Back in Our Day, Pool Techs Worked in the Rain — And Didn’t Cry About It

In this episode, Steve Sherwood discusses the challenges of pool maintenance during rainy weather, emphasizing the importance of effective communication with clients regarding service times and expectations. He also delves into the significance of proper water testing and the differences between commercial and residential pool care. Additionally, insights into insurance considerations for pool professionals are shared, highlighting the need for preparedness in the face of unpredictable weather events.


Takeaways

Weather can significantly impact pool maintenance schedules.
Utilizing weather apps can help plan pool servicing effectively.
Communication with clients about service times is crucial.
Different companies have varying policies on service duration and charges.
Understanding client expectations is key to successful pool care.
Insurance is essential for protecting against weather-related damages.
Regular water testing is vital for maintaining pool health.
Commercial pools require more frequent testing than residential pools.
Using accurate testing methods is important for pool chemistry management.
Effective communication can prevent misunderstandings and enhance client relationships.


"What do you do with these pools when it rains?"
"You have to test the water every two hours."
"You need to communicate with your clients."


Chapters

00:00 Weather Challenges and Pool Maintenance
11:46 Understanding Pool Chemistry and Client Communication
19:09 Insurance Insights and Weather-Related Claims
24:45 Navigating Insurance Claims and Due Diligence
27:38 Building Trust with Insurance Providers
29:00 The Importance of Client Relationships
30:14 Testing Pool Water: Best Practices
32:32 Understanding Long-Term Indicators in Pool Maintenance
44:02 Commercial vs. Residential Pool Testing
52:38 Effective Communication in Pool Service

