Reports of disappearing CYA in pools with White Water Mold got Eric's attention, and it sent him down a rabbit hole. John Davidson of 5-Star Pool & Spa in Billings MT joins the show to discuss this strange phenomenon.
[00:00] - Intro
[01:59] - The Montana Pool Season
[04:39] - What White Water Mold Looks Like
[06:02] - Breaking down CYA
[10:12] - How to Prevent White Water Mold
[13:57] - Chemistry of Breaking Down CYA
[18:27] - Challenges of Pool Care in Montana
[23:01] - ClosingÂ
197. White Water Mold vs. CYA (w/ John Davidson)
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Eric Knight: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Rule Your Pool podcast. I am your host, Eric Knight. This is episode 197. And every so often I will have a customer call me and ask me a question, or maybe they'll shoot me a text, or they will email, like you can, at ruleyourpool@gmail.com. And I will get a question that really gets my mind ticking.
For instance, um, most of the questions I get I've heard before, and there's usually a pretty quick answer, or you just send them to, uh, an article or something like that. But every once in a while you get questions like, "Oh, oh, nobody's ever asked me that before," and you got to do some homework.
And that is what we're going to talk about today, because I've got a guest on here, a good customer of ours, John Davidson, the owner of Five Star Pool and Spa out of Billings, Montana.
Yes, there are pools in Montana, and you take care of them really well, John. Thank you for joining us on the show.
John Davidson: Thank you for having me, Eric. Appreciate it
Eric Knight: Absolutely. We've known each other for a few years, and you had a question that caused me to go down a rabbit hole that was quite large. And I'm, I'm kind of glad you did. Uh, I also lost, you know, a, a day or two of my life, but, you know, it, it'll be all worth it for the audience, for anybody who faces white water mold.
And if you know what this is, you've probably dealt with it before, and it's a pain to deal with. And Jon, you had some of it, and you asked me... Well, actually, go ahead. What was it that you brought to my attention? What was the question?
John Davidson: I asked you if white water mold while it's in the pool. Which is white tissue paper. You know, it grabs into the skimmer, the skimmer basket. We see it in the filters. Um, we see it on the, in the water just floating, looks like Kleenex. If it removes or devour, eats CYA, and then as it dissipates and goes away, the CYA comes back.
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
All right.
John Davidson: what we're seeing. So
Eric Knight: Well, it's pretty amazing that you're seeing that, and it caused me to do a bunch of research, so let's get into it.
[00:01:59] The Montana Pool Season
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Eric Knight: Okay, John, let's back up a little bit. Um, you're servicing pools. Montana, I know it gets cold there. When I visited you, there was about a foot and a half of snow on the ground. How long is your season? Like, when do you open and when do you close pools?
John Davidson: So like open air non-auto cover pools, we open in May, right in there, and we close down in, you know, late September. Auto cover pools, those, those'll open a little bit earlier. We have some that open in March, but mostly April, and those will close down November timeframe
Eric Knight: Okay. And do-- I, I'm guessing most pools have heaters in your market?
John Davidson: have, they all have pool heaters. Yep.
Eric Knight: Okay. Uh, so, uh, what is the typical construction? Are, are these concrete pools, vinyl, fiberglass? What do you have?
John Davidson: Vinyl, vinyl swimming pools.
Eric Knight: They're all...
John Davidson: fiberglass
Eric Knight: Okay, interesting. Okay. Now, uh, you've shown me some photos of things that you've seen, and I'm wondering if the temperature extremes and the long off-season, much like what you have in the Northeast, I'm wondering if that contributes to it.
Because the pool care regimen that you're doing in the summertime is clearly working. The water looks great. But every once in a while you'll get, um, whether it's, like pink slime under the cover or... Actually, this is not just you. This is like a lot of companies have this. That's why we're bringing it up.
But white water mold specifically, where are you seeing it? What type of pools? Um, what, what are the common denominators for anybody listening?
