unless you're running it 24/7 and over, you know, over the course of a few weeks, it can happen.
Eric [00:25:02] But most salt cells don't run 24 hours a day. What happens is when the pump shuts off and the salt cell shut off at the same time, that salt cell's still really hot. And now you have stagnant water just sitting there, festering in this warm salt cell. On these hot blades. And that sodium hydroxide that was created by the salt cell can't get flushed out. So now you have a really high pH and a really high temperature with stagnant water. Of course, scale is going to form there. And eventually it will get broken off into flakes and go into your swimming pool and everyone freaks out. Well, it doesn't doesn't hurt anything except our feelings. It's just scale. [00:25:40]But the way you prevent that is you make sure that you can cool down that system effectively and flush it out with water. The other way you prevent that is to balance the LSI of your pool. [9.2s] Every time you treat it, that's the big action step here. And Jared, the other place that always gets scale first and by the way, you don't see it, but it's inside the heater, inside that heat exchanger because once again, temperature. Now, let's talk about where do you see scale? Like, where do you actually see scale? You can't see inside a salt cell very easily or inside a heater. Where around the pool do you see it first?
Jarred [00:26:17] Yeah, it's on the spillway in the tile line. And I'm doing a scale treatment today on my pool.
Eric [00:26:23] OK. It's on the spillway?
Jarred [00:26:25] Oh, yes. The spillway and tile line.
Eric [00:26:28] That has to do with evaporation and the fact that it is the hottest places. You have a spillway from a warmer spa that you heat up more often than your pool and it goes to a higher temperature, warmer water that trickles over and there's evaporation, too. So evaporation reduces the water, but it actually artificially raises the LSI. Largely because when you reduce the water, it increases the mineral content, which raises your alkalinity and it raises your calcium and you have an LSI violation. And of course, it's compounded by direct sunlight, which is very hot.
Jarred [00:27:03] Well, I have the stones that it precipitates on their darker than anything else. So the sun absorbs that heat better. And so therefore it forms a lot easier around those darker stones. And the darker tile line. So that's why.
Eric [00:27:17] Well, sure. And generally speaking, the hottest water in your pool is in the first few inches right at the surface. The coldest water is going to be down by your main drain. Generally speaking, because that's just how temperature stratifies. So if you do have - I'm using air quotes - "scale." At the bottom of your pool, it's probably not scale. [00:27:39]And if it is, it was locally forced there. And most often, if that's the case, like discoloration or mottling of plaster, it's a consequence of acid use because acid is denser than water. It can go punch its way right to the bottom. Create a local low LSI violation because it's so acidic. But it pulls out high pH calcium hydroxide, which neutralizes the acid, and now you actually have a rebound. And locally to the surface, you actually have a very high LSI violation. I know it sounds complex and conflicting, but this is very true. So you put acid in a column or something and it goes to the bottom. You can actually get scale formation over time down there and it'll turn white. [45.2s] That is from acid abuse. If you properly measure and dilute your acid in a bucket like you should, that shouldn't happen. But we see it all the time.
Jarred [00:28:35] They would call it discoloration or mottling.
Eric [00:28:37] Yeah, mottling or discoloration. What it is, is that it's actually pigment loss. And eventually you can actually get scale on top of the little pebble aggregate. We've seen it up close. It's the weirdest thing. You look at scale on the pebbles. And yet you look at etch cement around the pebbles. That is an acid violation of the LSI. So it's all localized. So, again, temperature determines where the scale is going to be. It will always, always, always form in the hottest places first.
Jarred [00:29:05] And, you know, quite honestly, we we view scale as a problem or a nuisance, which granted it is. But there are products, there's products on the market that can remove scale. Scale is not the worst thing that can happen to your pool. We can fix it.
Eric [00:29:22] We're one of like 15 products in the pool business that can remove scale its chelation, sequestering agents. I mean, we can all break down calcium carbonate and bring it back into solution as long as the water has enough time to soak it. That's that's the key. You have to be able to actually break down that scale. You could also put acid on it if you wanted to be aggressive. And Jared. I mean, you could physically remove scale with, like, bead blasting or like a screwdriver if you wanted to. [00:29:50]How do you go about your scale removal regiment? What are you doing on your pool right now? [4.1s]
Jarred [00:29:55] [00:29:55]Right now, what I did was I lowered my pH down to roughly seven, three, seven four, and I brought my water level up to the overflow drain. [9.9s] I could plug it if I want to, but I don't really have a lot of scale on my timeline that much. It's very faint. So I think it will do the job. If I had it really thick, I would plug my overflow drain, raise it up over there so that I got all of the scale under the waterline. And then I added a quart per ten thousand gallons of the SC 1000. And I'm just going to let it go.
Eric [00:30:26] And then you'll follow up next week with the weekly dose?
Jarred [00:30:30] Yeah, the weekly dose. But I'm keeping a log and I took some pictures, obviously, just for our sake. And I let it build up on purpose because I knew I was gonna do a treatment just to see what impact it would have on different levels or thicknesses of calcium.
Eric [00:30:47] Mm hmm. So you deliberately allowed an LSI violation for this experiment? We're not recommending those of you listening to do that, but we deal with scale problems all the time at Orenda. I mean, we get calls from the Help Desk. I would say at least half of them are calcium related. They're LSI problem related. Wouldn't you say? Maybe more than that?
Jarred [00:31:07] Absolutely they are. And I could have stopped the scale buildup two months ago, but I knew that I wanted it. I wanted to test this theory out and test the product just to - obvioulsy I know how it works. But just so that we could have some B-Roll and some pictures and some video.
