There are a ton of scenarios that can come into play when you're starting up a pool. The chemistry can be radically different even between pools across the street from one another. In this episode, Eric and Jarred go in-depth on the Orenda startup procedure, and how you can use it to prevent scale and etching on a freshly plastered pool.
00:25 - How to do the Orenda Startup
03:28 - Day One
06:11 - Considerations if the water is trucked in
09:18 - How to balance the water chemistry for startup
12:24 - What to do if your alkalinity is low
13:22 - What to do when your alkalinity is higher than your calcium
16:52 - Why chelate calcium?
21:46 - How much water is flowing out of the barrel
24:15 - When is it appropriate to do a bicarb startup instead of calcium?
31:57 - Day Two
32:20 - Do I need to brush? (Yes.)
33:01 - adding enzymes
35:06 - the rest of the 30 days
42:21 - when can I add cyanuric acid and when can I add salt?
46:01 - Do I need the Orenda startup?
Rule Your Pool is a podcast by Orenda Technologies. This show was created for pool owners, operators, and service pros who want the best water quality possible. If you want to know what's really going on with your swimming pool chemistry, this might be the podcast for you. Each week, we'll cover a new topic related to swimming pools, water chemistry, or indoor air quality. With our help, you'll be able to rule your pool without over-treating it with chemicals and wasting money.
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ERIC [00:00:00] Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast, I am Eric Knight, your host, and with me, as usual, Jared Morgan, my co-host. Jared, thanks for being here.
JARRED [00:00:10] Happy to be here.
ERIC [00:00:12] This is Episode 13. And if you remember, Jared, last week we recorded Episode 12, which was understanding the theory behind the Orenda startup. And today we're going to actually talk about the nitty gritty. We're talking about the details, [00:00:25]how to actually do an Orenda startup. [1.9s] And there's a lot of different variables because there's a lot of different types of startups, but they all kind of follow the same philosophy. So that's what we're going to be covering in this episode. Is there anything you'd like to add before we get right into it?
JARRED [00:00:40] No, just [00:00:41]there are a ton of scenarios that can come into play when you're starting up a pool [4.2s] with fresh water. So I'm actually going back to check on one today north of me. So we'll see.
ERIC [00:00:53] Nice. OK, well, let's get right into it. Episode 13 of The Rule Your Pool podcast, How to start up a Swimming Pool The Orenda Way.
INTRO [00:01:08] 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 roll your pool and let's go.
ERIC [00:01:30] So last episode we talked about the whole need for feeding the water, the LSI balance that it's going to crave, because if we don't, it's going to feed on this freshly troweled plaster surface. And before getting into this, I suppose I should mention, we're talking about cement based finishes here, vinyl liner pools and fiberglass pools. They should also have LSI balance. But you have more time because there's no source of readily available calcium in those surfaces so that water doesn't have the mechanism to correct itself right out of the gate like it does in a plaster type pool. Plaster, pebble, quartz, anything like that. So the consequences are a lot more dire on a pool that has a cement based finish that was just troweled in. And that's what we're really talking about. So we're really talking the first month here, the first, depending on who you ask. Twenty eight or thirty days. And I think we'll just say thirty days to keep it simple. That sound good to you?
JARRED [00:02:24] I agree. Or month, 30 days or a month.
ERIC [00:02:27] 30 days a month. Twenty eight days. Four weeks. I mean there's so many things, but generally speaking we're talking about thirty days before that plaster is mostly cured. And so what today is going to be is is actually walking you through the actual procedures. And before we get into it, all of this stuff is available on the Orenda app. It's just called Orenda. It's totally free. You will need the app if you're going to do our startup. It's in the play store and the App Store and just go to procedures startups day one through five guide. We also have blogs about it in the article section. We have videos about it. Jared is in a almost 13 minute video walking you through the whole platform startup and we're actually in the process of scripting the startup without the barrel. So there's lots of different ways you can do this. So just be aware. What we're trying to accomplish was discussed in Episode twelve. So if you haven't listened to Episode twelve, you should probably listen to that before listening to this. So, Jared, where would you like to start?
JARRED [00:03:28] [00:03:28]Let's start with I just had my pool plastered and I'm ready to start filling it up. [6.4s]
ERIC [00:03:35] OK, so traditionally I'm going to ask you I'm actually just going to kind of let you lead on this. I'm a homeowner. I don't know anything about swimming pool plaster, OK? I'm not a pool guy, so I just paid, let's call it ten thousand dollars for a new plaster job in my pool. And I'm trusting the professionals in my backyard that they know what they're doing. So they're still troweling in the pool. What happens next? Usually we're not talking the Orenda startup, just a traditional plaster - What happens?
JARRED [00:04:03] Usually is the plaster company will finish troweling the pool, doing any acid wash or exposures that they normally do, and then they will start filling the pool up with a water hose or a truck, depending on where you are.
ERIC [00:04:15] OK, so they just put the hose in the pool?
JARRED [00:04:18] Generally speaking, they tie it off with a float and let it start filling the pool up.
ERIC [00:04:24] OK, so by putting raw water directly in the bottom of the pool, it just runs continuously until it's full, right?
JARRED [00:04:32] Most of the time, there are some, I guess we call them horror stories, if you're a professional in the dustry, [00:04:39]when someone turns the water off in the middle of the night because they're concerned that it'll overflow, which is bad news bears. That's that's a perfect way to create a line in the middle of your plaster. [11.5s]
ERIC [00:04:51] I was just about to ask you, why is that bad news, Bears? Yeah, it will create a line. OK, so it's it's filling up at a pretty slow rate. I mean, if we're talking a backyard pool, it could take days to fill up a pool. It can also happen overnight if it's a pretty small pool. But you're talking about a garden hose or two, maybe three if you have them.
