I have a feeling that this potentially could actually change the pool um, if they're willing to share what they've developed. Um, it's, it's, they're using, not using conventional ORP sensors like
Okay.
uses. And, and they, they talk about a multiple array of sensors that does this testing and, and things that, um, it's really, really exciting. And then
Well, and I think people like pool service companies shouldn't feel threatened by having that on that equipment. 'cause Well, one, it needs to be monitored and probably calibrated periodically.
I
And
Yeah,
there's a bunch of sensors, that means a bunch of repairs on sensors at some point in that
Yeah.
life.
any, anything manufactured has. The need for verification and repair and, and replacement and all that kind of stuff. But, uh, it's, it's exciting because it sounds as if they're tackling the, the metering of chemicals from different angles than has been done in the industry for, you know, 50 years or more.
Right.
Yeah,
by using different
I think, I think that's ex exciting, especially because homeowners have the tr, honestly, they have trouble with testing water
yeah, they do.
so if they're trying to take care of themselves or in between services, I know I had a couple hot tubs on service. I told them, you are gonna have to take care of it in between services because it's such a small body of water and everything.
But I'll double check, you know things when I come to service your pool. I didn't take care of hot tubs if they didn't have a pool
Right.
service 'cause they're.
Well, and, and what, you know, caldera, um, Watkins Manufacturing, the, the parent, if you will, of Caldera and Hot Springs, um, does a ton of research on products, on sales, on consumers, all this kind of stuff. the concern of testing water, the water quality, all of that stuff is a reason that many people throw out there as to why they won't buy a hot tub. Well, okay, so they, for, like I said for the last 10 years, I think is what they said, they've been trying to tackle that coming up with a bathtub tub that will help the homeowner test the water instead of the homeowner having to be all concerned about needing to become a chemist to take
Yep.
this thing.
Otherwise, I'm gonna end up getting sick or, you know. Irritated or whatever, because the water quality isn't good. I, I got my hats off to 'em for, for going after it and, uh, know, we'll, we'll see this year as we start to bring these units in later in the year, how it does, what it does and, and the effectiveness of it and everything else.
But, um, I'm excited. It's, it's sounds like it's pretty cool stuff.
Yeah,
So, yeah,
I like that.
Let's find something for every episode. New. Okay.
I like that idea. 'cause believe me, there's a lot of stuff that no one sees
Yeah. Yep.
and it, and I think that it sh in our, you know, spotlight of things. It shouldn't matter. I wanna say cool products and stuff like that. Let's say it's not even sold in the us, it's only sold in like Europe.
yep.
It'd be neat to see what they're doing in Europe, because if they're doing it there, eventually it should happen here.
Yeah, it seems that a lot of, a lot of stuff, um, you know, the use of, uh, ozone and uv, I think to, to going back many, many, many years seems to have originated over there or was, was adopted over there much sooner than it was brought here to the us. Um,
I remember when I was in college, I went to Europe for a study abroad trip, and I had learned that things would first happen in Europe, before it would happen in America just because of regulations or trends or whatever, right? And I went there and the popular haircut for men was a mullet. And I'm looking around like, what is wrong with people?
This is not a cute idea.
yeah.
Fast forward three years later, and then mullet was back here, and I'm just like, this is not attractive at all. And then it faded away and now it's back. The mullet is back. When are we gonna get rid of that tacky haircut?
Right. How about bell bottom jeans
I don't mind those.
you know? Yeah. Well, but they were, they were gone for a long, long time after the, the seventies. And,
Mm-Hmm?
or do you, do you remember parachute pants at all?
Yes,
Do you?
I do. Yes.
and
I had one pair when I was like seven.
okay. All that kind of stuff. Well, same, same happens I guess in, uh, every aspect of how about colors of stuff in our industry, right? I've seen hot tubs as, since we're talking about hot tubs.
Yeah.
the colors of hot tubs through the years, you know, uh, 35 plus years ago, a brown marble kind of a. Acrylic was the thing, right? And yeah. Right. You kind of turn up your nose and, and definitely very dated, but started to kinda resurface, um, I dunno, five to 10 years ago. It wasn't just brown. They brought some blacks and grays into it and really made unique kind of colorings with it. But, uh, the, the brown by itself, I, I don't think that'll ever come back or there was a, a teal green or cranberry
I've seen these colors in the, in the field where they're like, yeah, we wanna get rid of this. It's like,
a good
I don't blame you.
You know, it's kinda like the Red Heart-shaped bathtubs that, uh, you know, I, I, some people have in their, don't know, maybe no one has 'em anymore. They finally ripped 'em all out and got rid of them. But that was a, craze at some point, way back when.