John Davidson: Yeah, so common denominators for us are auto cover swimming pools, mostly cartridge filter and mostly chemical management. We see it sometimes on sand, but not a ton. Open air pools that are on tabs, we don't hardly see it at all. And so I'm just wondering if because we're always adding CYA, if somehow that's keeping it away, I don't really know. but it's just something that's very interesting to us. Majority of our pools are vinyl liners, so vinyl liners are all, you know. I mean, We do have a concrete pool we take care of. We did notice some biofilm buildup around a equalizer port for the skimmer. We didn't build the pool, but we just noticed that yesterday.
But skimmer baskets, cartridge filters, chemical management systems, and then that auto cover, um
[00:04:39] What White Water Mold Looks Like
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Eric Knight: Well, what do all those share in common? 'Cause I've got something in my mind, the first thing that comes to my mind. But
what
think all those areas share in common?
John Davidson: I Well, I mean, they're warm, right? And they're covered. Uh, I, I think that's along the lines, um
Eric Knight: Let me ask again. What can you not do in those parts of the pool system? You ready?
John Davidson: yeah, man
Eric Knight: You can't brush them.
John Davidson: You're right
Eric Knight: So what we're talking about with white water mold, John described it pretty well. It looks like snotty tissue paper. That's like one of the best descriptions you can have. I, I'll throw some, some, uh, photos up on the screen if you're watching this on the Rule Your Pool Facebook page.
Uh, if you're listening to this, just imagine white tissues or tissue paper or almost like wet toilet paper. Not dirty toilet paper, just like wet toilet paper that's, you know, soggy and it just floats around in little flakes. Is that kind of what you see?
John Davidson: It's exactly what we see. We actually saw it on my pool. We turned on some bubblers that haven't been on for a little while, and it just, little tissue, it looks like, you know, you took a toilet paper roll and you ripped off a piece and you just put it in the pool and how it kind of disintegrates and then
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm. Yep.
John Davidson: Um, that is the very, you know, I mean, usually when we come to a pool and we test and we have zero chlorine, we kind of know, That it's probably on the verge, right? And so then it's just trying to get over the top, you know, the best we can to, to knock it out
[00:06:02] Breaking down CYA
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Eric Knight: Well, uh, what you're dealing with, according to the research, and I have three sources. The main source is this article called Cyanuric Acid Biodegradation via Biret: Physiology, Taxonomy, and Geospatial Distribution. It was a part of the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal. Um, I, I can't even pronounce the names of the authors of this, but basically this source talks about how cyanuric acid can get broken down.
Now, cyanuric acid is a nitrogen compound. And inside that structure, if you can break that compound down, that nitrogen creates combined chlorine. So you start getting nitrogen compounds. When they meet chlorinated water, you get combined chlorine. Um, and it's actually an organic nitrogen compound, cyanuric acid is.
And so if you run low on chlorine, you have this available CYA in there. And if such a, uh, biofilm-rich substance like white water mold gets ahold of it, apparently it likes to consume that nitrogen. It likes to break that down. How that's done, uh, I don't even know if I'll have time to explain it now because, to be honest with you, I don't really understand the mechanics.
They explain it in this source, and I can put that in the show notes. But, uh, basically these white water molds, from what I've learned, it's a resistant fungal colony. So it's not technically a type of mold, but it's very similar. And it's, uh... The most common species is called Geotrichum candidum, and it forms a heavy mucus-like tissue.
It routinely coexists with pink slime, which is methyl, Methylobacterium or Rhodotorula yeast bacterium. And anyway, uh, I'm very good at pronouncing things. But anyway, the point is, white water mold feeds on organic waste. It feeds on oils. It feeds on sweat. It feeds on not sunscreen itself, but the residue that sunscreen leaves behind.
It loves makeup. It loves dead algae, specifically the slime that protected it, and any other environmental debris. So think, uh, like oak trees or big, um, anything that drops pods with a bunch of pollen in it. This substance consumes that, and it makes a very thick biofilm, and that biofilm is incredibly chlorine resistant.
So when you're looking at this, have you ever touched it with your bare hands?