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:53

Hey everybody, happy Thursday, and welcome to another episode of Thursdays with Wayne and Steve. Um, again, it's only Steve Sherwood this weekend, so I'll be your host today. Wayne should be back in a couple weeks, so hopefully he's uh on his way to recovery. Wow, there's it's been pretty shitty out here in California as far as the weather goes. This show will come out on Thursday. I'm recording it on Saturday, and it'll have basically rained every single day from then until now. So it's been raining like uh the last few days, and it's like set to rain like seven of the next nine days. So brings me to my point of you know, one of the things that we're we're gonna talk about today. Um, and we're gonna talk about a few different things, but the the first thing that I wanted to talk about because it's so appropriate with the weather, is what do you do with these pools when it when it rains? You know, I lived in New Jersey in the Northeast for a long time, like 30 years. The one thing that I distinctly remember about living there, because I haven't lived there in a decade, is you know, when you start opening commercial pools and the season starts in like April and May, um, and March is pretty bad too, but you get these stretches where it'll just rain for four, five, six days straight. Um, and you'll get these little pockets of like where you'll have rain and then you won't have rain. So my first point is that if you guys aren't, you know, there's free tools out there that you can utilize, and everybody has a smartphone now that has some sort of a weather app on it. And like I have an Apple iPhone, and the weather on it is actually pretty accurate now. They have like a radar and they'll actually tell you, like, hey, it's gonna rain for the next 40 minutes, where it's gonna rain for the next 60 minutes, or rain will start in two hours, you know, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. And it'll actually tell you in your area what what's exactly going on. But the weather channel app, if you guys don't have the weather channel app on there on your phones, definitely give it a look and a download because what you can do is down at the bottom of the app, it'll pick up like where you are while you're using the app, and uh it'll show you a map of where you are, and it'll show you like the local radar, and it'll show you like all these clouds, which way they're moving. You can play it, so it'll show you like the next hour and a half, two hours, and uh you know that's I don't really leave this to chance anymore. And I'm not gonna waste my time or my energy either. So if you know there's days where we have pools that need to be done and it's raining, like uh some guys go and they they splash and dash, you know, and it just it really depends. Like, is it just a rainstorm? Because if it's just a rainstorm and it's raining really hard, right? So you're not gonna have a ton of debris and leaves and things in in the pool. I think you know, more so than the rain is the wind. When it gets windy, especially here in Southern California. I always knew that when I was going out to service pools that like I had to bake in the extra time to do these pools. And then it begs the question of like, okay, you charge this person X amount per week or whatever it is, and you know, how long are you there for? Or I guess how much is it how long is it appropriate to be there for before you start saying, Hey, I I I was here extra time. And every company is gonna do something different, but I know that like my wife Jennifer and I, we used to go out and service the pools ourselves, so like we could figure out at a pool, like if the pool was clean, her and I could be in and out of there in 25 minutes, 22 minutes, you know. But if the pool was kind of dirty or if there was a windstorm, like sometimes we would be there for for 45 minutes, sometimes we would be there for an hour, you know, sometimes we would be there for an hour and 15 minutes. So, what's the right thing to do with this? And I don't think that there's any right or wrong answer with this. Every company is gonna run their company different, but I'm gonna tell you, you know, how we do things. And what we do is I I realize like a lot of guys will say, like, when we're in and out in 15 minutes, like that's not time. They don't get to get that time back. You're not giving the client a discount, right? Because you were only in and out in 15 minutes because there was an automatic vacuum cleaner and the pool was perfect, and the the chemicals were perfect, so you only had to add a little bit of chlorine or whatever it is, right? But my whole point here is like uh when it takes you an hour, hour and 15 minutes, like now we're thinking, hey, we want to charge this person a little bit extra. But really, what I think about is like in the off-season, you know, when we're here and you guys in the northeast, like you don't have an off-season in that aspect. Like your season is full go from the time the pool is open until the time the pool is closed. Where here where I am, you know, in Florida and Texas and Southern California, these pools are open all year long, right? So it's we're treating these pools way differently in January, February, and March than we would be in June, July, and August. And coincidentally, it actually gets you know hottest here in like late August and September. But that's when you get all these problems with with algae and and all that stuff. So my my next point that I want to talk about is you know, and like I said, there is no right or wrong answer with you know charging them. And you know, once I'm there for over a half hour, I kind of start saying to myself, hey, like, am I gonna be done with this in the next 15 minutes? And like if I'm done with it in the next 15 minutes, like it should be fine, it should all all work itself out. But like if at a half hour I still have like 30, 40 minutes of work done, like I might actually reach out to the client and let them know, like right then and there. Or if you're working for someone, let them know, like text your boss and be like, Hey, I've been cleaning this pool for a half hour now. Uh, I've been here for 40 minutes total, and like this is what it looks like. Like, do you want me to continue? Were we getting paid for this? Or like uh would this be considered part of the service? And at that point, I kind of I always love if you can being able to push the ball back into your client's court and asking them, like, hey, like, are you guys using the pool this week? Like it's February. There's still some pools, like, there's still some leaves and stuff in the pool. I can get it more or less clean for you, but it's not gonna be perfect, you know. But if you need me to get it perfect, like I'm gonna have to charge you extra money because I'm gonna have to be here for a significant amount of time. And then they'll say to you, like, yeah, go ahead and clean it, like we don't mind paying. Or they're gonna be like, you know what, we're not using the pool. It's February, it's cold, like uh, you know, come back next week. And I always tell my technicians, like, when I first start training them, I'm like, take note of this pool, you know, and understand that like this pool is totally bombed, and like it's gonna take a really long time for us to clean it. So, you know, you have to make some decisions, and you know, most of the time, like I said, as long as it's you know within reason, like we're cleaning it and we're not asking for any extra money or anything like that. But it brings me into my next point of like now we're not talking about in the winter time, now we're talking about in in the summertime. So, you know, in the summertime, I always tell the clients when I first meet them, and this is we're gonna talk about this later on in the show. But when we first meet the client, I always ask them like a pretty specific set of questions that I want to know from them, like how interested are they in doing stuff for like testing the water? And like, you know, are they gonna be willing to have a net there and net the pool? Or, you know, if they want the pool to be absolutely perfect, like they should have a vacuum cleaner and maybe a brush there and a bunch of things like that. But my biggest, you know, issue that we run into, and we don't run into it much anymore because I'm super clear now with with the potential clients and the clients that we have. I tell them at the beginning, I say, Hey, like I'm only here one day a week, you know, you live here all seven days. So you let you have a dog, the dog goes out in the backyard, you know, um three, four, or five times a day. Um, you barbecue a couple times a week, you know, you walk through to get to the garage, whatever. All right, like you're looking at this pool a lot of times. And I wanna know, like, send me a picture, please. If the pool is, I don't want to know if there's three or four leaves on the bottom, like if it's a little bit dirty, unless it's like we just came and it's an issue of the pool not being clean, like leaves are gonna get in the pool. What I'm concerned about and what I want to know from you is is the pool cloudy? If the pool's cloudy, I wanna know if it's not clear, because that usually means that the either the filters stopped working or there's no chlorine in the pool, one of the two. Or if you have algae, please let me know right away. And the reason being, and I've talked about this on past shows, but you know, it's it's important to to drill this point home, that if we service a pool on a Friday, and you know, maybe they they maybe they have, you know, their phosphates have gone up in the past week or two or something like that, and uh you shock the pool on Friday and um come back what would be the next Friday, and uh the pool just looks like totally tore up, like it's got it's got all yellow algae all over the place, right? And what had happened is the pool didn't get algae on Thursday and it looked like that in 24 hours. What really happened is this happened on started happening on Monday, you know, where there was no chlorine in the pool. And now on Tuesday, now the algae started growing. Wednesday it got worse, Thursday it got even more worse, and now Friday is what you come into. But if the homeowner on Monday or Tuesday was able to contact you, and this isn't asking too much of a homeowner for them to if something looks wrong to tell you about it, you know, they should give you a call, and now they can put it on you. You know, let it be my decision or our decision to send someone out and say, you know, we're gonna come fix this now because maybe I could send my guy out on Tuesday and he takes care of the pool on Tuesday and then gives it a checkup visit on Friday. You know, maybe they only have to pay a little bit extra for the chemicals or whatever it is. But if I show up, we show up on a Friday and the pool just looks, you know, a mess and there's no chlorine, and we gotta bomb it. You know, when you have algae in the pool, you gotta shock it to 30 parts per million and then usually use some sort of algicide. So, and then you you know you brush the heck out of the pool, but you you can't leave it until the next Friday. You gotta come back on like Saturday or Sunday at the latest, because all that chlorine that you put in the pool, it's gonna kill some of the algae, but the algae is gonna eat up a lot of that chlorine. So it's not uncommon for you to come back, you know, that Saturday or Sunday after you put it up to 30 parts per million and it's down at four or seven or three or one even. It's not uncommon to see that. So my whole point is just that you know, with this, is just making sure that you talk to the client about this because if you have to come back on a Saturday and blast the pool, you know, if you're putting a pool to 30 parts per million, right? And it's a 20,000 gallon pool, about two gallons of liquid chlorine would take it from zero to ten parts per million free chlorine, right? So we want to bring it to thirty. So we actually have to put in six gallons of liquid chlorine or like six pounds of cal hypo, right? That's a that's a lot of chemical that you need to put in the pool. Like who's paying for that? You know, do you have to pay for that? Does the client have to pay for that? And that's why I like to make it clear at the beginning of the relationship. Like, hey, you were gonna be your pool person, but we you know, we need you to do uh a couple things. And that leads me to my other, you know, couple points that I want to talk about on the show today. I don't know if you guys have been checking out, you know, Wednesdays, but Natalie Hood took over. And I don't know, I'm not gonna say she took over for Sarah, but she's filling in for Sarah while you know Sarah is uh having her baby.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