Yeah, I know tile, there's some tacky ones from like the sixties and seventies and I'm like, oh my God, that's God awful. But then if you look at the tiles that are available now, they're starting to come back with some of those same ones. Um. They're like, especially now that I'm doing like the design stuff, I'm looking at tile, like all of the tile and some of the point, the choices.
I'm like, oh my God, I thought we got rid of this in the nineties. Like, why are we bringing this back? Like, it's so dated and, and just not attractive.
Yeah. Well, and, and some, you know, it's interesting 'cause some people, uh, sort of like the quote unquote retro right. Kind of, kind of design of stuff. this stuff isn't being brought back as retro. It's being brought back as it's just what people
one?
that, you know.
There's this one, God, I wish I knew what it was called because it's in my design program for tile and, um, oh, it was a, it's like a blue glaze tile with a, um, like a diamond shape in the middle that has a dolphin.
Oh
called
sure.
No Dolphin co uh,
Alt.
made by Noble title.
Yep.
I'm just like, that just reminds me of the stuff I saw in the nineties.
And I was like, this is, this is disgusting. Like, like there is nothing that brings, it's not I I grabbing any, a good way, like total nineties, or you get these ones where they're doing more of like a, a Spanish,
yeah,
how do you describe it? Just a Spanish feel.
Spanish.
I,
I know what you mean.
and I've seen customers take that Spanish, like influence tile and use it for all of the tiles.
Not like, oh, let's just have like this, this blue, pretty blue tile, and then have that goes with the blue inside the Spanish tile. And maybe have the Spanish tile as an accent, you know,
Yeah.
maybe every so many feet. Not every, every single tile. And I don't like them. I think that it's just. God awful.
Yeah, I don't know. Color colors of stuff is interesting. You know? The house, the, house I'm in now, we built in 2006, but prior to that we were in a house that we had bought and it was an existing home. when we bought it, the kitchen was avocado green.
Oh God.
The refrigerator and the, you know, everything was avocado greens.
So one of the,
I have this
actually the day we moved in, it got all, all of it got changed. . We, we had all new appliances and it got, and at the time though, and this was, this is dated as well. Everything was put in was white.
Well, my kitchen is a white tile with brown. Um, why am I stumping on the, on the grout?
Okay. Yeah,
And that's definitely dated and, but it go, the brown grout goes with the wood paneling in the, the playroom. So.
it, it was a theme throughout the house. Right?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
fun.
Well, I thought this is kind of nice little chat about different little things that are in the industry and
I.
that we're starting to learn about more and could actually open doors to better things.
Yeah,
So
you know, I'm real excited to see what AI does for our industry.
I know I was just talking about that with Deb and Michelle the other day. Like it, it's. It's incredible. Like you don't e like I I brought up with them. You can have AI on your website and have it sound like you and you can be chatting with your customer, scheduling an appointment or something and they think they're actually talking to you and they can mimic your, the way you write, they can mi the way you look like.
It's,
Right.
it's so much and it's changing so much. But you had, you had showed me one where it helps make it look like you're making eye contact when you're not. Which, hey, that is great for, uh, work meetings where you possibly are sleeping.
Yeah. Or, you know, so this year we're, we're getting into, um, and more, and I think it's, it's be, as a result of covid, people don't care to come in and see us for
no.
aspects of things, right? So we, you know, maybe we're selling malliner for the pool or a pump for their pool or whatever. And, and, you know, we, we often already have relationships with these, uh, clients from the service end of things.
But we send 'em a quote and we wanna, you know, we've got functioning displays of everything in,
Yeah.
or outside of our store. So, hey, would you like to come in and see it? Do you wanna come in and pick out a pattern your aligner? Whatever, whatever. And more and more people are like, no. Um, I don't, don't need to, you know, and, and it's email exchanges back and forth.
You know, you pop off.
we're we're gonna try to, um, bring in the use of. Like Zoom kind of meetings with
Okay.
right? So they can do
I think that's a great idea.
office, from their whatever. But with that, uh, this whole AI being able to your eyes focused on the camera, well think about, you know, typical body language and communication and sales skills around, um, you
Mm-Hmm.
right? And, and if I think the whole Zoom meeting kind of stuff, because you might be looking at something on your screen about the quote you just sent them and you're reading it or whatever, and you're, you're not focusing on them. It, it cause a little bit of, of not necessarily distrust, but just a change of. Perception of,
Yeah,
whether you're really caring about their whatever they're getting. this AI stuff to keep your eyes focused on the camera the whole time you're doing it. You can be looking off on the right side of your screen reading something about what you're talking to 'em about, but you're eyes are focused on the camera, which means you're looking at their eyes
right.