John Davidson: Mm-hmm. Yeah,
Eric Knight: Kinda gross, right? Slimy
John Davidson: Yep, yep. Snot is kind of what it reminds me of, yeah
Eric Knight: Yeah, exactly. So that's called an extracellular polymeric substance matrix, uh, or an EPS matrix, which is a thick biofilm. And I, I'm reading this from the source. Um, if you have... Basically, if you don't have enough free chlorine or it's near zero in like localized pockets, for instance, if you haven't been circulating 24/7, you can get it inside the skimmer throat just above the waterline, and then when water flow starts going again, it could wash right back in and start circulating, get jammed up in your filter, et cetera.
If you have dead zones in your area, this helps anaerobic bacteria within that biofilm secrete hydrolytic enzymes that consume organics, including cyanuric acid, because it is hungry for the carbon and nitrogen. You got all that, John?
John Davidson: Makes sense.
Eric Knight: Okay. So l-let me simplify this. I-- now that I'm, you know, taking the, the PhD out of whatever I'm reading here.
The bottom line is this is a fungal colony with a thick biofilm, and it loves eating organics and nitrogen. It loves eating that stuff. Not to get rid of it. So like enzymes will break it down, turn it into carbon dioxide 'cause they get rid of the carbon. No, this consumes it, and it becomes part of the Borg collective, so to speak, and it just feeds on it.
It gets bigger, it gets thicker, it gets hungrier, it gets nastier, and it gets more chlorine resistant. So up to a certain point, it becomes harder and harder to kill. And that slime is incredibly resistant to chlorine. And one of the best things you can do is you can brush, so you can release it from surfaces, so you get more surface area that you can start to address it with.
[00:10:12] How to Prevent White Water Mold
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Eric Knight: Now, you have had... I mean, every pool company's probably faced something like this before, whether it's this or pink slime, but you've had a lot of success dealing with this in certain pools. You told me on the phone the other day. What have you been doing on pools like this to remediate this issue?
John Davidson: Brush, just like you said. And then Orenda, we use PR 10,000, and we use the enzyme.
Eric Knight: Okay. And is it like instant, like it-- within a week it's gone or what?
John Davidson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, yep. And then, and then after that, once we, you know, obviously do that treatment, right, clean the filters. A lot of times with the PR, we'll have some fallout, so we'll vacuum, right?
Vacuum the waste, vacuum it out of the system completely, and then increase the chlorine, and we can get it back on track pretty quickly. Um, you and I talked a long time ago about, like, uh, this whole conversation that you and I have had for years about white water mold is originally started with pink slime,
Eric Knight: Mm-hmm.
John Davidson: right?
We show you that video of what looked like an eel coming out of a pipe
Eric Knight: right. I, I could put that photo on, on it
John Davidson: Yeah. I mean, it,
Eric Knight: Yeah
John Davidson: uh, it's, it's the real deal. I mean, we haven't had any, thankfully, pink slime, but just white water mold. Able to rectify it, get it corrected pretty quickly now. Orenda works for us, and so that's what we use.
Eric Knight: Now, when you have these pools, you're servicing well over 100 pools, right? So you have enough data to kind of pull. On these pools, are they still on single speed pumps or are they all on variable?
John Davidson: all on variable speed
Eric Knight: And are they all running 24 hours? Interesting. So you have full circulation, which I would have thought like if the pump turns off for eight hours or something, you'd have a higher probability of this. And that may be true, but in your case, that's not an issue. You are actually circulating. Do they have
John Davidson: of our, yeah, most of our customers want their pools at, you know, 85 plus. I mean, you know, we've seen, you know, even when it's hot, 90 plus. A lot of people swim at night, you know, we see a lot of that. So a lot of those have auto covers, on every one of them. It just extends that swim season, you know?
So it's, yeah
Eric Knight: Interesting you say that. So warmer water allows this stuff to thrive. I think pretty much every germ and bacteria survives better in warmer water. Cold water, like for instance, algae doesn't really grow and reproduce below fifty-five-ish degrees, depending on the species. Well, the same thing goes here.
So the warmer the water, especially like if you're heating it constantly, I would imagine that that's contributing to the issue, especially if the pool is covered. Are you seeing more of it in covered pools versus uncovered?
