Eric answers a customer's question about vacation rental properties and their unpredictable bather loads and temperature swings.
00:00 - Introduction
01:27 - Unpredictable bather load? Get back to basics.
03:05 - Back to the Four Pillars
04:12 - Four Pillars Action Steps
08:31 - We don't know what happens in these pools
10:17 - Rapidly changing water temperature
14:49 - Pool/Spa Combos
16:22 - Closing
[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I'm your host Eric Knight with Orenda and HASA. And this is episode 153. Today's episode is a request from a customer of ours from Palm Springs. Thank you, Eric. His name's also Eric, but it was not me. And his request came in I don't even remember when, but months ago. Sorry for the delay. It's a timely topic because we've been getting a lot more questions about this as well. Vacation rental properties.
[00:00:30] If any of you pool pros out there are managing like an Airbnb or a VRBO or some other vacation rental property, you know that the load can be unpredictable. And in season it is predictably horrible. Meaning it's just going to get slammed with people. And you don't know what people, and you don't know how many people, and it's always different every single week. And I know that's frustrating.
[00:00:54] If you are a property owner listening to this, maybe you have your own pool, but maybe you also have a vacation rental, this episode is also for you. Because there are some things to consider when you have these rental properties that may make the quality of your water better. And certainly help the service pro who is trying to make your water clean have an easier time doing so.
[00:01:15] This topic is kind of multifaceted, so it's a little bit more detailed than I thought. And that's probably the main reason why it's taken so long to get to it. Let's get into it. Episode 153, vacation rental properties.
[00:01:27] Eric Knight: Let's start with the obvious. Unpredictable bather loads means it's much more difficult to keep that pool clean and sanitary every single week. Now you could play it safe and just treat every single week as if you're going to have a very busy week and people are going to be using this hot tub or pool all day long every day. But is that the most practical way to do things? Not everybody can communicate with the property owner to know their exact schedule. And they're certainly not going to keep you updated on every single thing.
[00:02:18] So what pool pros continue to tell me is every week they go back to that property and they just have to be reactive. They've got to be able to just handle whatever was thrown at them in the previous seven days. And who knows what that is?
[00:02:31] Some days they go there and the pool was just perfect, because nobody was there, or very lightly used. And then some days they go there and the water is brown. And they have to drain the spa and they weren't budgeting that time on their route to take that water out, then rinse out the system, clean out the vessel and refill it. That takes a lot of time.
[00:02:50] And if you're on a route trying to get a bunch of pools done a day, say 10 pools a day, you need to be prepared for that. Some of our customers have been telling us when they go to these rental properties. They're just expecting the worst.
[00:03:05] Eric Knight: Let's think about the most common denominators of problems. If you have taken Orenda Academy, you know that there's a second Orenda Academy program that came out probably five years ago now called Four Pillars. The Four Pillars are the four common denominators of almost every problem that we see in swimming pool care.
[00:03:23] Each of the Four Pillars tackles a different concept and it has one action step. And if you just do this one action step, pretty easy to do, you can prevent that entire category of problems for the most part. Now there will always be outliers, there'll be extremes, but it's rare.
[00:03:40] Generally speaking, this action step will prevent whatever that problem stems from. If you just follow the four action steps, most of the problems that are going to happen on vacation rentals just don't materialize. Now again, they can in extreme circumstances and vacation rentals, especially hot tubs, can absolutely be extreme enough in the bather load category that it may break this paradigm. So just keep that in mind.
[00:04:08] But for the most part, normal use, it's not going to be as big of a deal.
[00:04:12] Eric Knight: So let's go through these four action steps quickly, and then we'll apply them to vacation rentals. Pillar number one, the action step is to maintain LSI balance year round. Easy enough, that's yellow or green on the Orenda Calculator. But you need to account for temperature if you're going to do that.
[00:04:29] In some areas, like where I live, my pool froze last year. Certainly the Midwest and the Northeast, pools freeze every single year. So you can't have the same strategy in January as you did in July. If you're in Southern California, the temperature may not move much at all. Well, that's fine, but you don't know how much colder it's going to get. Or maybe you have a vacation rental property that is heated 24/7. And it's always the same temperature.
[00:04:57] Whatever your situation is, in order to accomplish pillar one, you need to be aware of it. Carry a thermometer if you don't already. But it's not just temperature. You also need to be able to contain pH.
[00:05:09] Most of these vacation properties do not have automation. They are on weekly service and containing pH is going to be critical for that. If the pH is naturally rising, you want to know where it goes. Because at that pH naturally rises, it doesn't matter if I put it to 7.4, it's not staying there. Unless you put an automatic cover on it, which we just spoke about in the last episode, 152. Or maybe you have a Trichlor feeder. That'll suppress pH.
