Eric outlines everything done to his fixer-upper pool this year. Ever since the green pool cleanup was completed on May 14, physics has taken control of the water, making it incredibly reliable and predictable. Every chemical and action has been documented throughout the year, so Eric explains exactly how he ruled his pool.
00:00 - 🎶 The man who rules his poolÂ
02:36 - How I ruled my pool this summer
03:43 - Spreadsheet documentation
04:42 - Pool Volume: approximately 24,000 gallons
06:05 - May 9-14: Green pool cleanup
07:57 - May 14: Balance the LSI
12:08 - Leaves, debris, vacuuming and dilution
13:45 - Weekly liquid chlorine and CV-600 enzymes
15:02 - Two major rain storms and mud slides
16:46 - Add it all up
17:59 - Alkalinity: maintained thanks to liquid chlorine?
21:47 - Other products used
24:24 - Summary
26:43 - Chlorination
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127. The man who rules his pool
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How I ruled my pool this summer
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[00:02:36] Eric Knight: This is episode 127 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host Eric Knight doing this one alone. Not because I like being alone, but it's really a schedule thing. It is October of 2023. And I've got a lot of stuff to share with you. As you know, I bought a fixer upper pool. And I've talked about it in a few episodes. We've done a lot of this on Facebook live. So if you follow us on Facebook, Orenda Technologies, you've probably seen it.
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[00:02:59] We had a theory. And I say, we, I mean, I really mean me, but I feel like you're part of this journey. How far can physics go? Can we push it past its limits? Can we break Henry's Law? Can we break the LSI? Is there some mechanism that I can try to really see how far this can be pushed? And that's what I tried to do.
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[00:03:21] And you will see from the results, they are pretty astounding. It's not just theory. I wanted to make sure what we are teaching you on this podcast is real and proven in the field. So, I did it on my pool. A pool that I have complete control over. I don't have to ask permission for anybody to do anything. I can do whatever I want to it. And I did.
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Spreadsheet documentation
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[00:03:43] I could go through every single thing that I did to this pool. I've got it in a spreadsheet in front of me. I'm looking at it. No show notes for this episode, just a spreadsheet. In the first column, I've got the dates of whatever I did. And then I have the action, the chemicals if used, the amount of those chemicals, and a description. So that's kinda how I mapped it throughout the summer ever since the green pool cleanup.
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[00:04:07] And a lot of it is just repetitive because I wanted to standardize this. I wanted to make sure that I was doing pretty much the same thing every time I chemically treated it. And then I was looking for things. I was looking for algae. I was looking for scale. I was looking if anything was going wrong. If I had to remediate. So as we go through this. I'm going to kind of accelerate and go through because there's a lot of entries here. We have essentially done 22 weeks since the green pool cleanup. Okay, so let's start at the top. And I'm going to tell you the sum of all of this stuff at the end.
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Pool volume: approximately 24,000 gallons
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[00:04:42] I estimate that this pool in my backyard has about 24,000 gallons. I've measured it out. I'm trying to get an average depth. It's not exact. I know that because it's kind of an oblong, curvy pool. I don't know the length of the plumbing, that kind of thing. So is it perfect? No. But when I renovate this pool, mark my words. When I do the start-up after this thing gets redone, I will be putting water meters on the hoses. And I will know exactly how full this pool is. I will know the exact volume. It'll have new plumbing in it, but I want to be that precise.
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[00:05:16] And if you are a homeowner listening to this, if your pool is getting refilled, or resurfaced, or renovated, or whatever, put water meters on the hoses. Insist that your pool pro does so. It's easy. And if you are in an area that your swimming pools get filled up with trucks, still use a water meter on the hose. And then ask the truck driver, how many gallons is in this truck? Oh, you're doing four of these trucks? Add that to whatever the meter on the hose says, and you're going to having much more precise pool volume. Write it down. The more accurate your pool volume, the more accurate your doses.
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[00:05:50] I bring that up because everything that I did is based on my estimate of 24,000 gallons. It could be wrong, but I'm here to tell you it worked. So I know I'm not that far off. So let's get to it.