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SPEAKER_02 16:16

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Insurance Interlude with your host, yours truly, Steve Sherwood, and uh our guest, as always, Pat Grignon from California Pool Association. So, Pat, once again, thank you so much for coming on. Uh, always appreciate having you here. Thanks for having me. Cool. So we were just talking about the the you know the weather in uh Southern California, and while we're doing this one, like we're kind of having a spat or you know, of two weeks of like kind of rain intermittent. And earlier this this year, I guess it was a few weeks ago or about a month ago now, in in Florida, they had what they would call a freeze, right? Where you go watch the news broadcast and they talk about iguanas falling out of the trees and stuff. Uh they saw that frozen cold. But um, I I want to talk about frozen pipes. So, you know, in New Jersey and in the northeast where where I'm from, um we know that the ground is gonna freeze, right? So September, October, November, we we close these pools down. And one of the unique things that we do in the closing process is we put anti-freeze, and it's not just car anti-freeze, it's it's specially made um anti-freeze that goes into the lines that can then go back into the water. So this anti-freeze, even if it mixes with the water, the best thing about it is it just doesn't freeze and expand the pipe. And obviously, everybody knows what happens when you take water and you put it in the freezer and you make it into an ice cube, right? It it expands, and that's what happens to the pipe and how the pipes crack and stuff like that. So that happened in Florida, so I'm sure there was some instances where you know people could have had some weird stuff happening, but I want you to I want you to talk a little bit about that, Pat. And then I also want you to talk about like what happened in Texas a couple of years ago, because yeah, you know, they're just not prepared for that to happen in Texas and in Florida. So when when these types of things happen, you know, how as a Texan and a Floridian can you protect yourselves? And how did your guys, you know, what types of claims came up, and how were your guys, you know, how did they have to protect themselves and what can what or what could they have done better in the future? Um, you know, looking back at at these these freezeovers?

