A prescription (or treatment) without proper diagnosis is malpractice. Eric explains three foolproof, 100% reliable tests that can help you rule out certain variables when troubleshooting your pool. They're not precise, and not meant to be.
00:00 - Intro
02:18 - Thermometers are reliable and accurate, but because they're not water tests, they're not included in our list of three tests in this episode.
04:19 - No test kit stays accurate and precise forever. All of them need to be maintained, used properly, calibrated and reagents need to be taken care of (and not expired).
05:13 - The White Bucket Test
07:43 - Our first white bucket test...green water out of the hose on a startup
10:23 - White bucket tests can be used to identify if there are metals in tap water too
13:47 - Melamine clouds with Cyanuric Acid (CYA)
15:20 - PR-10,000 clouds with phosphates of any kind (red cap test)
17:55 - Ruling out variables helps you narrow in on the cause of the problem
20:06 - Closing remarks. Thanks for listening!
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82. Three water tests that are 100% reliable
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: I feel like the only way to start today's episode is with gratitude. Gratitude to you, the listeners of our Rule Your Pool podcast. We're so surprised that people actually are still listening to this. But we're grateful that you find it valuable and we will continue producing episodes.
[00:00:18] I'm Eric Knight, your host. This is episode 82 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm doing this one alone. Not because Jarred didn't want to be here. But because I'm only home for two or three days between trips and we've got a lot going on and I just need to get episodes out. And I keep getting a lot of questions on ask.orendatech.com. People will submit questions there. Thank you for those. And at the email, podcast@orendatech.com.
[00:00:48] And I keep finding myself referencing a, a few tests, right? And they're not official tests. They're just ways to diagnose a certain circumstance that you might have in your pool. Now, to us, we talk about them all the time, but you may not have ever thought of them.
[00:01:04] So I thought this would be a good episode because this is how you would diagnose certain things. These are three 100% reliable, foolproof tests that are not necessarily accurate or precise. They're not designed to be. Precision and accuracy is not the intent of these tests.. These are binary tests. Kind of like yes or no, you either have this condition or you do not.
[00:01:31] And that's a great place to start because you can narrow down, uh, certain factors or what's the term I'm using for? Um, you can narrow down variables and find what's going on in your pool a lot quicker if you can rule things out.
[00:01:48] Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It goes back to our philosophy of deciding to remove factors from the equation.
[00:01:56] You want to be able to know for a fact that you don't have metals for instance. So these are three tests with a hundred percent certainty. They are reliable every time. Ready to get into it? Episode 82 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. This one's going to be a quick one because Jarred's not going to drag it on and be long for you. Let's go.
Thermometers
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[00:02:18] Eric Knight: The first test that I think of when I think of reliability and accuracy, both of them actually, is a thermometer. Now, that's not included in these three tests today because it's not a chemical test. And it should be an obvious one. But people still neglect it because they just don't use thermometers like they should.
[00:02:56] When we teach classes, we say, uh, the three most valuable tools you have on your truck, other than your phone and your test kit, are going to be a thermometer, measuring cups, and a clean white bucket.
[00:03:11] People always kind of turn their head when they see that they're like What?! Like those three things? Really? Of all the things on the truck, those three things are the most valuable?
[00:03:19] Yes. Because they are tied directly to really good habits. It's the habits that are going to make you successful when you're trying to rule your pool. Bad habits will get in your way. Bad habits will get you back to trying to manage or pool the traditional way. Like the online forums say, or like the pool store software says.
[00:03:39] It's not a knock on the software. I mean, it's, it is what it is. It's based on range chemistry. We talked about this a few weeks ago in a previous episode about why our advice at Orenda is different from what you would get at the pool store or from other sources online. That's because we are not in the paradigm of range chemistry.
[00:03:59] We teach the LSI. We teach proactive pool care. We want you to rule your pool, obeying physics, not imposing your will upon it. So I think of water temperature as one of those things that we need to know, and thankfully there's a test that is very accurate and reliable.
All test kits have reliability concerns over time
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[00:04:19] Eric Knight: But let's be honest, there's an issue with just about every type of test kit in our experience, even the best ones, with reliability and accuracy long term. They either need to be recalibrated, you need new reagents, the reagents could get spoiled if the temperature of the kit gets too high, because it was sitting out in the sun too long, or it got too cold.