JARRED [00:05:08] The more the better. That's that's the key there. But, I mean, we've had some jobs take 12 hours and some jobs take three days. And it really depends on the water pressure and how many hoses you can get in there.
ERIC [00:05:20] OK, now there are other ways to actually fill up a pool besides a garden hose. I've been to one where they actually tapped into a fire hydrant and so they started it with a garden hose to get what they call a water cushion. I'm using air quotes about six inches of water in the bottom of the pool. And then they they got a professional tap into the fire hydrant down the street. And they, you know, it's like a five hundred foot hose and they bring it up into the backyard and they just open up this three-inch line and they filled that pool in under an hour. It was pretty amazing to watch. That's rare, though. What's more common is a similar sized hose, but it's coming from tanker trucks that actually truck in the water and they bring it in and that fills up more rapidly. But as Jared and I both know, and if you're a homeowner listening to this who have had this happen, there's also a significant amount of risk with that, too, because [00:06:11]the water may not be the same in every single truck. [2.7s] And we've experienced that ourselves.
JARRED [00:06:18] We touched on that last episode so there are variables that come with source water, for sure.
ERIC [00:06:24] So what we're going to cover today, I think we'll first do a traditional hose start up procedure generally. And then I want to cover the other ones, the the the tanker truck, for example, and then with or without the barrel. So we can't cover everything in this episode. We would be talking for four hours and we're not going to do that to you. We're going to just kind of touch it, the details that matter most. But we're not going to get lost in the weeds or at least we're going to try not to. So, OK, so traditionally the the pool just has the hose put in by the plaster crew and they're out they clean up the site, hopefully. Usually they do a pretty good job of that. They clean up and they're gone. They leave the hose in and the water is just filling up slowly.
JARRED [00:07:04] Yeah. Generally they'll let the builder know that, hey, we finished plastering the pool, hoses are in it. And at some point within the next day or two, the builder, the service company or whoever maybe will plan on coming by to start the equipment up and start the whole process of brushing and normal stuff, if you want to call it that.
ERIC [00:07:22] Right. And the equipment side of it is we're not going to really talk too much about that because that's pretty straightforward. All things considered. We're going to focus on the chemistry here of what the water is actually interacting with the cement and how that's happening. So, like I said, the traditional ways they're filling it with raw water, that's what we call it. No matter what that chemistry is, it's just filling the pool. So the Orenda startup has to get in between that step. It has to circumvent that. [00:07:48]We've got to get ahead of that hose being turned on. [2.0s] So where the Orenda startup comes in is while the crew is still plastering, we have to be on site a service technician builder who whoever's doing our startup has to be on site before the water ever starts flowing into that pool, period. You have to be the one that turns on the pool for this to go right. If you are late, you can have a problem like snowing where it actually starts to etch in the first few inches of water. Let's say you're there thirty minutes late and there's a few inches of water in the pool already. The of that water has been etching the whole time, almost certainly. Now there are some exceptions to this, but it's rare. So the guy is going to be really, really high in those bottom couple of inches of water. And when you start putting in what we're about to put in, that is not going to let it stay in solution. It's actually just going to fall out. And what can happen is you'll have a little bit of actual plaster dust in the bottom of the bowl. But maybe for the next two feet of water, you have fallout, which is kind of hard to distinguish from plaster dust. And it'll actually look different when you brush it away and you can have the dreaded ring in the bottom of the pool. Jared, you've seen this before and so have I.
JARRED [00:09:02] Absolutely. And it's fixable. Like I said, it's not a huge problem. But you do want to be there to turn that water on.
ERIC [00:09:11] Yeah, absolutely. OK, so what we're going to do is we're going to circumvent we are going to be there to control the water. And the [00:09:18]first thing you have to do when you get to that site is you have to test what's going to be filling the pool. [4.8s] You have to know what's coming out of the hoses. And if it's the case of a water tanker truck, you have to test what's going in first, which is going to be a bit of the garden hose. And you could just estimate based on - I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it'll pay off - count with a stopwatch how long it takes to fill a five gallon bucket or a gallon jug and get the flow rate of the hose. That's going to start that water cushion and estimate. How many gallons are you actually going to be filling up before that truck gets there? You may know it's only going to be four hundred gallons. OK, put that in the Orenda app. You're going to have to treat that tap water as if it's an entire pool for those first few inches because the trucks aren't there yet. This is where it gets kind of complicated. So if you have a truck, it's not as easy as just filling from the home hoses because that's the same water the whole way. Trucks are not necessarily that way. You have to go out and you have to actually test the chemistry of those trucks and plug it into the Orenda app and follow this procedure. So I keep mentioning this procedure. Basically, what you're aiming for on the Orenda app is to take whatever the tap water is. On the left side of the Orenda calculator. And on the right side, manipulate that chemistry typically by raising calcium or alkalinity or both.
JARRED [00:10:47] Not at the same time.