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May 9-14: Green pool cleanup
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[00:06:05] May 9th: green pool cleanup. Now, if you remember on May 9th on Facebook live, I did this process, and I was so focused on talking to you on the camera that I didn't brush. And that was a huge mistake. Because it took several extra days. It should have been about a 48 hour process. It ended up being like four or five days. My bad.
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[00:06:28] If you're following our process, stir it up. Brush it. Get as much debris off the bottom as you possibly can. We did get a lot of debris off the bottom, but it wasn't nearly enough and I should have stirred it all up. It would have been a much more effective process. So it took some time. Lesson learned. In fact, I'm actually debating. Next spring, just letting it turn into a swamp again just so I can show how to do it right. I mean, why not? It's my pool. Might as well, right?
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[00:06:55] Okay. So here's what I used. I used liquid chlorine, CV-600 enzymes and PR-10,000.
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[00:07:03] That was it. That was the whole green pool cleanup. Specifically, we did a purge dose of CV-600 enzyme, that was 2.5 quarts, and the same amount of PR-10,000 phosphate remover. I also used six gallons of liquid chlorine. You can watch this video on Facebook live. That was on May 9th.
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[00:07:23] Over the next few days, I was just waiting for it to fall out. And I had multiple videos between May 9th and May 14th. And on May 14th I finally got it cleaned up. I was scooping things off the bottom and vacuuming it to waste. It was a real mess. Thank you Rick Fenton. You are the man. He left me his portable cart with a vacuum on it. The trash vacuum pump. It was great. I was able to get it all out. And it was a laborious process. So had I brushed it the first time, it would've been a much easier process to do. But in any event, I'm very grateful for his help.
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May 14: Balance the LSI
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[00:07:57] So on May 14th, I balanced the LSI and got this party started. I added exactly 100 pounds of calcium chloride. This raised the calcium hardness to 400 parts per million.
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[00:08:11] In order to do that, I needed to lower the absurdly high pH because the pool was green. And I needed to lower that with 42 fl.oz. of muriatic acid. I decreased the pH so that the calcium could be added. Now this calcium that I added was chelated with SC-1000. Did a full purge, 2.5 quarts. Because I wasn't really needing to chlorinate yet, other than for the green pool cleanup. So I didn't put SC-1000 in initially until the pool was clear. So I did the full purge, knowing that I wasn't going to be able to told chlorine for, you know, four or five days maybe.
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[00:08:46] Most of that SC-1000, if you remember, went in with my calcium chloride. I actually used my start-up barrel. I have a start-up barrel that I let some customers use. I put it on the side of the pool. I put the 100 pounds of calcium chloride in the barrel. I put, I think one of those two and a half quarts directly in the barrel, the rest of it went right into the skimmer. Got it all cleared, put all of the acid, 42 ounces of acid, in that barrel, which is a little more than we recommend. But again, I was here to experiment. I want to push things to the limit. I just wanted to see if it was a problem. It wasn't, the barrel held up just fine. Cleared it right up. Put it in the pool. And that acid allowed for that calcium to stay in solution.
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[00:09:29] I did the calculation of what 42 ounces was going to do to my alkalinity. I needed to go up to about 60. All right. And that was 8.41 pounds of sodium bicarb. Essentially I did calcium, SC-1000, and acid in the barrel. Dissolved it pre-chelated it, got it in the pool.
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[00:09:49] Then I went over to the other side of the pool, grabbed a bucket of water, put 8.41 pounds of bicarb in there, and started mixing it up. Now you would never put this in the same barrel. But I went to the other side of the pool and I started slowly adding the bicarb.
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[00:10:05] It didn't cloud up, so I was able to get it all in, no issues. If it had started clouding, I would have stopped, diluted more, or I would have waited till the next day. Because I don't want to create a local LSI violation, but it didn't happen. So I was pretty grateful with that.
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[00:10:19] So that's basically where we started. That's May 14th. That's a very important day. Because, spoiler alert, that was the last day this entire year that I added sodium bicarb or acid.