[00:05:36] In most cases, it's rising up to that pH ceiling. And it may not get there, but it's on its way to it. Is the LSI still balanced when you get back? Is it balanced at that pH ceiling? That's a question you should ask yourself. If it is, then there's a really good chance you have taken care of pillar one. Good for you. That's awesome.
[00:05:55] Pillar Two. Supplement chlorine against the oxidant demand. Why the oxygen demand? Because chlorine is an excellent killer. Great at sanitizing, it's the best algaecide out there. Not the best oxidizer. There are other oxidizers that are way better. Ozone for one, AOP. These systems are way better oxidizers than chlorine, but the primary residual oxidizer in your pool is going to be that chlorine.
[00:06:21] It's going to get used up. The vast majority of what chlorine gets used up on is oxidants. And the vast majority of those are going to be non-living organics. Bather waste. Not just the natural stuff that comes off of our bodies, but the products we put on our bodies. Sunscreen is the mac daddy of them all, but lotions, cosmetics, deodorants, things like that.
[00:06:43] In general, Pillar Two is probably where I would put my focus when we talk about busy vacation rental properties, because of the unknowns. You can be proactive and stay ahead of most of this stuff by assuming there's going to be a big bather load. It's very simple: supplement chlorine against the oxidant demand.
[00:07:03] Maybe the property owner has the means to put on an ozone system or an AOP system, in which case that's great. UV can help, but UV does not oxidize. It can definitely help with sanitation, no doubt. But if the problem is sunscreen, well, what is sunscreen block? Oh, yeah. It blocks UV. Hm. Okay, just keep that in mind.
[00:07:26] We make enzymes. CV-600 is a great fit for getting rid of that body butter, so to speak. If you don't have a DE filter, CV-700 is a great fit for this as well. And if you leave a residual in there as directed, that residual of enzymes is going to be there all week. It's going to be ready for the new bathers to get in there and it's going to help keep that pool clean and clear.
[00:07:47] That way your chlorine is freed up to do what it does best, which is sanitize and kill things. That's what we really want chlorine available to do.
[00:07:55] Pillar number three, keep phosphates below 500 parts per billion. If you go higher than that, it complicates chemistry. We talk about this at length in our Four Pillars. Not that we need to dwell on this. Phosphates don't seem to be a urgent matter with these pools any more than they would be on a normal pool. So I don't think that's really worth bringing up in this episode. But just try to stay below 500.
[00:08:16] Um, and then finally minimal CYA is Pillar number Four. If you have a residential pool, keep it below 50 parts per million cyanuric acid. And if it's a commercial pool, below 15 per the CDC recommendations for an accidental fecal incident.
[00:08:31] Eric Knight: You don't know what happens in those pools. You're not there. If you don't own the pool, you tend to be more reckless in the pool. One of the main things that gets into these pools, depending on where you are, is alcohol. Hopefully not glass. From what we're hearing from customers, Some of these pools are just trashed. Absolutely trashed when they come back.
[00:08:55] And so from a water balance and water quality perspective, the balance strategy doesn't change really at all. You're still going to try to balance your LSI, have enough calcium in there. You're going to have probably more splash out if people are using it. So that number may dilute down depending on your tap water. So balance really isn't as much of the concern, assuming you're doing things the way we teach it anyway.
[00:09:17] It's really about water quality. So I would air to the higher side of free chlorine. It will get used up. So it's not going to stay super high for very long. But make sure that you are chlorinating sufficiently. I would absolutely supplement against the oxidant demand. If I were managing pools that were vacation rentals, I would be utilizing probably a double weekly dose of CV-600 personally, just as an insurance policy. I don't know who's going to use that pool.
[00:09:45] And the worst thing that can happen if I dose too much is some extra bubbles. In which case I can dial it back the next week. So no harm, no foul, but at least I'll have it in there just in case you have that bachelorette party where everyone's wearing tanning oils and they're partying like crazy and wine spills in the pool and whatever else. It happens.
[00:10:03] These things do happen. And, uh, we don't want to think about everything that goes into those pools, but we do know that if you are taking care of these oxidants, chlorine is going to have a fighting chance of keeping up with the things that you absolutely don't want in that pool.
[00:10:17] Eric Knight: So that's the water quality topic. There is another variable that this customer in Palm Springs brought up. What about when there's a rapid temperature swing? For instance, it's wintertime, the water's pretty cold. But then they crank up the heat on the spa. Maybe even the pool, but usually it's going to be the hot tub. So the pool is staying cold. But the hot tub gets hot.
[00:10:41] So now you go from, I don't know, I'm going to make it up. Let's say 50 degree water to 90 degree water. And you have that 40 degree temperature swing rapidly within an hour. Wow, that changes the LSI in that spa. No doubt about it. Rapid temperature changes like that tend to cloud the water. I've seen this a lot from customers that text me saying, Hey, this homeowner just sent me this photo. Every time he turns on the heater, the water just goes milky.