ERIC [00:10:47] Yeah. Not at the same time. We'll cover that more to it's actually one of my notes. [00:10:52]You're going to raise that LSI to zero point to something. [4.6s] Zero point to point to a point to five. It doesn't matter. But you want to be in the green. Ideally, you can go a little bit higher. You could be a purple zero point three five. But it's risky because you could start to actually precipitate scale. Chances are you won't. But, you know, we don't really want to risk it. We have found a sweet spot to be point two-something in the green on the LSI. If you are filling a pool with zero point two or three water in the green on the LSI, this is going to be a very successful startup. In all likelihood. Timing is everything, though, Jared. I mean, we've done this enough times to know that if you're late, you could have some issues, but it's very hard to have issues if you're early. I mean, if you front load this thing, I mean, I've dumped in accidentally way too much calcium and we didn't have any plaster dust. So if you're going to err in any direction, err high, the worst that can happen is you get some snowing, which means you had too much saturation. But that's fine because you can always clean it up the next day. But it ignored the cement in the plaster service and that's what really matters the most. Would you agree with that?
JARRED [00:12:05] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Worst case scenario is fixing a little scale. We can do that, no problem.
ERIC [00:12:11] Let's not even scale. It's just going to be dust. It brushes up. You lower the the next day and it actually goes in fine. So again, you're targeting a zero point two something on the LSI to fill that pool with. [00:12:24]Now if you are low in alkalinity, which is very common and you're low in calcium hardness and when I say low, I mean alkalinity less than 80 and calcium less than one hundred, I would consider those numbers low. Would you agree with that? [14.6s]
JARRED [00:12:38] I would say that is the most common readings that I run into and -
ERIC [00:12:45] - Double digits, not triple digits.
JARRED [00:12:46] Absolutely. And a lot of them are the mis-perception that they have no idea their calcium was that low. They think they have hard water and this just generally not the case.
ERIC [00:13:00] Like in Phoenix, they all think they have hard water. But the city changed how they treated water because it's not hard anymore.
JARRED [00:13:06] Well, there are some rare instances where I've run into rural areas where they have really high alkalinity out of the tap and a moderate level of calcium, say sixty and using the word moderate loosely there. But [00:13:22]when you have three hundred and fifty to four hundred parts alkalinity out of the tap and sixty parts calcium. It's actually not bad water to fill a pool with depending on the temperature. [11.9s]
ERIC [00:13:34] Well, that's because the LSI, if you put in four hundred alkalinity in the LSI app, you're going to find that it's actually a higher LSI than you think, even though you have lower calcium. Now, [00:13:42]you're going to have to correct that in the next 30 days and kind of switch that ratio [3.8s] because we know that [00:13:48]a pool will turn green if you have more alkalinity than calcium. [3.1s] And we've also learned that it's about a three to one ratio. This is another episode entirely. But you should have most likely about three times the amount of calcium that you do alkalinity at any given time at a minimum. The ideal is actually four to one, according to Dr. McNamara. But again, we can go into that rabbit hole another time. What we're trying to say here is no matter what the chemistry is out of the tap, you have the tool to figure out exactly what that water is going to need to pretreat id. And if you have the Orenda barrel more power to you, you were able to add a lot of things up front. One thing that you cannot do, and I cannot stress this enough, Jarred - made mention of it a few minutes ago. You cannot do bicarb and calcium chloride on the same day. Don't do that. [00:14:44]If the app says you need thirty six pounds of sodium bicarb and you need eighty one pounds of calcium chloride one day after the next, [7.6s] and usually what you're going to do is you're going to do whichever is needed more. So if it if it's a much higher number on calcium. And by the way, I mean, Jarred, what would you say? Ninety five percent. It's calcium. Absolutely, yeah. Vast majority of times we're talking calcium chloride on Fill up Day, not bicarb. Now, that's not to say that you can't do a bicarb startup and still meet the LSI parameters. You can. It does work. It's just a little more complicated to correct it for the reasons mentioned a few minutes ago. So we almost always are adding calcium chloride in the bucket or I'm sorry, in the startup barrel or divided among a bunch of buckets. You may not have access to a startup barrel, and that's OK. You've got to divide up over a bunch of clean buckets like old Cal Hypo or Trichlor buckets are perfect for this. Fill them up with water. Divide up. Let's say you need fifty pounds of calcium, get five buckets, put ten pounds of calcium in each bucket, pre dissolve them. Then what we're going to do to assist this pre dissolving process is we're actually going to pre key late that calcium. So Jared, you want to explain that.
JARRED [00:15:58] So yeah, we had our SC-1000, which is our metal and skill control, which is a chelant. So when we add it to the calcium in the barrel or the buckets, it starts to control that calcium that we're going to be putting into the water so that it doesn't immediately just precipitate out whenever it gets into the water.
ERIC [00:16:19] Right. Well, let me let me put it another way. If we don't pre-chelate the calcium, it's a free calcium once it dissolves going into the water and there's going to be a lot of carbonates in that water when you fill up. So if you missed the mark in any way high or low, but usually low, because it's going to pull out hydroxides, the pH is going to go up and that free calcium is going to bind with the nearest carbonate available and you're going to get calcium carbonate and it's going to look like plaster dust. Now, in this case, we call it snowing, but it's the same substance as calcium carbonate. [00:16:52]If we chelate calcium, however, before it goes into the pool [3.3s] and I don't know if you've ever dissolved calcium chloride in a bucket, it gets really hot. Chelants work better in high temperatures. They work. They may not even activate in cold water below sixty degrees. So by having that extra heat, that's to your advantage. So if you're doing a late season start up, you're going to want to put more SC-1000 with the calcium before it goes in, because the heat allows that SC-1000 to activate. But [00:17:22]basically what it's doing is it's grabbing onto the protons on each calcium, I guess, iron molecule, whatever you want to call it, and it doesn't let it form scale. [9.4s] So it prevents that interaction between the carbonate and the calcium itself, and it inhibits scale that way. So you can actually have a very high level of calcium in a high concentration as you're filling the pool. Of course, it's diluting by the minute, but still you're going have a very high LSI in that bottom, the first few inches of water. If you're doing this right, we have to prevent the scale so that that doesn't actually play out and cause a big problem. That's why you want to prechelate it. But there's something else that we learned in the last few months, the high pH of our product. Well, it's great for startups because it's you know, it's got a over ten pH, so you can put it on your surface. You don't have to wait for the pool to be filled. You do want to actually neutralize the pH of that chemical, which you.