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[00:10:35] Let me repeat that. The last time I added any sodium bicarb or muriatic acid to this pool was May 14th.
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[00:10:46] I am recording this on October 13th. It has been 22 weeks. Remember how I said, I really wanted to push this to the limits? I wanted to run an experiment and see what the extremes of what we're teaching could possibly be. I'm not recommending you do exactly what I did. I'm just telling you my experience of what we did to see if it was even possible.
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[00:11:10] And the results are astounding. Come to find out, physics always does exactly what it's going to do. And we have the functionality in the Orenda app that shows the pH ceiling and it tells you exactly, based on your chemistry, how high that pH is going to get. And it was right.
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[00:11:30] I never had an LSI violation ever since May 14th. It's been balanced ever since. So here's how that happened. I go basically twice a week into my backyard, if I'm in town. Sometimes it's a full week, sometimes it's 10 days, sometimes I had to have a neighbor come over and do it. But every time I had them write down exactly what they did. Okay. I had the pool serviced twice by Rick. Thanks again, Rick. You're the man. And that's because I was out of town or it was something that I wasn't qualified to do. Like one time I had an issue with the filter. Rick helped me out again. Thank you for everything. Everything else I did myself.
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Leaves, debris, vacuuming and dilution
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[00:12:08] I'm looking at my notes here pretty much every time I'm netting leaves. Because leaves are falling into my pool every day. In fact, I netted leaves this morning and this afternoon it's like, I didn't net anything. There's just hundreds and hundreds of leaves, especially now in October. They're starting to fall. But they were falling all summer. I have this big, I think it's a maple tree or something in the neighbor's yard and it just keeps dropping these big leaves into my pool. It's driving me nuts, honestly.
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[00:12:32] But anyway, I'm netting leaves. And about every third week, I'm vacuuming based on these notes. And the reason vacuuming matters is because I'm vacuuming to waste. And what that means is I'm diluting the pool. I'm taking whole water out and refilling it with my hose. I vacuumed, let me see here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six times.
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[00:13:01] That approximately takes me about 15 minutes. 15 minutes at... boy, I haven't really done this math, but 15 minutes at about 50 gallons a minute. So a 15 times 50. That's approximately 750 gallons. I vacuumed out of the pool this summer. So, you know, out of 24,000, it's not really that significant, but it does take the pool down an inch. You know, each time I do it, maybe an inch and a half, if it takes extra long. So that's the amount of dilution I had. And then I would refill periodically to replace evaporation or whatever.
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[00:13:36] I also had a lot of rain. We had some torrential thunderstorms this summer. So just assume when we go through this, that I'm physically getting leaves out and I've vacuumed six times.
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Weekly chlorine and CV-600 enzymes
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[00:13:45] Every single time I treated the pool I added either a half gallon of liquid chlorine or one gallon. I'm just going to run through these really quick. Week one. One gallon and then a half gallon on Saturday. On the 25th, I did a half gallon. I also did 12 ounces of CV-600 enzymes. Now again, 12 ounces is based on the idea that I have 24,000 gallons.
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[00:14:10] This pattern repeats itself every week. What I was doing was basically like Tuesday or Wednesday, I would do a half gallon of liquid chlorine. And then on the weekend I would do another half gallon. And 12 ounces of enzymes. And I did that repeatedly. So week one, that's what I did. Week two, same thing. Week three, same thing. Week four, same thing, but this time I added 16 ounces of PR-10,000 because my tap water has a bunch of phosphates and these leaves, they keep getting in the pool.
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[00:14:38] So this pattern repeats itself. On the seventh, I chlorinated again. I vacuumed, and this time I flushed the filter, backwashed it out and replaced the DE with six pounds. I ended up doing that three times plus the initial charging. So I went through exactly one box, which has four six pound bags of DE. And water quality is just outstanding. It's working well.