[00:11:11] Yeah, that's an LSI violation. Doesn't surprise me at all. Because the temperature's going way up, it's suddenly a purple, scale forming condition. Calcium carbonate starts to precipitate out of solution.
[00:11:23] There are a few ways to handle this. Number one, you could adjust your chemistry so that you have a lower pH ceiling. You could run it at a lower alkalinity as long as you have enough calcium to sufficiently balance the LSI for its normal temperature, which is much colder. As long as that's balanced and you have that lower pH ceiling, you're going to have a less severe LSI violation if you have one at all.
[00:11:49] So maybe they crank up the temperature and it barely goes like 0.35 positive. Well, that's not going to cloud the pool. But a +0.55 might, or a +0.65 might. It just depends. Every pool is a little bit different. So you want to stack the odds in your favor no matter what happens in that pool.
[00:12:10] Another option is you could sequester or chelate the calcium in the water. So that when the temperature does change, you're ready for it. That calcium's not coming out of solution because it's already bound up. So that scale inhibiting is going to be beneficial to you as well.
[00:12:25] In terms of strategy, treat the entire system for the colder temperature. You want to make sure you're LSI balanced on the cold side. It's much easier to clean up scale if you get it. It's much easier to clean up carbonate clouding if you get it, than deal with etching. Etching is permanent.
[00:12:46] Carbonate clouding, once it goes back into the pool and it cools down, it's usually going to go right back into solution. What you want to try to avoid is depositing scale on the tile, but even so it's usually not that big of a deal. Yeah, it's unsightly, but you could just chelate it. SC-1000 will do that. Any sequestering agent will do that. And I think the bigger issue is just understanding what that temperature is going to do to the LSI, plugging that into the calculator and seeing where you need to be in that case. And then communicate with the property owner. Let them know hey, when you crank up the temperature, don't go over 95. Or don't go over 97, or whatever the number is. Just set that as your highest temperature.
[00:13:28] And I understand different systems are going to have different limitations. Maybe the user's going to have a button that they could just keep pushing up, up, up, up, up. I get that. But education's the key.
[00:13:39] Maybe they put a placard there or something because there's a difference between 95 degrees and 104. And it might just be enough of a difference. Between clouding up the pool at 104 and not clouding it at 95. It's not just hot tubs and spas though. Because some pools will heat up from say the 50s to the 80s for two weeks. What do you do in that situation?
[00:14:06] The exact same thing I just described. Look at where that temperature is going to be, manage the alkalinity level so that you manage the pH ceiling level. And use that to determine where your calcium should be. So that you don't get an LSI violation when it's cranked up, but you're also defended when that heater turns off and the temperature goes back down to the cold temperature.
[00:14:28] Again, the bigger priority is protecting the downside. That's a much bigger priority than focusing on the higher temperature. With the help of SC-1000 or a sequestering agent, the high temperatures are not going to be nearly as big of a deal. And even if they are, they're temporary. The colder temperature can do permanent damage if you're not careful.
[00:14:49] Eric Knight: And this doesn't just apply to rental properties, of course. There are a lot of swimming pool and spa combos out there that can either flow with the same circulation or you can close a valve and isolate the spa to heat it up. Jarred's pool does this. Jarred's pool will be cold and then he can crank up the heat on the spa. Well, what do you balance your LSI to in that situation? Exactly what I'm just describing.
[00:15:11] Focus on the cold temperature and then manage the temporary spike in temperature in the hot tub itself. Use the calculator. It will tell you how extreme you can get, and it will guide you on where your parameters should be.
[00:15:25] One final note on this is chemistry is very slow in cold water. So if you're below say 60 to 65 degrees, even chlorine, isn't going to work very fast. Enzymes don't really work. Sequestering agents and chelants may go dormant. The temperature slows everything down.
[00:15:47] One of the questions we get, I think it's justification for its own podcast episode, is cold plunges. Those are really hard to manage because they're very hard to clean. The chemicals don't work well in cold water. If you have a pool in the winter and you crank up the heat, suddenly all that chemistry wakes up again.
[00:16:08] So you can treat it while it's warm. And you could do things while it's warm before it goes back to its hibernation state. I don't know if it's hibernation in your case, or maybe it's just normal circulation, but no use. It was people like jumping into cold pools.
[00:16:22] Eric Knight: I'm sure I am forgetting some things. I just wanted to get the general concepts out there. I do want to thank Eric for reaching out with this podcast suggestion. I know I've got several others and I've been horrible about getting to all of them, and I'm sorry.
[00:16:35] This has been episode 153 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. If you have any questions or you have a pool that's really driving you nuts, reach out to us. You probably know how to reach us by now. And if you don't, our help center is ask.orendatech.com. ASK.orendatech.com. And if you don't see the answer to your question, go to the top, submit a question. That's how you can reach us. Uh, anyway, I'm your host Eric Knight with Orenda. I appreciate your time, until next time. Thanks.