JARRED [00:18:19] Don't do that don't don't put it directly on the surface. You're going to always doing it and put it with water.
ERIC [00:18:25] Right? Right. Well, you always dilute SC-1000, but basically you're going to put it in with calcium. But we used to say wait till there's a few inches of water in the pool, then just put all the SC-1000 in the bowl of the pool and fill up the pool. That's before we knew as much as we know now about the process and the LSI. And even that helped because it inhibited a lot of the plaster dust, but it didn't actually stop the real problem. So that kind of reinforces what we're saying, that this process is what stops the plaster dust and prevents the pH spiking and the loss of calcium hydroxide. We don't have a magic chemical. SC-1000 is not the magic thing here. All it does is unlock the ability to do what we need to do faster and easier. That being said, [00:19:11]it takes 12 ounces of muriatic acid to neutralize one quart thirty two ounces of SC-1000. And it takes one quart of SC-1000 per ten thousand gallons of water for a start up. [14.1s] There are some areas, if it's well water, you want to typically add another court on top of that, sometimes even double the dose, just as an insurance policy against whatever metals and mystery items come out of the well,.
JARRED [00:19:38] I always tell people to round up. So let's say you're filling a fifteen or sixteen thousand gallon pool. Add two quarts that way, you're always going to round up as far as the SC-1000 is concerned, to make sure you have enough in there,.
ERIC [00:19:53] Right, because if you have more metals or more calcium than you have chelating agent -
JARRED [00:19:58] Round up on the SC, not on the pool volume, because you're treating the pool volume, the same with the calcium, but with the SC-1000 round up.
ERIC [00:20:05] Yeah. Thank thank you for the clarification. What we're trying to do here is we're trying to not throw off the LSI too much because the high of SC-1000 can actually contribute early on to a higher pH in the water. But if you neutralize that with the appropriate amount of acid, it's actually a wash. So it's just going to go right back to what your tap water pH was. So if you put it let's say you put a quart of SC-1000 in the startup barrel and you put 12 ounces of muriatic in that startup barrel with that quart, it's going to be the exact page of your tap water anyway, because it perfectly neutralizes that. And we had studies done. So we're pretty confident in that. But basically what you're going to do is you're going to have this pretreated water, calcium chloride, SC-1000 and acid almost every time in the barrel. If you're as high and you know that this entire pool is going to need I don't know, let's let's say a quarter gallon of acid because the pH is eight point o out of the tap, I'm making it up. Let's just say it's about that. You can add that in the barrel, not necessarily all at once, but as the pool is filling, put it through the barrel, it will be diluted for you. We know we need to dilute acid. We know that you shouldn't put acid straight in because it'll plummet to the bottom, put it in the barrel. The barrel will dilute it for you and it'll push it in slowly at a trickle rate, which is ideal for what we're trying to do for a startup. We've had a lot of success with that. So keep that in mind. The barrel on the first day or the buckets are going to be pre chelated calcium chloride with some acid in there and that is going to be added as the pool is filling. So, Jarred, is there anything else you want to add on fill up day itself?
JARRED [00:21:46] [00:21:46]Yeah, and you mentioned a trickle. If you are using the barrel, it is literally a trickle going in with the fill hoses. [7.1s] They're all tied together. So you have to make sure that your water source from the hose is tied to the hose that's coming out of the barrel, because if it's on the opposite side of the pool and your fill hose is separate from the calcium rich water you want to pre treat the tap water with, you're not getting the benefits of the offset. So those hoses have to be tied together in order for it to offset or correct the low calcium coming out of the tap.
ERIC [00:22:22] Correct. And there are some, but very few exceptions to this. Like if you had a fill line on a commercial pool, if you happen to be listening to this as a commercial operator, you may have a fill line in the pump room and you're doing a barrel outside. I just did one a couple of months ago. I didn't have a garden hose with it. But you do what what you can and try to dilute this stuff is as easily as possible. And what it says is is actually a lot simpler than it sounds. He says tie the hoses together. He literally means put the hoses together with some duct tape, with the vacuum hose that that has the overflowed pretreated water put a sock around all of them or rag tape it to an empty bottle. And now you have your entire floating fill line. So when the water comes up, that empty bottle floats those hoses off the bottom so they don't leave a mark or anything like that. And whatever comes out of that barrel is instantly getting diluted by fresh water as it fills up the pool.
JARRED [00:23:17] Correct. The theory is you want to gauge the fill rate of the pool with the turnover rate in the bucket in the barrel start up. So that's why we say a trickle, because you're thinking either we got our thirty gallon start-up barrel and we also have our fifty five gallon start up barrel. So they're two different sizes. So the rate of turnover is going to be a little different. And you've got to think of your fill in a fifteen thousand gallon pool with hoses from the house while you're trying to trickle that, let's say thirty gallon tank to where it's turning over one one and a half times. By the time the polls fall, it's going to take multiple hours. So if you trickle that water flow through the tank and back into the water, it is a trickle.