Eric [00:31:23] Mm hmm. Right. Right. Well, I guess that's those are all the points I had. Just a quick recap. Go ahead Jarred.
Jarred [00:31:31] There was one point that we really need to touch on, and it's for the people in colder climates that do year-round maintenance or they do it, let's say winter watch checks. [00:31:39]If you're checking the water chemistry, the temperature is very important because what is it? Is it below sixty five degrees or sixty degrees - ? [9.3s]
Eric [00:31:49] Depends on test kit. I've heard fifty five. I've heard 50 degrees. I've heard 60 degrees.
Jarred [00:31:53] But either way, let's just say [00:31:55]you're going to want your water to be over 65 degrees to be safe, to get an accurate reading if you're testing water that is 40 degrees. It's not going to be as accurate as 70 degree water. So it's good practice. [14.6s]
Eric [00:32:10] The reagents won't work as well. Test strips won't work as well. So the the best practice. How do you overcome that, Jarred? Do you get a sample of water? What do you do?
Jarred [00:32:20] I'd say put it in your truck for at least five or 10 minutes. You do want to take the water sample relatively soon after you take the sample from the pool, because if you wait an hour or two hours or three hours, it's going to be different, not dramatically different, but it will be different. So you want to let that water warm up to, say, 65 degrees in your truck or hold it in your hands for a little while and then check the chemistry to get a more accurate reading.
Eric [00:32:47] [00:32:47]I've made this mistake and I don't know if you remember that pool in Georgia. It was the middle of winter. And I tested it and I said, 'wow! This this calcium hardness is through the roof." I was doing a drop test, a titration, and it was not through the roof. It's just that the reagents weren't working. They weren't reacting because the water was like 40 degrees. So you have to warm it up. And we ended up taking in a bottle. I think I called you or I called Harold and ended up taking a bottle into the house and just talking for 15 minutes and then tested it again and found out the calcium was 220. [35.7s]
Jarred [00:33:24] Oh, yeah. You'd see a dramatic difference.
Eric [00:33:26] Oh, yeah. I must have put 40 drops in and I wasn't getting anything going on. So. Yeah. Temperature of your sample. That's a good addition to this.
Jarred [00:33:35] Oh yeah. I had a customer not beat a dead horse here, but same thing. Customer calling me from Oklahoma. They do our startup. We'll touch on that later. But, you know, he was adding calcium to take it up to, you know, 300 on fill. And he called me the following day, said, hey, I think I did something wrong. My calcium levels like 500 plus Did I pull all of that calcium from my plaster? And I was thinking, no, that didn't make sense. Granted, it was January when he called me. So I said, take a water sample inside. Check it out. That's how I figured it out. He called me back an hour later, said, man, I was right on the money. I took that calcium levels at like 260. I said, well, it's a good thing you didn't, you know, add more calcium or take more calcium away or drain it down or dilute it because you would have had another issue to deal with. So, Water temperature is very important.
Eric [00:34:25] And on startups, it is, too. If you're doing a startup in the winter. Just be aware if you have that water trucked in, it could be cold from the truck. It can be cold from the ground. I'm from Virginia. Even in the summer, the tap water that we measured was fifty five degrees Fahrenheit. That's not warm. OK. And so you got to let that sample warm up before you test it. But anyway, let's let's kind of get back and wrap this episode up. We've taken enough of your time. Thank you so much for listening to it.
Eric [00:34:52] This has been Episode five of The Rule Your Pool podcast. And if you understand the LSI and all the factors, you know, temperature and the previous two, which were pH and Alkalinity and the next few that we're going to get through, you will be able to rule your pool because you will understand the basics of the physics of what water's actually trying to do. The whole point of this podcast is to deliver information so that you can adjust water on your terms. But according to the physical needs that water has, so you're not fighting it. And so today's four takeaways were that water temperature is the easiest thing to measure. Yet it's the most ignored. Don't let that happen to you. If you're a homeowner listening to this, get a thermometer, put it in your pool that costs less than 10 bucks. If you're a pool service professional, you need a thermometer and encourage your homeowners to have their own. The second takeaway was that it's a moving baseline when your temperature goes up, you have to act differently. You have to treat that water differently than when it's going down or when it's cold, etc.. It's a moving baseline to build your LSI strategy around. And the third takeaway is that almost all pool damage happens in the wintertime because cold water is more aggressive and there's a lot of varying consequences. Pool vinyl liners fade. Fiberglass pools, they start turning white when their gel coat breaks down because of an LSI violation. And then the next spring, you start chlorinating and it starts oxidizing the broken down jell coat and it turns white. And everyone thinks it's scale. It's actually not. And the final takeaway is that temperature determines where scale forms. So if you see it on the bottom of your pool, it happened for a reason. Feel free to contact Orenda. We deal with it all the time. We're happy to help you figure out what is going on. Jared. Are there any last words that you have for this episode before we sign off?
Jarred [00:36:50] Nope, none here. I think the main thing is if anybody does have any questions or comments or anything they'd like for us to touch on, leave a comment in the section below or email us. Call us. Happy to help out any way we can.
Eric [00:37:05] Yeah, absolutely. So thanks again. This is episode five of The Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm Eric. That's Jared. Thanks so much for your time, everyone.
OUTRO [00:37:14] Thank you for listening to Rule Your Pool. A podcast by Oenda Technologies. For more information on what we discussed this week's episode. Check the links in the description or visit www.orendatech.com. I hope you find this show valuable enough that you tap that subscribe button and share it with your friends. You can also like us on Facebook and social media. With our help, you'll be able to rule your pool without overtreating of chemicals wasting money. I'll see you next episode.