From the Pool Trenches of Summer Servicing!

In this episode of the Talking Pools Podcast, hosts Peter Wiedermann, Lee, and Shane engage in a lively discussion about their recent experiences in pool maintenance and servicing. Against the backdrop of scorching temperatures in Perth, Peter shares anecdotes about challenging pool jobs, including a particularly daunting one involving a neglected pool that hadn't been touched for two years. The hosts delve into the importance of proactive maintenance, addressing issues before they escalate, and the significance of effective communication with customers in managing expectations. From preventing leaks to handling challenging customers, the conversation covers various aspects of the pool service industry, providing insights and anecdotes that resonate with professionals and pool owners alike.

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Transcript

Peter Wiedermann (00:05.597)
G'day folks, Peter here. Welcome back to Monday's Down Under on the Talking Pools podcast, where I am joined by Lee. How are you young lady?

Lee (00:13.221)
Hi, Peter. Very good, thank you. Hey, Shane, how are you?

shane (00:17.454)
I am goodly, thank you. Cooking a little bit. It's pretty warm over here. Probably not as hot as what it is in Perth, but yeah, it's getting pretty warm. Yeah, I think he is melting.

Lee (00:29.405)
Peter's melting.

Peter Wiedermann (00:33.501)
It's 41 Celsius here, which is about 106 Fahrenheit. And I noticed this morning was really humid and I've been watching my lightning tracker and there's quite a substantial thunderstorm coming down. I think it's moved about 30, 40 kilometers in the last half an hour, so it's moving quick. So we'll probably hear some banging and crashing sometime soon. And the.

Lee (00:56.957)
So if we lose you, we know why.

Peter Wiedermann (00:59.553)
But then we lose the whole recording because I'm hosting it. So let's hope not. Let's hope not.

Lee (01:04.817)
Let's hope not.

Peter Wiedermann (01:09.101)
Alrighty, let's go on.

Lee (01:12.901)
I was going to say how's your week been for both of you?

Lee (01:19.199)
Is it any way good, Peter?

shane (01:20.645)
yeah we're past that week Peter.

Peter Wiedermann (01:22.637)
Yeah, I know. No, it's been a tough one. I've been getting over the tail end of the flu. Gabe, my technician, he's been off with COVID for a week. And of course, in these temperatures, everyone wants service immediately. So we're quite a few jobs behind, a couple of dozen jobs behind, some of which are, you know, major vacuum to waste and green pool recovery. So it's going to take a lot of work to catch up on it. But Saturday was also the same temperature, 41, and I had a

media filter replacement and that wasn't fun in that weather in full sun and this afternoon I've got another one to do so I should have waited a few days till the temperature drops to something sensible before doing those jobs but it is it's part of the climate here we accept it

Lee (02:07.261)
Absolutely. And look, Peter, you have to tell the listeners about that doozy of a pool you sent us a picture of.

Peter Wiedermann (02:14.697)
Oh mate. Okay, went out to a job yesterday. It was booked several weeks ago and I've just moved into the house. They have, they said they wanted the pool. It just needed a bit of a clean because it was, I said how dirty is it, what condition? They said oh there's a bit of dirt in it but it's not too bad. Went out there yesterday, had my spin tester in hand because when I'd go to a new pool for the first time, first thing I do is check chemistry, see if there's anything major that needs rectifying.

Walked out into the yard, saw this pool. I would date it at about the late 1980s, fiberglass pool. It was about half full of water, and this water was thick, green. I couldn't see an inch below the surface.

Lee (03:00.259)
a little bit of debt.

Peter Wiedermann (03:01.393)
Yeah, just a little bit of dirt. So I put my tester down. I said, well, it won't be needing that then. And I said, oh, how long will this take? I said, this is at least three, four trips out to site, but I can't see what's in it. Couldn't see what debris was in the bottom. But given the number of trees around, all of which lose lots of leaves, I'm expecting the worst on this one.

shane (03:02.115)
Thank you.

Lee (03:25.593)
And how low was the water level? It was about halfway up the wall, wasn't it? Yeah. So chances are there could be a massive crack in the floor of the pool or anything.

Peter Wiedermann (03:28.749)
Halfway up the wall, it was half full. So about three foot from the top.

Peter Wiedermann (03:37.825)
Doubtful the floor, because on a fiberglass pool I'd expect it to drain below that. Entirely possible in a pool that age. And that area does have a variable water table underground. And there's a high clay content in the soil, so a lot of expansion and contraction. So I said to him, first thing you need to do is top this thing up. Get water into it, stop the walls bowing in. I said, I think they have slightly already, couldn't see much.