SPEAKER_03 18:48

Yeah, yeah, no, it's you know, obviously it's unpredictable. You know what to expect in most of most of the country. But yeah, like that freeze in in Texas and that in the Dallas area, what was that a couple two, three years ago? Um yeah, that that came out of nowhere, certainly. And so there was a ton of busted up equipment, pipes, and and a lot of our construction remodel guys out there, guys and gals, um they had a lot of work uh for the subsequent, you know, six, ten, twelve months to to get out there and do all those repairs. You know, I think luckily, you know, for that situation, it's kind of hard to blame the pool guy on uh, you know, the the the the the the weather busting up all the equipment or causing the damage. There certainly was some stuff that came in from folks in that area that we insure. Um, you know, but yeah, basically, you know, got a letter and says this isn't, you know, the claims adjuster just got a letter out and said there's no way that this is this is our our uh our insured's fault, and that's kind of where it stopped. But, you know, really, you know, you look at like the the situation. So there's there's not a lot you can do with those wacky weather events. Um, you know, I think most important message for for for those folks in Texas or for for things where you just get overnight freezes out of nowhere. Um, just make sure you have insurance because you know you can have a claims adjuster that in this situation writes up a note says, no way, you can deliver that to the to the homeowner or to you know to the company whose pool that you're servicing, and that's it. You don't have to go pay a thousand bucks for a lawyer to go drop something up. So um, you know, I think that that's the message there. You know, for Florida with those big swings in temperatures, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, that's gonna affect the water chemistry. And you know, there's not gonna be there's not gonna be like leading to injuries normally, obviously, from that, but potentially you could end up having some algae or some other issues with the the water chemistry, and then you've got you know someone who tries to take advantage of that to um try to get a free remodel or resurfacing out of you. Um so you know, I I think yeah, you can probably speak to that that best when you do have like rain, when you've got um, you know, what what happens to the chemistry, you know, when uh when you've got big swings in temperature and and rain and some weather events, I think what's important is that you know you're out there and and making sure you're checking things. And um, you know, if the pool's not sitting there for unattended for I guess if you do a pool once a month, like you got that on your route, probably go check in on that pool, you know, that's that's not just gonna be sitting there for four weeks, kind of unattended, no one looking at it.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Yeah, I so it's funny you say the once a month because I always laugh because uh in Australia and New Zealand, like that's the standard. Like everybody has the pool guy come by once a month, and like that's literally how they're making a living, which is totally respectable. But I was just like on the floor laughing. Like uh if I came to one of my clients' houses once a month, like it would literally look like a bomb went off because they they're not they're not doing anything, you know what I mean? Like they're not they're not emptying a skimmer where all of these people in Australia are active participants in the taking care of their uh of their pool. Yep. You know, so um, but here's the thing for me with with all of this that happens, and anytime there's any sort of event, um, there's always gonna be you know certain bad apples that try and take advantage of the system or are trying to get trying to get something for nothing. And I have an instance one time where I got called out to a acclaim um for an insurance company, and the homeowner had already hired, and this is where it gets weird because the homeowner had hired another like insurance adjuster, or you know, her insurance adjuster came out. So I'm out there as a pool expert, right? So the this they had like a weather event, and this tree, which was huge, had toppled over, but there was like a wall there. And it totally crumpled the wall, like all of the rebar, like the it looked like um like the Kool-Aid man had come through. You know what I mean? Like it was the whole thing was just mangled, man. Fine. I mean, it's it gives you a good visual, right? Yeah, but I I remember I walked in, I was like, oh man, it's the Kool-Aid man. So the tree is literally like in the middle of the pool, you know, like it fell over, it's on the deck, like it's hanging over into the pool. One of the slabs with the rebar like came down onto the surface, big chunk missing out of the surface. And I'm like, wow, I'm like, this is pretty, this is pretty effed up, you know. This is pretty this is pretty mangled here. Um, and I'm like doing my thing, and the adjuster, like, is the other adjuster keeps like asking me all these questions, and he's like, What about this? And I'm like, Well, I'm like, yeah, definitely a new surface, you know. I'm like, he's what about the tile? I'm like, that's staining from uh metals and minerals. I'm like, that was there before. He's like, Well, what about this black stuff over here? You know, I'm like, there wasn't a fire. I'm like, this was a weather event. I'm like, this was a rainy thing, this wasn't a fire thing. Um, and then he goes, What about the deck being uneven over there? And I'm like, What do you mean? I'm like, where? And he's like, over there, you know, and the tree is in the opposite direction. So I'm like, and like I get out of the pool, I go over by the deck, and yeah, sure enough, it's like three-quarters of an inch off in the one area, you know. But it had nothing to do with the and I was like, if you can show me, and he was like, No, that's where the that's where the tree was. Like there was branches that they removed and stuff, and it hit over there. And I was like, I will give you a thousand dollars right now if you show me a picture of because he was like, I got pictures of it, and I'm like, You show me a picture of that shit. He sent me the pictures, and it was like a picture of at night, and like you could see where the deck was, and I like I literally circled the picture and sent it back to him, and I was like, There's the deck, still three-quarters of an inch off. There's the actual tree in the pool. So he tried to total and he actually was like, Oh man, you know, like I'm just trying to get everything I can for the homeowner, and I wanted to tell him I wanted to tell him the fuck off, but like and it just gave me a sense of like what really goes on there, and you really need to make sure that you're just covering yourself in in all aspects of that because this this wasn't the homeowner that you get a lot of you know jerk-off homeowners where they're like, oh, and you know, you know, they're just what I just said, yeah. But with this, this was next level because this was the actual insurance company. Yeah, you know, so and those private adjusters, too.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