ERIC [00:24:06] Yeah, well, I mean, it's a slow flow, I should say, but that's fill up day. You're not doing bicarb on the same day. If you were doing bicarb, [00:24:15]if you had a very low alkalinity but you already had high calcium, you would just put bicarb in the barrel. [4.4s] There's no acid needed. Obviously there's no SC-1000 needed in the bicarb tank. You just put all the SC-1000 in the pool. You would still do it on day one, but you wouldn't put it in the tank necessarily. And it would just be a bicarb startup, which also can work. It just depends on what your tap water is. If you have questions about it, if you're alkalinity is way lower than your calcium, call us. Just contact us. It's very easy. Contact us directly through the app. Contact us on Facebook, we're very responsive, we get questions like this from people all the time, so your circumstance may dictate some unique things and that's not uncommon because everybody's tap water is different. But that's Philip Day and we call that day zero, day one is when the pool is actually full or close to being full, close enough that you're going to turn on the equipment that day. That would be day one of the process. So when you're looking at the Orenda start up procedures, that's when you're going to actually start adding the other chemicals. So more often than not, day one after the pool is full is going to involve sodium bicarb, and enzymes. So I get a lot of questions on why didn't I add bicarb on the on day one? Well, Jered, have you added sodium bicarb at the same time as adding calcium chloride?
JARRED [00:25:37] I have. And it turns basically to a rock very hard sinks to the bottom. Not a good idea. Don't do it.
ERIC [00:25:45] Yeah. Milkey I mean, it will foam up almost in a bucket if you put it in concentration. It's a disaster. Don't put them in the same day. We've only had problems with that. So don't try to rush all of it. The next day, when you do add bicarb, pre-dissolve it in buckets, not the barrel, you're going to actually empty the startup barrel before you do anything else, empty it, take it out of the site. Then you will take buckets and pre dissolve the sodium bicarb and put it around the perimeter, Jared, you have something to add to that?
JARRED [00:26:16] Yeah, and generally just with a freshly plastered pool, your pH will have a tendency to rise slightly if you did it correctly. Now, it shouldn't be through the roof unless the tap water was very high pH. But generally speaking, you're going to have to add some acid on day one along with the bicarb and CV-600.
ERIC [00:26:36] Well, as we discussed in the first few episodes about pH what Jared's mentioning here is very predictable. The pH will rise, but it will not spike. There's a huge difference, most traditional start ups when you get there on day one. Jarred, where's the pH.
JARRED [00:26:52] Unmeasurable.
ERIC [00:26:53] Through the roof. And that's because you lost calcium hydroxide, which has a twelve point six. And the spiked as a result. So you come back. We're talking old habits here. Oh, my God, this is unbearably high. What do you add, Jered?
JARRED [00:27:09] Gallon of acid,.
ERIC [00:27:11] Bingo. Acid. Well, what you didn't know is if you're following the traditional method, the water balanced itself when you were gone. [00:27:19]You don't like how it got there, but the LSI of that water was actually perfect. The key was through the roof and there's plaster dust everywhere. But the LSI was actually balanced. [10.5s] And then you went and you burned it up with some acid because you saw high and you were thinking about range chemistry instead of the LSI. The proper response to that is to measure everything before you add anything. And typically, you would be lowering the pH in a controlled way while simultaneously adding calcium on that day one, if you missed the startup day. We call that the switcheroo or I call it the switcheroo. I don't think Jarred's ever endorsed that. But I call it the switcheroo because you're switching. You're lowering pH while simultaneously raising calcium hardness to replenish its LSI value. And in so many words, it kind of stops the bleeding. And that's what you would have to do. [00:28:11]But if you started it up the Orenda way on the first day properly, there's no need for the switcheroo. [4.4s] The next day you're adding the next parameter that that water needs, which almost always is sodium bicarbonate.
JARRED [00:28:22] There are some cases where we run into extremely high alkalinity out of the tap at, say, three hundred parts when traditionally speaking, people add a bunch of acid to burn up the alkalinity to try to get it under control, which is a very risky proposition, which I know we touched base on it the last episode with a hot start and acid bath or zero alkaline type start up. But if you try to lower that alkalinity too quickly during those first couple of days, you run the risk of getting into that. I guess we can call it a danger zone just to make it easier to understand. So what I tell people is, hey, don't don't worry about the high alkalinity from the get go. Balance it accordingly from bringing that alkalinity down while you simultaneously bring that calcium level up, make sure your pH stays in range. And it could take you a week or two weeks to get that alkalinity under control. But you do not want to tank your pH to get it there fast.
ERIC [00:29:22] Yeah, as a rule of thumb, don't lower your alkalinity more than the LSI calculator tells you your water can handle. And in a startup, that means not even letting it go below zero. Don't even let it go yellow normally. Let's fast forward. It's a year or two of the pool or whatever. Don't do it. Anything that turns it red. Typically it's about 20 to 30 parts per million. If you had high alkalinity that you were trying to lower, you can't really correct more than 20 or 30 parts at a time because the LSI will go too aggressive. So just keep that in mind. But back to this process, what Jared said is absolutely right. Your tap water is going to determine the rate in which you do all of this. Most often you start with calcium on the first day, bicarb on day two, but that's not all the time. And if you had very high alkalinity, it may be multiple days of acid to get that alkalinity down to keep your - I'm sorry to keep your LSI where you need it to be, but fortunately for you, you already raised calcium and it may be a multiple day process where you're incrementally raising calcium and incrementally lowering alkalinity. And then by day three, you get where you need to be that as long as the LSI allows for you to do that is a possibility. Personally, I like trying to get to the target as fast as possible without being reckless on the LSI. As much as the LSI allows for me to handle it, I'm going to do it. I've put in over one hundred and thirty pounds of calcium on fill day in a twenty thousand gallon backyard pool because it needed it. It had 30 parts per million calcium. I needed to get it to about 280. I think this was a pool in the south. Most pools are going to need to be around three hundred plus on startup. This one was might have been Arizona, I don't really remember, but it was a lot of calcium and -
JARRED [00:31:12] Depends on the water temperature too, because I've run into where we used to have a standard - You need to meet this parameter. This parameter. Well, we've soon figured out that. No, because in the middle of summer and either Arizona or Texas, when the water coming out of the tap is high 80s, you don't necessarily need as much calcium as you do when it's 60 degrees out of the tap.