[00:04:44] And, and there's always factors that can screw up a test kit's results. We're not talking about test kits in this episode, because those test kits are designed to be accurate. They're designed to be precise. These three tests, I'm about to tell you they're not. They're binary. They are just yes or no. And they're a hundred percent reliable. Not accurate, reliable. So let's get right into them.
1. The White Bucket Test
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[00:05:13] Eric Knight: The main one, the first one is the white bucket test. And the reason it's a white bucket and not an orange Home Depot bucket or a blue Lowe's bucket is because white allows you to see the color of the water. You need to see the contrast if you have a green pool or a brown pool or whatever it is, you need to be able to see the color of that water in the bucket for this to work.
[00:05:39] It's a very easy procedure. Basically, you're going to scoop some of your pool into that bucket. Half the bucket a little more, whatever. I don't know, eight to 10 inches, something like that. And you're going to chlorinate it in the bucket. Use liquid chlorine. Don't use Cal hypo. Don't use granular shock. Don't use dichlor or trichlor, because those are white powders and that will lighten the color of the water no matter what and this is a color test.
[00:06:04] So you want to put in liquid chlorine and shock that bucket. Because if you have a green pool and you have not diagnosed why it's green, and you shock that pool, if it was copper, uh oh! That's a pretty big, oops. You don't want to be in that situation.
[00:06:24] And yet we get calls every year, without fail, several a month, from pool pros that make this mistake because they just instinctively think, oh, that pool's green, it must be algae!
[00:06:37] But then they found out the hard way it wasn't algae. It was copper. Or other metals combined, but usually copper. The white bucket test diagnoses before you prescribe. There's this great saying that says a prescription without proper diagnosis is called malpractice. That can be also stated a treatment without a diagnosis is called malpractice.
[00:07:06] If you don't know why your pool is green, why are you treating it as if you do? What the white bucket test allows us to do is take a sample of that pool and diagnose it. Shock that bucket of water. And if it gets darker, you know there's metals present. Especially if it's darker green, that's going to be copper usually, but it could be a combination, it could have iron as well.
[00:07:29] But then you're going to know! And say, whoa, pump the brakes. I don't want to shock the pool, this is going to make it worse! Now that I've tested it in this little sample of my bucket. I need to address metals and then you can go about it the appropriate way.
Green water out of the hose?
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[00:07:43] Eric Knight: I made this mistake the hard way. A few years ago, we were doing a startup and the pool the next day was as green as the grass next to it. And this was brand new water. We were in Florida on one of those many thousands of little canals that they have down in South Florida. And this water, I mean, it was green, green, green. But it was translucent.
[00:08:07] Like it was, it was transparent. I should say it was clear. I could clearly see the main drain. It wasn't murky. It wasn't cloudy at all. I thought, wow. Brand new water, not even 24 hours old? During the startup. This has got to be copper. I've heard of copper at high levels coming out of the ground. This must be copper.
[00:08:27] There's no way it could be algae. They filled it up yesterday afternoon. How could it be algae overnight? No way. So me, with my infinite wisdom, ruling things out in my own head, I said, it's got to be copper. So I poured in an extra few bottles of SC-1000 to chelate that copper. Now, those of you who have used SC-1000 know that it neutralizes your chlorine until it finds metals to grab onto.
[00:08:54] The reason it does that is because it's invulnerable to chlorine. We've talked about that in a previous episode about SC. But it's going to zero out your chlorine until it finds something to grab onto, and then it can cohabitate just fine with chlorine.
Our first white bucket test
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[00:09:08] Eric Knight: I put that in. No noticeable improvement. And about an hour later standing on the side of the pool I said, you know, let's just double check. Let's just make sure that this is copper. And this was the white bucket test.
[00:09:25] Grab a scoop of water from this green pool in the white bucket. Didn't have any liquid chlorine because I was out of town, I don't live in Florida. So we use some household bleach that the homeowner had. Which is still liquid chlorine, it's just a weaker version of it. But household bleach will work.
[00:09:40] We put it in, it immediately cleared up within five to 10 seconds. I felt so bad. I realized that I had just neutralized all the chlorine in this pool. And in fact, somehow, that pool was actually loaded with algae and it came out of the tap. I didn't even think that was possible. You better believe I learned.
[00:10:02] Had I done that white bucket test first, I would've known, yes, this is algae. Easy. Shock the pool. Let's take care of this. Let's let's get this going right now. But because I didn't diagnose it, it was actually a lot harder to clear up that pool because I had just put SC-1000 in. I learned this the hard way.
Diagnose both discolored water AND clear water.