Lee (03:44.974)
Oh, you're true.

Lee (03:54.85)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Peter Wiedermann (04:06.973)
caking of dirt on the walls. But some of the paving beside the pool had already started to sink just an inch or so. But that shouldn't happen. And so I told them to fill it up. I said, look, once it's filled up, cleared up, I nuked it with, it was pointless doing a test. It was that green. No test result would have been accurate. So dumped a heap of acid in, dumped a heap of chlorine in, and hoped for the best. I said, now, where's your equipment?

Very little could have prepared me for the site I was about to behold. The equipment I would say also was late 80s. Pump design I haven't seen in many years. The chlorinator was an Aqua Health branded chlorinator. Now I remember them from basically back when I was in high school. Aqua Health was quite big. Now it's a Waterco brand of chemical.

Lee (04:51.901)
which I haven't even seen before either.

shane (05:02.811)
Jesus that's going back a while now then Peter.

Peter Wiedermann (05:06.265)
Yeah, I know, trudging through the snow on the mountains to get to school and didn't have shoes and slept in a cardboard box. Ah, yeah. It was only a problem when you had to sit in the corner with a dunce's cap after the teacher threw the chalkboard at you. But yeah, this chlorinate, I haven't seen one of those for many, many years. It was a real dinosaur. And they said, oh, all the equipment works, right?

Lee (05:11.677)
riding your pony.

shane (05:21.006)
Hmm.

Peter Wiedermann (05:35.129)
I said, don't hold your breath. I said, I can't test it till the pool's full and the water's in reasonable condition, but don't hold your breath. Afterwards, they told me that it hadn't been, nothing had been done with it for about two years. So obviously that heard from the seller of the home they bought off, that had just been neglected. So you can expect with that, all the seals, all the gaskets, all the, everything to just be completely stuffed. And that chlorinator,

It would be a modern day miracle if that thing still works.

Lee (06:07.933)
I cannot understand why people buy houses with pools and don't get a pre-sale inspection done on the pool and the pool equipment. Like seriously.

Peter Wiedermann (06:16.777)
Do you know that? I see people get a building inspection, pest inspection for termites and borers and all that. I see them get all of these things. I do a lot of the inspections because I've really worked hard in promoting it to real estate agents, especially buyers agents, settlement agents. But so many people, when they've just moved into a home with a pool, they get me out there and I say, look, these are the things wrong.

Lee (06:21.785)
Yep.

Peter Wiedermann (06:45.765)
you know, did you have a pre-purchase or pre-settlement inspection done on the pool? Oh, I didn't even think of that. So much can go wrong. If I was to buy a secondhand car, you can guarantee I'd be getting it inspected first by someone, an expert in that industry, a mechanic or a car inspector or whatnot. But people just don't think pools, the water looks great. Therefore it's wonderful.

Lee (06:52.859)
Yeah.

Lee (06:57.073)
Yeah.

Lee (07:00.477)
Absolutely.

Yep.

Lee (07:09.149)
Well, clearly this pool didn't look great if it hadn't been touched for two years. But so this person may have had a fair idea of what they were getting themselves into or let's put it this way, that it was gonna be a bit of a money pit regardless. So they may have taken that into consideration with their offer of buying the property or whatever the case is. But so many people do it. Like you say, the pool water looks clear and so they assume that everything else is good.

Peter Wiedermann (07:12.571)
No.

Lee (07:38.605)
Little do they know that the clients just chucked 15 litres of acid and sorry, 5 litres of acid and 15 litres of chlorine in it and ran it for the last 48 hours to try and make it look somewhat clear. But yet, yeah, the rest of it could be absolutely crap. The water quality can be crap. It's, and they don't know.

shane (08:07.264)
Hmm.

Lee (08:09.025)
Um, but yeah, people spend all this money on properties and, and don't get the simplest of inspections done. I don't think.

Peter Wiedermann (08:17.417)
the two things are, first of all, when, I mean, if they said after the fact it had been neglected for a couple of years, why did they tell me it's a little bit dirty? Why didn't they tell me, this is a big job so you can allocate the time for it. Secondly, like everyone, every new customer, can you please send me some photos of the pool? One showing the pool as a whole, one of any area of concern that you may have, and a photo of the equipment so I know what to expect.

shane (08:29.765)
Mm-hmm.

Lee (08:32.805)
It's a little bit green.

shane (08:45.745)
Mm.

Peter Wiedermann (08:47.677)
they didn't send the photos. And I think I've just been too busy. I didn't follow up on getting that photo. Otherwise I would have said, look, this is not a January job. This has got to go to February, March, whatever, when things slow down a bit. So I should have been more diligent in chasing them up on that.