John Davidson: Oh, yeah.
Eric Knight: Yeah.
John Davidson: are covered pools, you know, truthfully. Um, you got uncovered, right? We have the sun, the UV, right? I mean, it's doing its thing that it's natural, and it does, and it does it really, really well. But a lot of them are covered, right? I mean, water's a living organism, right? Now we're covering it up for a week at a time.
The number one thing we hear is, "I haven't even been in it," and we're like, "Yeah, aware." You know what I mean? It's actually harder to maintain when it's not being used, uh,
Eric Knight: Yeah
John Davidson: actually being used. At least we have some consumption of chlorine, and we're opening the cover and allowing the UV.
Um, what I've started doing on my personal pool is just leaving my auto cover cracked, um, just to kind of gas off and, and, and we open it at least once a day just to kind of let it breathe. knock on wood, uh, we haven't had it in my pool. Just in the very beginning, that was it. Um, so yeah, I mean, just education. Auto covers are great. I'm not dissing auto covers at all. That is not what this is. I'm just saying, you know, just if customers use them and, and/or open up the pool cover, I definitely think it would help, because we're going off the data from our open air pools, uh, that don't seem to, you know, get this hardly at all.
[00:13:57] Chemistry of breaking down CYA
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John Davidson: So
Eric Knight: So what kind of chlorine are you primarily using on these pools?
John Davidson: So a lot of these pools are like chemical management, liquid chlorine
Eric Knight: Y- when you say chemical management, for the audience, what does that mean? 'Cause do you mean chemicals only, or are you doing full service, or what?
John Davidson: management meaning it automatically doses liquid chlorine and muriatic acid to control the pH. So
Eric Knight: Oh, feeders. Like chemical.
Got it. Okay. So automation. Cool.
All right. So you have plenty of sanitizer, and when you called me, you were saying, "Hey, you know, this is the strangest thing. I've got CYA in these pools. I know I've got CYA 'cause I put it in there." And you get a white water mold outbreak, and your CYA test's zero. Which immediately tells me either it's distorting your test or there's something wrong with your test, or it's doing something to the CYA.
And that's why I went down this path. And yeah, come to find out, as long as there's not a chlorine attached to it, so it's not an isocyanurate, it's just cyanuric acid without the chlorine on it. Yeah, according to this, it's part of the biological process that this starts to break down a compound like cyanuric acid, and it converts that down eventually into nitrates.
And nitrates, uh, after several reactions, nitrates, as you may know this, John, is the final oxidation state of nitrogen. Which means chlorine doesn't do anything to them. And, and by the way, for the listeners, anything that ends in ate, like phosphate, sulfate, nitrate, you're not going to be able to oxidize it with chlorine.
It's the final oxidation state of whatever that substance is. And so nitrates, just like phosphates and sulfates, are food for algae. Isn't that interesting? So then you've got another compound issue. It, it-- and so this kind of, uh, cycles on itself. And how it gets introduced, it's just environmental, unfortunately.
There's nothing you can really do about it. You just have to try to stay ahead of it. And yes, you are not crazy. You are noticing something real. I'd never thought of that. No one's ever told me this, and I, I greatly appreciate you bringing this to my attention because y- you know, I've known you for, I don't know, six or seven years now? And you always bring me the head scratchers.
So I, I greatly appreciate that about you
John Davidson: .I mean, this is like the team tells me, and I'm like, "No way. Really? Are you kidding me?" And sure enough, I mean, I look at their report, like testing, and I'm like, dang, it's like zero CYA. And then they'll come back in a week, and they'll be back to forty or fifty. And I'm like, very interesting. I'm like, I have to
Eric Knight: Yeah
John Davidson: Knight.
I have to ask him what's going on. This is interesting,
so
Eric Knight: so there's something similar that was done in this study. And a-again, this study is called Cyanuric Acid Biodegradation via Biuret. And so the formula here, I can put it on the screen for those watching. When you have, uh, cyanuric acid in water, and you add, um, mold in this case, which can contain a specific enzyme that breaks CYA down into something called bee-yuret. it actually Starts breaking down some of that carbon into CO2, and it starts splitting that off.