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Major rain storms / mud slides
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[00:15:02] Um, Chlorinate again. I just keep repeating this pattern. There's really only two anomalies to this pattern. I had two major rainstorms. One of them was on August 10th, and I had this mudslide from my yard. I put this on Facebook live by the way. And it flooded my pool with like mud green water. I mean overnight, like it looked fine the night before. And it was not fine when I woke up. Like really bad. And I could see it cause it was pouring. And it's just running down the sidewalk, floods my deck drain, and it just floods right into the pool.
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[00:15:38] That was a nightmare. But amazingly, by the time the rain stopped that afternoon, I put this on Facebook live too, I went out there and everything had settled to the floor. The water clarity was actually really good. CV-600 for the win. It really held together, which was great.
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[00:15:57] But it did put my phosphates through the roof. I did the red cap test with PR and the PR cap test got to like six foot diameter quickly. So I knew I had really high phosphates. So I did a treatment there. Um, chlorinated with a full gallon that time, not a half gallon. And then I just continued the pattern. Half gallon here, half gallon on the weekend, 12 ounces of enzymes. So on and so forth.
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[00:16:22] And then on August 31st, it happened again. I did another Facebook live. Vacuum to waste exact same thing happened. It settled to the floor, enzymes for the win. It was great. So I hit it again with PR. 16 more ounces.
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[00:16:37] Blah-blah-blah now we're in a September. Everything's the same, the same, the same. And then another PR treatment. So let me get to the sum of all of this.
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All added up
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[00:16:46] I added zero algaecides, zero mineral systems, zero supplemental, anything that was not called Orenda. Because I'm again, I'm trying to prove a point here.
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[00:16:57] Let's see. I added 17.5 gallons of liquid chlorine this summer since the rain pool cleanup. And that was six gallons. So, call it 23.5 gallons is what I added. Rick serviced the pool twice, and I think he used a gallon each time. So let's just call it. 26 gallons. Sure. 26 gallons approximately of chlorine went into my pool since May 14th. It is October 13th today. It's 26 gallons of liquid chlorine in 22 weeks.
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[00:17:27] As of today, I have added 100 pounds of calcium chloride, that was on May 14th. And I have not added any since. And I'm going to add 50 pounds, which will take me up to 520. Um, that's 170 parts per million and 24,000 gallons, that's what the Orenda Calculator says. It says 50.01 pounds. Perfect. I got a 50 pound bag. I'm ready to rock. So I'm going to use 150 pounds for the year, so that I'm ready for the winter. And that's approaching quickly here.
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Alkalinity: maintained thanks to liquid chlorine?
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[00:17:59] I am going to add 3.3 pounds of sodium bicarb. To go from 60 parts up to 70 parts. And before you ask. This is for the winter. I maintained my alkalinity between 50 and 60 pretty much the whole year. And oddly enough, this surprised me, I didn't add any bicarb since May 14th. I was expecting to have to do that because, you know, dilution and rain.
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[00:18:27] And I got to thinking about it. I realized I didn't have to do it because my liquid chlorine was doing it for me. Remember, I'm not adding acid. The reason that you don't ever see liquid chlorine or cal hypo increase, your alkalinity is because acid negates it. So the way it works is HOCl, hypochlorous acid, the bad-ass killing form of chlorine oxidizes something or kill something. It loses its oxygen and it creates hydrochloric acid, HCl, and it almost perfectly neutralizes itself.
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[00:18:59] So even though the product liquid chlorine has a very high pH of about 13, and cal hypo has a high pH of about 11 something. Once chlorine actually does its job, it brings its own pH down. But not quite. It's like 90 some percent. I'm sure there's a calculation for it. Bob Lowry's probably published it. I'd have to look for it. But essentially it's almost a wash. But it's not.
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[00:19:25] And that small percentage of additional hydroxide, sodium hydroxide for liquid chlorine, calcium hydroxide for cal hypo, contributes to alkalinity. And if you don't neutralize that with acid, it actually builds. This is exactly why pools that use carbon dioxide systems for pH management see their alkalinity go up. CO2 is not adding alkalinity to your pool. The chlorine is.