Lee (08:54.576)
Yeah.

Lee (09:00.846)
Yeah.

Lee (09:06.421)
Yeah, I suppose the telltale sign, the fact that they didn't send the photo, yeah, is a good indicator that the problem was much bigger than they were indicating. But it's so funny when you say to people, like, it's one of those common questions that I ask when I test water in a shop is, how does the pool look? And so often you get the answer, yeah, the pool looks great. And then you delve a bit further and you go, oh, well, there is some green stuff on the walls, but it's only a bit.

here and it's down there and it's like okay well hang on a minute let's go back two steps here what am I actually dealing with because if they don't tell you in a retail environment it's easy with service because you see it with your own eyes but in a retail environment or when you're booking that initial service job if you don't get that full information yeah you're absolutely flying blind and you may not be addressing the problem

especially in retail, obviously, the problem that actually is there to fix it for the client. And I've had people like with my staff who haven't sort of probed further into the information and client comes back and goes, Oh, my pool's still green. They go, well, hang on, you were in three days ago. You didn't mention your pool was green. If you had told me it was green or on the verge of going green or had a bit of green growth, then we would have treated it completely differently.

shane (10:04.652)
Mm-hmm.

Lee (10:29.553)
So it's important to get that information, but yeah, even more important when you're booking a service job and you need to allocate sufficient time. So, hmm. But then we come.

Peter Wiedermann (10:40.773)
Yeah. Do we mention the other week on an episode, the customers who say, oh, while you're here, you go out for a chemistry check, while you're here, can you, you know, overhaul all the equipment while you're here? Can you, you know, paint the bloody living room? I don't know. Media change. Yeah. They think that because you're there, you've just got unlimited time to spend on that job. Well, no, I've allocated 15 minutes then off to the next six.

Lee (10:47.93)
Yes.

shane (10:54.39)
do a media change.

Lee (10:56.413)
I'm going to go to bed.

Lee (11:09.049)
people always used to, I'm not, I wasn't big on allocating times for my husband, who was our head service technician, because you could send him to do a five minute job, as they call them, that takes five hours. Or he could get to a job that takes five hours and find that for whatever reason, he can't undertake that job at that time. And that completely changes your schedule. So it is really hard to pinpoint.

at times at time. Yeah, but it's yeah, it's a difficult thing.

Peter Wiedermann (11:44.921)
When I book in, I'll be telling the customer, early morning, mid morning, late morning, slash early afternoon, things like that. And I do get them saying, oh, I need an exact time. I say, it all depends how long previous jobs take. I can make an exact time for the first job of the day, assuming traffic's not gonna be a mongrel. But apart from that, which traffic jams can slow you down a lot.

shane (11:50.539)
Yep.

Lee (11:51.993)
Yes.

Lee (12:07.801)
Yeah, oh, completely.

shane (12:07.958)
Yep.

Peter Wiedermann (12:09.177)
I was driving to a job today and this little hatchback decided to change lanes. He was indicating for about 20 seconds, then started changing lanes until the bus he was about to bump into beeped its horn. Quite a loud horn, I will admit. But this person was oblivious to a bus. All you need is some dickhead on the road with his head up his backside, and that can just cause everyone behind them to have a really bad day. So...

shane (12:34.984)
Yep.

Lee (12:35.277)
Yeah.

Peter Wiedermann (12:37.317)
Mind you, Perth drivers do have a reputation for especially changing lanes and merging. We're known for that, I'm very sorry to say.

Lee (12:49.073)
We were exactly the same. The only time that actually got truly allocated was that first slot in the morning, other than that if people needed to know a time, Scott would ring when he was on the job before them to give them a bit of an indication. We could say, like you say, morning, afternoon, midday sort of thing, and try and work around that as best as we can. But if somebody needed a dedicated time, they were always given that first slot of the day.

it's just too hard to try and allocate times but so today's topic is relevant to all of those things and that's maintenance

Peter Wiedermann (13:24.282)
Mmm. Yes.

Peter Wiedermann (13:29.426)
Maintain it.

And we're not talking about the fortnightly or weekly or monthly service where you go out and just clean the pool. It's the other stuff that goes on beyond that, the preventative, proactive rather than reactive.

Lee (13:43.737)
Yeah, we're not talking... obviously backing the pool or removing leaves is a good preventative maintenance but we're not talking about those regular, like that routine stuff that you do, emptying the skimmer baskets, backing the pool, testing the water, they go without saying. But for me it's like how many service technicians actually go that step further and do the preventative maintenance?