And then you go through hydrolysis of biuret into something called allophanate, uh, A-L-L-O-P-H-A-N-A-T-E. Feel free to check my work. And basically, that further breaks down into ammonia. And so you pull a few more elements out, and now once you have ammonia, chlorine goes after the ammonia to create combined chlorine, and eventually this process continues to go down.
But the point is, two steps into this, your cyanuric acid is no longer cyanuric acid, and it's not going to show up on your test kit. It has been broken down into carbon and nitrogen and other things like that. So you are seeing something really happening, and white water mold does indeed break down CYA.
What are you seeing? Are you seeing it be zeroed out even after you kill it, or does it come back?
John Davidson: Our guys are seeing it come back.
Eric Knight: I'm guessing it's lower. It's got to be at least somewhat lower, but it's probably not huge
John Davidson: it's definitely coming back. Oh, yeah.
Eric Knight: Yeah. So that tells me it's kind of both because it would be somewhat of a test interference and obviously it's breaking down some of it. But based on this, um, and again, limited information, I'm not a microbiologist, but it doesn't seem like it eats it all at once.
It seems like this process takes time and it binds it up in a format that just probably doesn't recognize on your test kit. So a little bit of both. Interesting, man. Like this is-- Like I said, this is a long rabbit hole. If it was a simple answer, we probably wouldn't do an episode on this.
[00:18:27] Challenges of Pool Care in Montana
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Eric Knight: But if you listening at home have faced white water mold or pink slime, pink slime does something similar, it's not easy to deal with this because shocking alone might get it, but the biofilm is the problem.
John Davidson: Yeah
Eric Knight: you, you got to get through the biofilm. That's the hard part. And if you can break that down, it's actually very easy to kill this stuff.
Just like it's very easy to kill algae if you can get the slime off of it. It's really no different. This is just a thicker biofilm. Anything you want to add to that, John?
John Davidson: Well, you're correct. I mean, that's kind of like the research I've done on it is, you know, um, just consumes it. And that's kind of why we think maybe on tab pools we don't see it is because it's always putting in cyanuric acid, right? Where, you know, liquid chlorine, right, once it's in, it's in, right? I mean, you dilution, of course, you add, you know? Um, so that's, that's exactly what our team, that's what we're all seeing
Eric Knight: Well, I would imagine if you had-- Let, let's just say for instance you don't have chemical automation and you're just feeding tabs, slow dissolve trichlor tabs. I would think you could still have the mold in there, but the difference is you would probably be able to get more of a cyanuric acid reading because you're, you have it constantly-- It, it hasn't been consumed yet.
Is that what I'm hearing?
John Davidson: Correct.
Eric Knight: Yeah.
John Davidson: Yep
Eric Knight: Interesting. Well, according to this, um, it doesn't seem to matter what type of chlorine you're using. As long as you have chlorine, it can kill it. The biofilm is the problem. So, um, whatever you're doing, uh, try to make sure that you keep proper sanitation in there, avoid over-stabilization, and like John says, he's, he's using an enzyme to help break it down.
You got to do something. Ozone can do this too, by the way. You got to do something to break down this biofilm. Uh, so regular brushing, get it off the surfaces. If it's in your pipes, I mean, maybe there's a way to clean out, like brush the inside of your pipes. I don't know if you could snake it, but I don't know if that's practical.
But clean your filters, that kind of thing. What's your recommendation, John?
John Davidson: Yeah, same thing. Brush, right? Treat with, uh, you know, we do a phosphate and an enzyme. Um, let it fall out, right? Vacuum it, clean the filters, and crank up the chlorine.
Let her ride
Eric Knight: you, see a whole bunch of stuff. So I'm, I'm going to stop looking at the notes here. I'm going to focus on you. You've seen a whole bunch of stuff that most people in the country don't see, and I think it's partially because of your climate. Uh, you are very north, being up in Billings, Montana. Uh, you're at a decent altitude too, and it's different foliage in the high desert, basically.