and you know that eye contact is a huge thing when you're dealing with sales. So,
Oh God, yes.
you, you think of the aspect of how that AI in a virtual meeting setting improves the aspect of the, the of sales and such, because the homeowners customers in general are gonna feel that you're, you're just very, very attentive to them. and it's not that you're not attentive to 'em, you know, you're, but, but just the perception of your eyes always focusing on them. Um. Has meaning. So yeah, I'm, I'm excited to see what AI does for us over the course of the next couple of years and and beyond for,
Well, and it's gonna be interesting 'cause it is, if you think about it, pretty elementary, um, what is at right now. But the progression that it's making even every day is a lot
Well,
it
let me, let me throw this out at you. So
Okay.
of all of the stuff that we use to test water isn't accurate, right? Test strips, kits, spin labs, they have, they, they're only accurate to a certain range, if you will.
Right.
And with that, when you're testing water, if you're gonna, if you're gonna test every parameter that you can, if you were to apply the accuracy of the test to the values that you got. You're gonna get a, get a range. So if you test the chlorine and you think it's three, it may not be three.
Yeah.
don't off the top of my head, depending on the test you're using, but you could be 2.5 or 3.5
Yeah.
your, your sinic acid tests are some of the least accurate and salt tests, some of the least accurate, if I remember right.
Tests that are out there variances of, uh, 10% on the spin,
Yeah.
spin desk stuff. the variances with drop tests are like huge, huge, huge. So at any rate, look at AI to all of that. So if you have ranges for everything you have to pick a value within that range that you feel is what the value truly is, and then if we're certainly balancing things to LSI and so forth. Within that range, I can see some fairly significant fluctuations. Right?
Yeah.
and this is where we see people come in that, um, well I went to, you know, this pool store and they told me I had to do this, and now you're telling me you should have done that. Or, or you know, the technician that was out last week said, my water these levels shouldn't need this, and now you're telling me it needs that. And I think a lot of that comes into the professional's interpretation of these variances and such.
Yeah,
throw, throw all that stuff into an AI and what can it do for us, you know, like,
well it can, it can clear up a lot of miscommunication, mis knowledge, time. You have to explain everything to the customer. 'cause it can explain to the customer.
and, and it can also quickly attribute these ranges of each individual test that we've taken within the degree of error
Yeah.
find. Some normalcy out of what is slight chaos. Uh, I don't know how to, how to really speak to what what is in my head. I can't, I can't really get it out. But, you know, it, it likely will have the ability of, of giving better, um, chemical treatments out of the same test than pool professionals who have been doing it for decades.
Yeah.
And that's, and, and so the other part of that is now if, if that AI technology becomes that, which I, I believe it will, now you can take your new hires and have them be performing at much higher levels much faster with the help of AI guiding them
Mm-Hmm.
every test that they take. right?
right.
been doing it a long time. I've been doing it a long time. You know, we test water, we know pools, we know what we're doing is gonna produce the effect we want and so forth. But if you have someone that's been working for you for a year, they don't have the knowledge you do
No.
AI could help give them that knowledge help you give the customer the experience that they're expecting as if you were in the yard
Right.
somebody that has a little bit less experience. it's interesting. I mean, exciting. So we'll see
I'm excited about it. Um, there was a gentleman that showed me a picture of a design that he did with ai and this, this picture, it'd be very difficult to notice the difference between a picture of a pool and this image that he created.
Yeah.
And I thought that was kind of neat. Obviously I got, like I said in my talk with the ladies was that makes me a little nervous because of me trying to get into that field.
Is that going to remove my, my knee, my need,
Well, that there's, there's a lot to be said about that too. I, I think for, for right now, the AI is just gonna help us do what we
Yes,
And
but there is a possibility it will
Right.
and we'll have to harness it.
I'm too old to have to worry about, you know, Skynet, so
Well, the and the way, it's like everything. We always get afraid of something taking our job. Oh, we have chemical automation. We don't need pool service. No, you do.
Absolutely.
And it's gonna be the same thing with the ai. There's going to be a need for the professional regardless of what is coming about.
right.
is only so independent.
It makes errors.
tool. Technology is a tool that makes us better.
Yeah.
uh, you know,
So it.
all of this, this, uh, well, the, the chemical metering stuff, you know, people even today will, will say, well, why, why would I wanna put that on someone's pool when I'm building it? Because I want them to have us do service forever.
And if I do that, what about automatic pool cleaners? Wasn't,
Yep.
not remember, but I do because I was around when there, there was
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