I mean, I'm hearing that stuff pop up, ads on the radio and on billboards and stuff, where you know, the personal injury attorneys have been out there and about for forever, and that's obviously blown up over the past 10 years. But I'm hearing stuff on ads all over the place about like, hey, if you have a homeowner's claim, you need to call yada yada, you know, a professional adjuster to advocate for you. And so that's become way more common to where you've just got property damage stuff on your home, and you know, you're gonna go get the you know, basically a personal injury attorney type of uh individual to go out there and advocate for you, but they're just trying to railroad everybody that they can, rack up the bill, take 30%, move on to the next one, you know?

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Yeah, I mean it's just the it's the world we live in, right? Um you can sue anybody for anything nowadays. So, in some closing remarks, Pat, I just want to ask if you want to share and open up a little bit to like the insurance world of like what would you guys do if you were in my situation where you know there's an insurance adjuster that comes out and you get this report from them that says that the pool is all messed up and I'm your guy, you know, and like now you're like, well, Steve's not an act, you know, I'm just Joe Schmo pool guy. I'm not an I don't write pool reports and stuff like that, you know. Yeah, how do you know what's going on? Like, do you have to hire somebody to go out there? Or like what do you what do you guys do on your end to kind of do your in investigating, I guess? Like, how do you how do you you obviously don't believe this guy's report, right? I as the pool guy telling you, I'm like, hey, like they're lying. Like, do you have to hire someone to go out there to write a report? Or like, how do you guys do your due diligence to say, like, no, this guy's report is kind of bullshit, and this is what really happened. And you know, that's what people hire me for, but I just I'm looking for for your third party, like what you guys would do as a as the insurer.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

Yeah, for sure. I look step one, you know, call your agent, call like you you would call me. Um, I would personally, uh, and I I'm probably a little unique like this. Different strokes for different folks. I mean, a lot of agents are just gonna put in the claim and and and do that lickety split if there's even an inkling of there's potential for a claim. I I personally would um would call the adjuster and before putting in a claim, I'd say, Steve, like let me call this guy, you know, let him know, you know, my uh, you know, uh informal opinion that he's full of shit and uh and and he's not getting any money out of you or your insurance company, and then see where it went. If it persisted from there, I would certainly file the claim with the with the carrier, and then they absolutely would get, you know, their you know, their their team would go investigate it, they'd get on property and they'd do their own report and um you know they they would probably tell them to kick rocks in this in this example. But um, you know, if something happened or it escalated or there's a settlement, then your insurance company would go would go pay for that and they would cover the cost to defend you. So I always try to find a way to like not get claims onto your because even if it's even if there's a little bit if it's a little payout, you're gonna end up paying a deductible of 500 or 1,000 or more.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