You're, you're at the, the northern part of the, the Rocky Mountains. What kind of things are you fighting against? For instance, here in North Carolina, it's oak trees. Oak trees and leaves and these seed pods, these pollen pods that come in in the spring and sometimes even in the fall, there's a different type.
They just load our pools with organics. What is it that you have in your market?
John Davidson: Yeah, I mean, our city systems has talked about, you know, adding phosphates to keep pipes clean, so right. You know, we have obviously that. The water, I mean, they think Montana, like the water's great, but it's usually very high in alkaline. you know, 220 out of the well, right? So that's always a thing that we're dealing with.
And then we just deal with a lot of cotton. When cotton starts flying, we're big, we're wide open. I mean, it, it clogs skimmers, it clogs cartridge filters, sand it doesn't matter. is a big one. Knock on wood, thankfully this year, because we had such a warm winter, um, it was so nice. We think the trees are confused, and so we didn't have a ton. But normally we're dealing with just a lot of cotton,
Eric Knight: So
John Davidson: brutal on, on pool systems. I mean, I'm talking like zero circulation,
Eric Knight: Yeah
John Davidson: Um, it's, it's brutal. It's just like putting a towel in the skimmer,
Eric Knight: It reminds me of, uh, my neighbors had two golden retrievers, and they would swim in the pool pretty regularly, and it was this mat of hair.
w- when you say cotton, are you talking about the crop cotton or cottonwood trees?
John Davidson: trees, cottonwoods.
Eric Knight: Cottonwoods. Okay. Yeah. Then it's all in the air and the breeze. Yeah. Wow.
John Davidson: the air, right? We get a lot of... I mean, this year we've had a lot of wind, right? We're really wide open, so we get a lot of dust. I mean, we've had 60, 70 mile an hour winds. That's been, that's been tough, you know. Um, not so much this summer, but definitely over the winter.
So when we go to open them up, we have, you know, layers of silt and dust that we're vacuuming out. Um, yeah, it's leaves, trees, you know, everybody seems to love that lagoon look, you know, trees. And so we get a lot of leaves. Um, but the cotton is, one's a tough one. Um, yeah.
[00:23:01] Closing
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Eric Knight: Interesting. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? I greatly appreciate the question.
John Davidson: No, no. I just wanted your take on it, so
Eric Knight: Well, and, and here I am pulling you by the ear to get onto the podcast. And as begrudgingly as you did, I'm g- really grateful that you did.
So I'm gonna just recap this. White water mold is a fungal colony coated in a very thick chlorine-resistant biofilm, and that biofilm is organic, and it feeds on, basically nitrogen and organic compounds. And instead of breaking them down like enzymes break down carbon bonds and they convert it to CO2 and they clean out your pool, these just eat it and it grows and you get more of it.
Now, cyanuric acid is an organic nitrogen compound 'cause it does have a nitrogen, it does have a carbon in it, and it breaks that down to eat it. So, uh, basically what I'm hearing here, although the s- the source doesn't talk about, you know, testing for CYA in a, in that sense, there seems to be a different form of CYA.
It's kind of like partially broken down, and then perhaps if you kill this stuff, it's intact enough that it can show up again on your test kit. I don't know, honestly. But what we do know is that it does like breaking down CYA according to this source, and it does break down eventually into ammonia and then nitrates further down the line.
Takes a lot of chlorine to get rid of that stuff. So yeah, it, it's just fascinating. I never would've thought white water mold could attack CYA and remove it, but now we know.
John Davidson: Now we know
Eric Knight: Cool. Well, John Davidson from Five Star Pool and Spa, thank you so much for being on the Rule Your Pool podcast. As I say to most of my guests, undoubtedly the low point in your career, and it's just been a pleasure.
John Davidson: Thanks, Eric. Appreciate you
Eric Knight: All right. Awesome. This has been episode 197. We are slowly approaching episode 200, and that's just astounding to me. So thank you for still listening. Thanks for being here, and I hope you found some value in this. If you have any questions or you have any of these mystery pool problems, reach out to me at ruleyourpool@gmail.com.
Thanks, everybody. Take care.
John Davidson: Thank you