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[00:19:52] And that's what I noticed. I'm having torrential rain storms, and I'm vacuuming here and there. And I'm diluting with hose water. And my alkalinity out of the hose is 40. So it's not really a big source of alkalinity. And yet every time I tested this pool, my alkalinity was between five and six drops. It was between 50 and 60. It was amazing. Like every time. I don't think there was a single exception to this. It was in between five and six drops the entire summer. I call that predictable.
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[00:20:23] And yeah, I realized I probably got lucky that I had the right amount of dilution for this. But essentially what I'm saying here is. I hardly had to do anything to this pool chemically. Pretty amazing.
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[00:20:37] So I'm going to be adding 3.36 pounds to get up to 70 parts per million. I don't need 80. I don't need 90. I don't need 100. Because I'm going to have 520 calcium hardness. Now it may not be perfect, I may need to raise that. But it gives me a favorable pH ceiling so that when my temperature drops, that pH is going to stay at its ceiling and I'm going to be insulated for the winter. I've thought this through, at least that's my plan. And you know what? If I screw up and I grow calcium crystals or something, all the better for the audience.
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[00:21:08] I don't mind eating some humble pie here and there, but I don't think it's going to be a problem because I'm going to let my pH stay high. I'm going to let physics continue to take me through the winter because Hey, they took me through the summer. These laws of physics never went anywhere. Super reliable.
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[00:21:29] And if I go back to May 14th, it was 8.41 pounds of bicarb. Add that to 3.36 pounds, let's just call it 12 pounds of bicarb for the year. Yeah. 24,000 gallon pool, about 12 pounds of bicarb will be consumed for the year. Now let's keep moving.
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Other products used
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[00:21:47] As I said before, I did three filter cleanings and back washes. Each used a six pound bag of D.E., plus the original charging of that new filter grid that Rick installed for me. That's four bags, total that's 24 pounds of D.E.. Uh, not so bad.
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[00:22:03] Of the Orenda products, I used 146 ounces, 1.14 gallons, of CV-600 this summer. And that was since the purge. So if I include the purge, it was 1.77 gallons total. Again, I have 24,000 gallons approximately. If you have a pool about that size and you were thinking of implementing this program, get two gallons. You'll be fine. You may have some leftover, like I do.
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[00:22:28] But as far as I can tell, that's the reason my pool stayed so clear. And I mean that seriously, because the two mud slides and the leaves every day and all the organic material getting in there, these enzymes rocked. I don't have a scum line. My water looked great. I had two dogs in there for six hours on one day and I did a Facebook live. Now, some people will say a dog is worth 50 people. I don't really buy that. The better number I've heard is about seven people. That's probably more accurate, but I don't know. Maybe it is 50 people. Maybe it's between seven and 50. Who cares? It didn't matter.
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[00:23:03] Because CV-600 was in there working while I sleep. Think that's what really made this possible to keep this pool as clean as it was, because it was beautiful all summer long, except for two rainstorms. And they cleared quick. 1.77 gallons of CV-600 on the year for me.
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[00:23:20] And by the way, because I've been using it consistently every single week, 12 ounces, a week, 12 ounces a week, 12 ounces a week. I don't have to purge this fall. I already have my enzyme residual. My water temperature is 67º today. So I'm done for the year. I'm not going to use again until I purge in the spring. I should be good. And I know there's a ton of leaves getting in there, but the enzymes are in there. They're slowing down, but they're still in there.
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[00:23:44] As for PR-10,000 phosphate remover, I used a total of 64 ounces after the purge. And that was in 16 ounce increments. Every single time. So if I add in the purge. That's a total of 144 ounces or 1.13 gallons. If I didn't have to do the green pool cleanup, I would say two quarts. For 24,000 gallon pool, that's really all I used. You could probably get away with that. If I'm a homeowner with a pool my size, I get a gallon and I roll it over cause it's going to get you through much of your next season. None of our products expire unless they freeze. So I would just stored inside for the winter. And we're often running.