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[00:10:23] Eric Knight: Don't be like me. Use the white bucket test first, find out what it is. It takes 10 seconds guys. It is not a complex thing. But at least you'll know. And by the way, the white bucket test isn't just for green water or dark water. Right? You open it up in the spring, it's dark and murky. It's probably going to be tannins, maybe a little algae, although algae doesn't grow in cold water. You know, it's, it's probably that, but not always.
[00:10:52] You don't know what you don't know. But you could also do this with clear water. You want to know if there's metals in your tap? Pour water from the tap into the bucket, shock the bucket. If it stays clear. Okay. You don't have much metals, if any. But if it gets dark, I don't know what metals you have, but you've got 'em.
[00:11:16] I don't know how much, but it's enough that it got dark and you need to address that. And so it gets back to that idea of deciding. You're going to decide to address the metals appropriately. Decide to take those metals out of the equation. Use a pre-filter. Address them, use a chelating agent. Use a sequestering agent if you need to. A metal filter of some kind to pull it out. You just need to be aware of it. And the white bucket test is a hundred percent reliable. If you have metals in that water that are not chelated, they will get darker. They will change color. When you shock it with liquid chlorine, they will get oxidized.
[00:11:58] Now I said chelated and not sequestered in that bucket for a reason. Theoretically, sequestered and chelated metals should not be oxidized. Generally they won't, and especially in doses that we would use in a pool. So both of them are going to be successful in the pool. That said, in that kind of concentration, we're talking about putting in two or three ounces of liquid chlorine into three gallons of water.
[00:12:23] That is a huge amount of chlorine. And that is typically enough to overpower a sequestering agent and oxidize it too. So it's going to get to the metals anyway. You would not have that happen in a swimming pool per se. Uh, but with ours, at least, if it's SC-1000 chelating the metals, ours is immune to chlorine. So it's going to hold just fine.
[00:12:45] We know this for a fact, we've actually tried it. We've tested it. And sequestering agents tend to fail in the bucket. That doesn't mean they're going to fail in the pool. But if it's coming out of the tap, you're not going to have a chelating agent in your tap water very often, especially if it's well water, you shouldn't have anything because it's natural water.
[00:13:03] But a lot of city water has sequestering agents in it. That's why there's phosphates in city water. They're protecting the pipes. Nobody wants to have a Flint, Michigan in their town. So they're protecting their pipes. They're protecting us. It's good that we have these things in our drinking water. But it's annoying for reasons like phosphates and stuff. So if you chlorinate, you should still see metals, even if they're sequestered, generally speaking.
[00:13:30] Okay. So that's the white bucket test. It could be for discolored water. Does it get clear? Does it get darker? Or clear water out of your tap or pool to find out if you have metals present. A hundred percent reliable, it will show. Now let's move on.
Melamine clouds with Cyanuric Acid
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[00:13:47] Eric Knight: Cyanuric acid. It's hard to get an accurate reading of exactly what your CYA is. Some tests do much better than others, but at low levels especially, like below 30, it's really hard to tell.
[00:14:01] Like, zero to 15 is extremely difficult to tell the difference on. You just don't know exactly what that CYA is on most test kits. I wish I had better news for you, but that's just kind of the reality of what they are.
[00:14:15] But if you are trying to rule out cyanuric acid, or prove that you have some in there, you can use melamine. Melamine is the white reagent in the Taylor kit, and that's what causes the water to cloud up. So it's a turbidity test. And now how accurate that is, depends on, you know, how good your eyesight is and how clean your vial is and all sorts of stuff.
[00:14:38] But I'm not here for accuracy. I'm here to say yes or no. There is cyanuric acid of some level in this pool, or there is not. So you'll grab a small sample of pool water, and you put it in that vial, you probably don't need a lot. Just put, you know, a few squirts of melamine in there and see if it clouds.
[00:14:58] Now you're supposed to shake it up, give it 30 seconds. But if it clouds it all, there is cyanuric acid in that water. How much is up for debate. Use the test kit, follow their instructions, and make sure your water sample's warm enough, et cetera. But if it's in there, you will see it. It will happen. A hundred percent reliable.
PR-10,000 clouds with phosphates
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[00:15:20] Eric Knight: Now the last one is our product PR 10,000. Just take a small amount of PR 10,000, put it in water and see if it clouds. Give it about 30 seconds, 30 to 60 seconds. Now we say based on our experience, if that cloud in your pool from a cap full of PR 10,000 gets larger than a basketball within 30 seconds, it's probably worth treating.