ERIC [00:31:35] Correct. And I'm from Virginia in the summertime. It's fifty five out of the ground. Fifty five degrees Fahrenheit tap water. So maybe if you had trucks that were sitting in the sun all day and you had warmer water, but temperature actually really does matter on these startups. And you got to kind of prepare if you have a late season startup, your temperature is going to be very different than the one you did in July. Keep that in mind. So [00:31:57]day two, again, you're going to do the bicarb. [1.9s] You're going to get pretty much all the LSI balance things are in. I'm sorry, not by day two. By day one, because we had day zero was filled. Day one is full. In those first two days, you've got pretty much LSI Balance. Now, it's just to maintain routine from there. You're just going to maintain that LSI balance for the next few days.
JARRED [00:32:19] People always ask me: [00:32:20]do I need to brush? [0.5s] And the answer's always absolutely. The more brushing, the better under any circumstance. Brush, brush, brush. It's going to help get any residual on the surface. That may be one of his dirt, this PVC shavings, whatever it may be. Brush it, brush it, brush it.
ERIC [00:32:39] Mm hmm. Well, let's be clear. We talk about the no dust startup if you do it right. Yeah, you should brush because every site has construction debris. But if you did the startup right, you should not be brushing any plaster dust. It's a pretty sweet feeling when you push that brush across it. Nothing comes up and it's a beautiful thing.
JARRED [00:32:56] Yeah.
ERIC[00:32:58] So glad you clarified that. Which brings me to [00:33:01]the next thing you will do on day one. And that is enzymes. [2.9s] Enzymes, because you're not chlorinating yet. Help clean up the water. And they go after nonliving organics and oils. Plaster crews typically clean their equipment with things like WD-40. So those trials have oils on it helps them spread the cement in the pool properly and all these things. And you also have nature to contend with. Oftentimes you'll come to a pool that still full and or filling, I should say, and it's got dust and debris and pollen on the surface. A lot of oils that surface has a lot of non-living organics that can adhere to it. Enzymes will actually address those and help keep it clean. So yes, brush, but it's going to be easier to coagulate these particles and get them filtered out if you're using enzymes. That's why we recommend it. It is the same purge dose as SC-1000, but this product is called CV-600. Not that we want to be too product specific, but this is our start up process. Those are the only two Orenda chemicals you will be using in the first thirty days. Again, that's SC-1000 on fill up day and CV six hundred on day one when the pool is full or close to it.
JARRED [00:34:10] Well, I don't know about you, but I've been on a number of new construction sites in a backyard and it's not the cleanest process per say. So when you're cutting PVC pipe and you're gluing things together and you're doing all of this stuff, well, that PVC pipe was produced somewhere that probably has oils as a releasing agent or whatever you want to call it, that glues. I mean, all these things that you're about to turn the equipment on and start pumping your water through, it's not uncommon to see just kind of a flurry of foaming and organic accumulation on the surface. As soon as you turn those pumps on. That's what we're trying to manage. And you can see it pretty clear soon as you start turning the equipment on.
ERIC [00:34:53] Oh, yeah, absolutely. So enzymes actually go through the whole system. They circulate with the water and they really help out, but not to dwell on that. That's the bulk of what we want to talk about in the episode is days zero and day one. [00:35:06]Now it's actually pretty easy, Jared, because now we can just talk about the rest of the 30 days, [3.6s] because there to day one, whether it was filled with a truck or with a barrel or with buckets or whatever, the accomplishment that you did was you controlled how the pool was full so that you slightly overfed it. Again, that's point to to point three positive in the green on the LSI. How you filled that pool, stopped or prevented the interaction between the water and the cement surface so it didn't pull any calcium hydroxide, if you accomplish that, you did your job, that is in the first two days, everything from here on out as managing the LSI to keep it there. So we go from day two through five to three, four or five. Those next few days. You want to keep your LSI around that same range. Unfortunately, as Gerard mentioned before, it's not that hard to do. You're talking about slight acid additions each week because the pH will naturally rise. But we're not taking the alkalinity. We're not taking the calcium hardness. We already have everything in the pool that we need. It's just trying to maintain that. LSI Up until day five, when you start to or some people would say day four, but you start to chlorinate. And that's what chemistry changes, right Jarred?
JARRED [00:36:23] Yeah, it does. But I think the key here is we talked about this through the episode and yes, it is. And a lot of work up front to get the barrel set up. Make sure you're measuring the chemicals properly, getting it filled properly and so forth. Day one, there's a little more adjustment period for the chemicals, but overall it is so much easier on days two, three, four or five. Then if you were to try to do it the traditional way because you're not fighting it. And our main goal here, honestly, as a company is you should not be fighting your water. Work with the parameters you're given. You know what the water wants as far as the LSI is concerned. So make micro adjustments, work with it and don't fight it.