Whether that be from a chemical perspective, adding clarifiers, preventative algaecides, phosphate removers, before anything's a problem.

or grazing o-rings to reseal on a pump lid or those little things. And I mean this by like not ignoring that slow drip that's coming out of the end of the cell housing or off the pump union. I wonder how many service technicians actually out there cause they're so busy. I get it. You've got to.

10 jobs still on your list to do, and you've got this tiny little leak, and you know that if you open that, are you opening a can of rooms? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But is it leaking because there's a crack, which potentially could explode the moment you walk away? Yeah, so I think prevention, as I always said to my clients,

Peter Wiedermann (14:57.405)
Yep.

shane (14:59.127)
9 times out of 10, yes?

Peter Wiedermann (15:01.063)
Yeah.

Peter Wiedermann (15:11.418)
Mm-hmm.

Lee (15:18.373)
Prevention is always easier and cheaper than cure. So it's important to do those little preventative bits. So what do you guys do as part of when you're servicing? How far do you go, Shane?

shane (15:34.938)
Myself checking for phosphates each visit. So, excuse me, that'll be something that we take on board every call that we go to we will check it whether it's still two weekly. We check them every visit. You know, that little bit of extra money coming in as well as looking after their pool is always, it's good for everybody.

We were discussing earlier algaesides. This isn't something that I do personally. I know there's a lot of companies out there in Auckland-based, which add a algaeside on a three-month basis. Think from memory, my previous employment, we added a 32-gram copper-based algaeside every three months. But then...

Peter Wiedermann (16:29.65)
Mm-hmm.

shane (16:31.734)
we never, the guides on the road never checked the copper level prior to adding it. So that's always a good thing to do, you know, testing before you're adding. But for myself, there is a couple of pools out there. One of them, which had suffered some severe black spots before we took it over. We did a black spot treatment on it.

Peter Wiedermann (16:45.257)
Hmm.

shane (17:01.434)
95% of it disappeared but there is still I guess the scarring from the plaster and little indentations that these little spots just do not want to move but I do make sure I keep copper level 0.2 0.3 on this pool four times the last thing I want for this to be spreading back throughout this swimming pool

shane (17:29.162)
yeah i mean having a good eye in checking everything i think i'd like to think i should say that i've got a very good eye and if there is any issues that i will point them out to the client and i'll try and fix as much as i can on the spot like you said lee you know if there is that little drip and you think ah

do I do it today or do I see what it's like next week I do inform the client so at least they're aware of it if I can't fit it in to have a look at it on the day at least I get them to keep an eye on it until I return for the next visit

Lee (18:17.493)
And I actually think that's really important to actually highlight any issues that you identify and not ignore them. Because if you don't bring it to the client's attention or if you don't bring it, if a service technician doesn't bring it to the business management's attention, then it could be seen that technician is sticking their head in the sand and ignoring the obvious

shane (18:26.443)
Yeah, most definitely.

Lee (18:45.425)
think it's much better to tell a client, hey, look, I've noticed this issue. It's not really bad yet. But it's something that I'm going to monitor for you over the coming weeks or months. Or if you notice that it gets worse, please bring me straight away, and we'll get straight on to it. Or I'll put it on to next month's schedule, and I'll bring the equipment with me that I need. I just think it's really important that we acknowledge it because otherwise people think you are ignoring it.

shane (19:01.058)
Yeah.

shane (19:12.302)
Your neck light and the pool.

Lee (19:13.709)
on purpose and you're neglecting, yeah, you're not doing your service. Which I think then brings me to the question of...

Lee (19:25.861)
Well, how far do you go? And Peter, you were saying before we came online that you are guided by your customer.

Peter Wiedermann (19:40.077)
to a point I'll tell them when there's an issue when something needs addressing one pool for example it's a rental so it's through a property manager and I said look your multi-port valves leaking through the spider gasket water is coming out the waste pipe when it's on filter mode it's also not particularly clearing particularly well and I said look the multi-port valve needs replacing this one was beyond repair it was that old and

I said, just needs a new one. This is the price. I said, but I can look inside the filter, see what state the media is in. No, don't bother about that. Just replace the multi-port valve. So get this multi-port valve in. And fortunately it's a very common make and model. So I won't have problems selling it. Opened it up and I sent her an email saying, look, I've opened it up. As I feared the media is in very poor condition. As we're vacuuming the pool, dirt comes straight back in.

It's getting worse each service. This filter needs replacing. I've already given you the price of this. So then she gets back to me a few days later, because they never respond immediately. The landlord, the owners will sometimes take forever to bloody decide. And got this email from her, oh, don't worry about replacing anything on the filter. The landlord said it's fine, it's in good condition. I got back and I said, this pool will never be clean. Not until that is addressed.