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Summary
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[00:24:24] So as a recap, I didn't have to add any bicarb all summer since May 14th, which is astounding to me. But again, the chlorine was doing that in my favor. So if you have a salt system, you probably would. But then again, I wasn't adding any acid. So if you're not adding any acid and you're letting physics do it for you, you may not have to.
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[00:24:43] I relied on Henry's law. I had a theory that if I set my pH ceiling into the green on our calculator, and that the LSI is balanced at that pH ceiling, I would be fine.
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[00:24:54] I'm happy to report. I was right.
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[00:24:56] I have cyanuric acid. Oh, that's the one thing I forgot to mention. I added about eight pounds of granular cyanuric acid. Here it is just under eight pounds. And that was to get my level up to 40. And then I re-upped that on July 10th. I added another 3.2 pounds. I want it to be between 30 and 50 cyanuric acid. And it worked. It worked really well. I did not add a single ounce of trichlor to this pool at all.
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[00:25:25] I have successfully used physics and not had to fight my pool. It is a beautiful thing. My question to you is if you were using traditional pool care methods, how much acid would you have gone through this year? 22 weeks.
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[00:25:40] Half gallon a week? A gallon a week?
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[00:25:45] 22 gallons, maybe? Maybe 11? Somewhere between those two? What about bicarb? You probably would have gone through at least 25 pounds of that. Probably would have gone through a lot more chlorine. I'm not going to try to prove a hypothetical. I'm not there, every pool is a little bit different, but what I do know is this. Physics always had my back and I never violated it.
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[00:26:09] I let my pH rise up to 8.02, the pH ceiling. And it stayed there. My LSI never got unbalanced. All I had to do was clean leaves, vacuum periodically, I chlorinated, put enzymes in each week, and do basically a monthly treatment of PR-10,000. That's what I did. I didn't have any chemical conflicts. I didn't have any long-term byproducts left behind. And everything I did was proactive. You can do this too.
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Chlorination
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[00:26:43] Now, commercial operators listening, you don't have the luxury of being able to do what I did. Because I let my pH go up. Because I had cyanuric acid, my chlorine was there. And it was there to perform. I kept my pH at the pH ceiling of about 8.02. And yes, it fluctuated here and there because of the rain and the dilution. But generally speaking, it was right around there. On the test kit. It was appearing to be perfectly on eight every single time. Exactly where I wanted it.
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[00:27:15] You can't let yours go up over 7.8 as it stands now, I get it. But I could. And most residential people here listening can do the same thing if they want. As long as you have some CYA, you can do that.
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[00:27:28] I only saw two or three spots, and I mean spots less than a quarter, of algae the entire summer. And they were after the mudslides. And they brushed off no problem, but I did see them. Uh, both on August 10th and on August 31st. Because of the mudslides.
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[00:27:48] I brushed it. They never came back. They never got hold. I have not had an algae problem. So it makes sense, like with a mudslide you're literally putting soil and grass and all sorts of stuff in there. And then I come back from a trip and my pool is brown and green from the stream. But I didn't have an algae problem. My chlorine performed fine. Every time I tested it, I had a residual. That's astounding. Can't hold chlorine for a week? The way I was able to do it was I chlorinated two times a week.
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[00:28:19] I understand for the pool pros, listening to this. You're there once every seven days. I get it. This is not meant to be a playbook for you to implement exactly like I did. I did this to prove a point. It's not us making this up. We didn't invent these physics. We didn't invent Henry's Law. We didn't invent the LSI. All we're doing is sharing it with you.
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[00:28:48] It's real. You don't have to believe it. But it's still going to happen.
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[00:28:55] Anyway. That's how I ruled my pool. This has been episode 127. Thank you for listening to me, find a way to somehow. Brag about this fixer upper pool that is not pretty. But the water was beautiful. I'm Eric Knight with Orenda, thank you so much for listening and if you have questions, our help center is ask.orendatech.com. Of course, the main website is just orendatech.com. If you have questions for me, or episode suggestions, the email address is podcast@orendatech.com. Thank you so much. God bless.
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