ERIC [00:37:09] Absolutely. Just maintain LSI because water cannot fight you back if it's already balanced and you can balance it on your terms. So that's the name of the game. You're right. That's a good way of putting it. The Orenda startup is front loading your effort so that it's an easy ride for the other twenty five days of the process. As long as you get to that day five and you've maintain that LSI after day five and beyond, it could be any green number on the LSI. You know, as long as it's balanced, it's not going red when you put too much acid in or something like that, your LSI is fine at that point, the carbonation process is well underway. You are getting a good reinforced surface, which is exactly what you want. Now, it may still look ugly. And I want to reiterate that from the last episode, Cement cures ugly and this startup has nothing to do with preexisting conditions. If there were streaks from an acid wash or a white bowl left behind because they didn't neutralize the acid wash fast enough or there's footprints or other things like that left behind, this startup has nothing to do with cleaning up workmanship. It's not like blaming anybody for it either, it's just there's only so much the startup can and cannot do, it is only stopping the theft of calcium hydroxide from the cement. It's preventing the interaction between the water and the cement. That's it. Any preexisting condition you have before that pool gets full is going to be visible. But don't freak out about it because you can clean it up after 30 days. And that's the message we're trying to say. We're trying to cure the plaster. If you have a surface thing that you don't like looking at, it's ugly there, streaks or lines, whatever, just cure the plaster underneath it, cure everything that you can, carbonate it properly following this process. And at 30 days, Jerrard, what would you recommend you call it an acid bath.
JARRED [00:38:59] I call it acid that's bringing the of the water down to roughly six, five, six. So it's not a four pH or whatever. And a lot of people have a different recipe for what they call an acid bath. Some people might take acid baths as one gallon of acid per three thousand gallons of water, one gallon of acid per five thousand gallons of water. And in my opinion, those are those are zero alkaline environments because you're going to tank the alkalinity in that water at that rate. So just follow the app. And sometimes it might need half a gallon of acid. You don't there's no one no one ratio to work with to be right. Persay. So it's just getting it in that range so that you can brush it and give it some time to wear away at the streak's or whatever it is you're trying to cure.
ERIC [00:39:51] Yeah. And to be clear on this, after that 30 days, the surface is already mostly carbonated from the outside and now it hasn't carbonated everything in there, but it certainly has the outer layer carbonated, which is kind of like searing the steak. I think I made that reference in the last episode. That's a good thing. You can clean the char off of the steak now without taking juice out of it. And that's what we're trying to do. Yes. When you do an acid bath, it will be red on the LSI. Absolutely. But it is intentional that you're doing it that way after thirty days. Not a hot start in the first thirty days because it is not carbonated enough that surfaces to virgin for that. It's not going to be able to withstand that aggressive water, whereas a carbonated surface you are deliberately trying to eat away at the outermost layer, which is an LSI violation in a controlled way to clean up those imperfections. But that's that's a remedy thing I want to get back to wrapping this episode up, because now we're at day five. [00:40:55]From day five, today, 30, it's just a weekly visit. [2.9s] It's just normal maintenance routine.
JARRED [00:41:00] I'd say weekly at a minimum, but if you have it every other week or every other two twice a week, I should say, or more, it's not going to hurt anything. You're just getting more balanced water that's going to have a better result and keeping LSI more consistent and obviously more brushing. We touched on before the more brushing, the better. So you cannot ask would you say you could overtreat a pool during the first 30 days?
ERIC [00:41:25] Oh, sure, it depends what name a chemical you can absolutely -
JARRED [00:41:28] no no no - I'm assuming all of everybody listening here is going to follow the LSI and keep it LSI balanced and actually happy.
ERIC [00:41:35] So what do you mean by overtreat?
JARRED [00:41:37] Like, do you want to add you want to take your chemicals every other day and do micro adjustments? You know, you can my personal opinion.
ERIC [00:41:45] Yeah, but now we're talking opinions. OK, I've done of startups. Jared, you've done just as many as I have or close to it. I've probably done 40 personally. I don't like to helicopter parent a pool,.
JARRED [00:41:56] No me as a as a pool professional. No, I will not be there every day checking the water chemistry after days five, six or seven between seven days and thirty days. One visit a week is sufficient.
ERIC [00:42:08] Yeah, absolutely. Because you already the process is well underway. You've done your part and there's two questions that we get all the time and a third that we somewhat get. But it's not too often those two questions are [00:42:21]when can I add cyanuric acid and when can I add salt? [3.0s] So the answer to the first one cyanuric acid is on day five, four or five, depending on... You know, I think the 30 day startup guide from the NPC says day four, we respect that. That's that's an appropriate time. In ours we say day five, but it just it just depends. What do you mean by cyanuric acid if you're putting a little bit of trichlor in a feeder, not the skimmer, not a floater, but in the feeder, you could probably do it on day four, but not too much because Trichlor does suppress the pH. But the cyanuric acid should not get too high. Now, we've said don't let it get over 50, but you shouldn't even be close to 50 in the first 30 days. You should really be more like 10 to 15 parts per million in the first 30 days. And you can add more after 30. Would you agree with that?
JARRED [00:43:16] I'd say yeah. But the main goal that we as a company want to promote is having a cyanuric level around 30 is plenty sufficient for UV protection across the board. So that's our recommendation. Keep it around 30.