And then, oh, week or so later, I got a message from her saying, oh, we were just out doing a property inspection and the pool's all cloudy. You need to come back and fix it. I said, that involves replacing the filter. This is the price. I said, we're not playing games here. The thing that I've worked hard, especially with property managers, because they're used to people, all guys included coming out there. I need to replace this, replace that, blah, blah. Costing a small fortune.

If something doesn't need to be fixed or replaced, I won't sell them something for the sake of selling it. There have been countless times when they've said, oh, the pump's not working, it needs replacing. And some of these are, you know, $2,500 pumps. And I've said, no, the pump's fine. You need a new element in your cartridge filter. That will fix it. I can replace the pump if you want, but you're wasting your money. Then they know from that point.

Peter Wiedermann (22:04.557)
If I say something needs replacing, they know I'm serious. I've earned that level of trust with them. But when a customer starts saying, no, we're not going to, I don't want you to do this, don't want you to do that, phosphate treatments won. I had that recently. Customer rang me up, he said, your guy was out here and he said he needs a phosphate treatment. You've never had to do that. I said, well, for starters, I have. Look at your invoice from whatever time it was. Secondly, I've seen the chemistry results.

your phosphate levels at 180, yeah, it needs to be treated. So if you're not gonna let us treat it, then we can't help you. And he said, oh, I might as well have gone to the pool shop. And I said, well, tell you what, I won't charge you for this call out. And in the future, you won't call us out again. Just go to the damn pool shop. I don't care. Some customers like that are not worth having because they're gonna be a regular pain in the butt. And that goes for things like, and talking maintenance,

shane (22:55.529)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Wiedermann (23:03.493)
not only phosphate treatments, copper, I don't even ask them, I just say afterwards, I have added this as a preventative against algae. I've added this because your pool has problems with black algae, biofilms, whatever, depending on the situation. Another thing is if there's a leaking union, for example, not only may it squirt you in the eye and give you conjunctivitis for a week over Christmas, I speak from experience,

Lee (23:27.997)
Thank God.

Peter Wiedermann (23:34.245)
You never know if the customer's going to go down to the equipment area, have a look at it after service. Oh, you were here and now there's a leak.

no because I've already told them I've noticed a leak here it covers you can say I have identified this problem if they say oh wasn't leaking before well it was when I arrived so depends what you mean by before it wasn't last service now it is something's happened and

Lee (23:45.981)
That's exactly it.

Lee (23:59.373)
Yeah, it's amazing how they love to blame us for little things like the equipment is out in the sun. I was going to say 24 hours a day, but if the sun's not out 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it's in the sun. And this equipment like filter multiple heads. They could be 10 years old before the head needs to be replaced. Some of the older ones especially. The handles get brittle and it's not my technician's fault.

Peter Wiedermann (24:08.264)
All done.

shane (24:09.062)
You

shane (24:25.536)
Mm-hmm.

Lee (24:29.337)
that he's had to depress the handle and rotate it to actually backwash the filter and it snapped off in his hand. It's 10 years old!

shane (24:39.362)
That's actually happened to me many times.

Peter Wiedermann (24:39.997)
ball valves are classic for that and some of the three-way valves. Ball valves with the red handles. I tell people now, if I have to turn this valve, there is every chance it might break. It is no longer red, it is pink. It is brittle. Simple as that. This valve should be replaced. Because there's no... You know, the number of jobs you go to and you see something like a G-clamp or a pair of locking pliers or something attached to... locked onto a valve...

Lee (24:42.345)
Yep. Oh, this is terrible.

shane (24:45.346)
Hmm

Lee (24:53.807)
Yes.

Peter Wiedermann (25:09.617)
because they know there's a problem and all you need is the whole thing to collapse and you're in a world of pain.

Lee (25:17.125)
Yeah, absolutely. I think these things that we're talking about now, it's all about preparing the customer. It's managing their expectations. So we're identifying an issue, we're letting them know this needs rectifying now, or it's going to need rectifying soon. And it's like, it's just keeping them informed. It's communication. We come back to the good old communication word. So yeah, preparing the customer.

Peter Wiedermann (25:23.281)
Yeah, 100%.

shane (25:38.484)
Mm-hmm.

Lee (25:45.453)
setting their expectations. So yeah, but it's funny, like people don't think twice about booking a routines visit to the dentist to have a checkup and have plaque removed or whatever the case might be. I actually told my accountant one day that I'd rather go to the dentist than go to him. I can tell you my accountant was not.

Peter Wiedermann (25:59.065)
I do. I hate the dentist. It's bloody painful. Although there is happy gas, which is a plus.