[00:15:44] If you read pillar three and you've taken Orenda Academy and four pillars, you know that our third pillar, the action step is to stay below 500 parts per billion of phosphates. Or for those in our international audience, which we actually have now, which is crazy, we're talking about micrograms per liter. If you have more than 500 micrograms per liter of phosphate, that's when it starts to become problematic.
[00:16:09] Phosphate tests typically only measure orthophosphate, which is the building block of phosphate compounds like polyphosphate, metaphosphate, et cetera. We talked about these different forms of phosphates in previous episodes, 23, 64, and especially we focused on it in episode 71 of this podcast. So you can go back and listen to those.
[00:16:32] But the building block is orthophosphate. That's what phosphate test kits measure. But if you have metaphosphate compounds or polyphosphate sequestering agents, or something like that, they may not show up on your test kit until they've had time to break down into orthophosphate. That happens with prolonged exposure to sunlight, uh, prolonged exposure to oxidizers like chlorine. They will eventually break down into orthophosphate. And that at that point you can test for 'em.
PR-10,000 reacts with all forms of phosphate
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[00:17:03] Eric Knight: PR 10,000 doesn't care. It's going to react with any form of phosphate on contact. So if you have any type of phosphate in your pool, even if you just tested zero, which happens a lot, it's going to cloud. You're going to know. That's why we do the red cap test.
[00:17:20] So if you're struggling with phosphates of any kind, you want to be able to know, do I have phosphates? Is it worth treating? Do the red cap test. You can do it in a bucket too, to see if there's phosphates in your tap water. Now this one, you could do the white bucket, but you're going to need to put it in the shade.
[00:17:37] Because it's going to be a white cloud, it'd actually be an advantage to have a dark bucket for this one, technically. But, um, yeah, just fill up some water in a bucket, put the cap in it and see if there's phosphates in your tap water. If there are, it will cloud.
Summary
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[00:17:55] Eric Knight: So those are the three, 100% reliable, foolproof tests.
[00:18:00] They're not accurate, but they are a hundred percent reliable, yes or no. White bucket test will tell you if you have metals or not. And if you have discolored water, if it's organic or algae and whether or not chlorine's going to fix it. The melamine is going to tell you if you have cyanuric acid or not. It'll either prove you have some, or it will prove that you have none.
[00:18:26] Same with phosphate control. PR 10,000 it's going to cloud up in the presence.
[00:18:31] So to wrap this up. The reason I'm doing this episode is because a lot of the questions that we get, they're not specific about this, but they have a pool problem. You know, you might call me and say, oh, my pool's turning green or whatever it is.
[00:18:46] And I find myself asking, well, did you diagnose it? How do you know? Do you know if you have metals in your tap water? No? Do the white bucket test.
[00:18:58] Are you sure you have no cyanuric acid? Take some melamine reagent, put it in a vial with water, see if it clouds. Same with phosphate remover. So these are just easy ways to know. And you could rule things out.
[00:19:11] Because let's say you do have a green pool and you do the white bucket test and it clears right up. Great. Now you have a strategy. But if it got darker, you have a completely different strategy. So get ahead of it, diagnose your water properly, and this is going to help you be a lot more efficient and direct. Kind of like the sniper rifle approach instead of the shotgun approach of throwing everything at the problem and hoping that something hits it.
[00:19:39] No. You need to diagnose what the problem is. And once you know that, you can treat it directly at its source. That is ruling your pool. That is being proactive. So use these tests to your advantage. They're pretty much cost free. I mean, Yeah, you got to pay for liquid chlorine and melamine reagent and PR 10,000, but you're using very small amount of them. So it's a good way to diagnose it in a foolproof way.
Closing
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[00:20:06] Eric Knight: I'm Eric Knight with Orenda, this has been episode 82. I think Jarred's going to be on the next one. I know he's not going to read the show notes either way, so I'm not even sure I'm going to make 'em. But, uh, yeah, we don't know what we're talking about yet. You are the people that are giving us the ideas of what to talk about. At this point, we've covered most of the things that we wanted to talk about, but I've got a cue of like 30 ideas that have come from you, the listeners of what we need to talk about on this show.
[00:20:35] So thank you so much for that. Again, the email is podcast@orendatech.com. Our help center is ask.orendatech.com. Thank you all so much for listening to this. And until next time, enjoy ruling your pool. Take care.