ERIC [00:43:30] Yeah. And in the first 30 days, especially in the fall, you're not going to really get algae in the fall. You will in the Sunbelt areas where it's warm all year, and if your pool is plastered in May oh yeah, in the first three days, you could absolutely get algae. So you don't want to over stabilize, but you do need to chlorinate. So the answer, cyanuric acid is day four or five, but just not too much. The [00:43:54]second biggest question is, when do you add salt? [1.9s] After 30 days, and that is touch based on that last episode, so, yeah, that's a big one because everyone wants to fire up their salt system. And I've talked to a bunch of builders. Oh, yeah, we put salt in day two. You do what? You put salt in day two? There's a lot of studies that have shown how salinity impacts the carbonation rate of cement and it does have an impact now in some regards, like salt water, like if you're building a bridge across the Chesapeake Bay or something, when you have super high salinity, it changes concrete curing completely. But if you have moderately low salinity, which is what a salt pool is, when you compare it to the ocean, it is a detriment to how cement actually cures. So, no, you do not want to add it until you have a carbonate layer completely in that pool. And that's about after 30 days, theoretically. Could you do it sooner with the Orenda startup if you did everything perfect? A lot of people have told us, yes, you should be able to. We're not endorsing that at all. We are saying after day 30 and pre dissolve it, don't just dump salt straight to the bottom of the pool and then brush because inevitably you're going to miss some and it now radically changing your TDS by throwing in thirty two hundred parts per million of salt. Well, you just made your water a lot more aggressive in a matter of five minutes. So what you want to do is be aware of that, number one, and make your chemistry parameters allow for it by using the Orenda app. Don't lower the pH too much. You want to be able to add this without making the water go red on the LSI. That is critical. So predissolve, just like you want to dissolve anything dry. Get that salt in. And the final question by actually, Jared, you want to add something about salt?
JARRED [00:45:47] No, not about salt. I was going to say to wrap up, I do get one more question pretty commonly.
ERIC [00:45:51] is it about wheeled vacuums?
JARRED [00:45:54] No.
ERIC [00:45:55] What do you get. I was going to say Weald Vacuum's after thirty days too. What are you going to say?
JARRED [00:45:59] I have customers that will ask me, [00:46:01]do I need the Orenda startup? [1.5s]
ERIC [00:46:04] No you don't.
JARRED [00:46:06] Well...
ERIC [00:46:07] I mean is your pool right. Yeah.
JARRED [00:46:09] I guess if we wanted to take that approach. Absolutely no. Nobody needs it.
ERIC [00:46:13] No you don't have to listen to what we're saying.
JARRED [00:46:14] It's their - it's their pool, it's their discretion, but more along the lines of [00:46:20]there's different types of services that we deal with in this industry. [3.8s] There's quartz, there's regular plaster, there's pebble and so forth.
ERIC [00:46:31] And there's polished pebble.
JARRED [00:46:32] Absolutely. So everyone has something unique and different about it. And in our position as a company, yes, all of the services will be benefited by doing the Orenda startup, because whether it's a pebble surface or not, you still have plaster or cement holding that aggregate on. So you still have the same likelihood for the loss of calcium hydroxide, regardless of the type of surface. So, yes, the Orenda startup is beneficial for all types of cement based services.
ERIC [00:47:08] In a plastic in a pool finish, you will see less exposed cement in a pebble finish because of how it's exposed. And they actually if they acid wash or they water wash, they're taking some of that quote unquote cream, that excess cement off so that you have very little surface area of cement, which is why they appear to dust less. But if you put a whole bunch of objects on your kitchen table, you still have just as much kitchen table underneath those objects. And water will find calcium wherever it is. So even if it's a pebble pool versus an all plaster pool. Yeah. Are you going to get more dust in a plaster pool that you can see? Usually, yes. But it doesn't mean that this chemistry is any different. In fact, it's not any different. The consequences in a pebble pool can actually be worse because you have less available, which means when it does get etched, you can lose pebbles and you've no doubt have brushed a pebble pool. Jared. I know I have. And you just see a pile of pebbles near the main drain. They just keep falling out of the wall.
JARRED [00:48:07] That's not uncommon after a freshly plaster pool. But [00:48:10]if you continually see loose pebbles after, say, two weeks or three weeks, then, yeah, something's not right. [7.7s] But if it's day one and you're brushing, that's not uncommon just from the application and just normal process. But, yeah, every every pool that we're talking about as far as a plaster based finished, definitely going to be benefited by our startup.
ERIC [00:48:32] Right. Well, we know this has been a very long episode because it is a pretty detailed process. I just want to reiterate, [00:48:38]all of this is available on our website, Orendatech.com, [2.3s] specifically procedures.Orendatech.com. Find the startup materials in there. We've got videos. We've got articles about it, talking about all the consequences. It is all documented. We really appreciate all your time listening to this. It's. A little bit of a more boring episode if you don't do start ups, so thank you for tolerating us. When we come back, our next series of episodes where we're moving on from the start up. We're talking about how to actually maintain pools depending on the types of chlorine they have. So thank you so much for your time, Jared. Are there any final thoughts on this before we close out?
JARRED [00:49:16] I think we touched base on everything. And like I said, like you already touched on the resources we have on our website. Answer any potential questions you may have. But obviously, if that doesn't get you where you need to be, call us, email us, you know, reach out in any way you can.
ERIC [00:49:30] Yeah, we're not hard to find. So we're all over social media. You can easily comment on anything on our website as well. We will see it. Thank you so much. And this has been Episode 13 of The Rule Your Pool podcast. Take care, everyone.