I mean, or get yeah, or get dropped by your insurance.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Yeah, for sure. And so I we we always try to find you know more creative ways. I mean, look, I if it if there's ever some sort of like allegation of an injury, then I don't mess with that. It's like, look, we should put this into the carrier right away. But if we're just talking about property damage and it's clear they're trying to pin you and just get get some money out of your out of your insurance company, I I tend to try and and uh you know take that route before just popping a claim in that's gonna end up you know costing you higher premiums or moving you to another insurance company if you have too many of them. So, you know, I not everyone does that, but I feel like that's you know that's the best approach to to try and avoid using your insurance if you can handle it through other means, but you know, ultimately it just depends on what they're alleging and how serious it is, and you know, we'll we'll we'll get it into the carrier, and they absolutely will do their diligence to make sure they're not just paying money for no reason.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Nice. Well, Pat, that's why we keep you around, buddy. Because you're gonna allow you new stuff. No, but I'm serious, man. Like, cause honestly, because a lot of insurance companies would just be like, oh, let's throw in the claim, and now you wind up having this huge deductible, or you get uh, you know, you just don't know about it, where you guys are so willing to talk about each of these things as an individual on an individual basis with with each of your individual clients, and that's why you know you probably have you know a million people with policies with a million different policies, you know, and and not every policy is gonna be the same. But you know, when I work with you guys, and this probably you know goes for everybody that works with you guys, like I feel like I'm your only one. You know, every time I I call, and whether I don't get with you, I you know, sometimes I get with one of your associates, which is which is great. Um, they all take you know tip top care of me. So, you know, if you guys are listening out there, like I'm not saying that you know, every insurance company is different, but you know, you have a chance here to be able to you know have a lasting relationship with an insurance company that as you can see here has your fucking back. And you know, that's that's the one thing that we care about most, but like I you know, as I grow as a company, I know that my liability just gets greater and greater and more and more. And once you become to a certain size, like it's not if something is gonna happen, it's it's more about when it's when it's gonna happen, right? So when something happens, you want the best of the best to be in your corner. And you know, I absolutely think you guys are the best of the best. So everybody out there listening, please check out California Pool Association. Um, you know, and if you let them know that about the Talking Pools podcast and the promo code that we have, they'll give you general liability insurance for $100 off for the year. And to be honest with you, um, you know, everybody that I've sent to Pat, most all of them were like, Whoa, this was the best thing that ever happened. And then, you know, some other people were like, you know, I'm still gonna check around, but the information that he gave me was just second to none. And you know, in in everything that I'm looking for, not just insurance, I always want people like Pat and California Pool C Pool Association to have my back. So, Pat, thank you for that. Um again, guys, thank you so much for listening. Hit us up at talkingpools at gmail.com if you'd like. And uh thank you for stopping in to our insurance interlude, and we will be talking at you next week. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Thanks, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

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SPEAKER_02 33:04

So Natalie's had uh a few, she's been on for a few shows now, and her shows are really, really, really they're pretty polished and they're really good. Um, and she talks about some some good subjects. And you know, last week she had on uh Dewey Case, and they were talking about you know going away and you know them using swimming pools, and like I don't I don't I don't use swimming pools really at all. Like I agree with them 100% with that. But there are certain places where you know I'll go to like a nice resort and I'll like either test the water or you know, they were saying that they look at the pool logs, and you know, I'm not sure that everyone's gonna be able to be like, hey, I want to look at the pool logs at you know, when you're at Disney or whatever. They might be like, no. But I always do carry around a you know, test not a test kit, but I always carry around some test strips with me. The main thing is I want to know that there's sanitizer in the pool and that there's nothing crazy going on, um, and that obviously that there's no that there's not that there's no chlorine in the pool, because then obviously I'm not gonna go in. I don't go into commercial hot tubs by any means, which is what Dewey said as well. But they were talking about like the consistency or how often you should be testing the water. And they were saying with you know with the residential pools that you should do like a full panel test once a week, which I agree with wholeheartedly. Um, I'm not sure how realistic it is for my guys to do that because they're in most of our residential pools, there's not a lot of people using them. It's usually like a family and like nobody's using the pool, maybe once or twice a week. But uh, you know, there are certain clients where they use the pool a lot more, and we do ask more of them with that. So that's why at the beginning of when you meet these clients, you want to talk to them because I have clients that have their own, you know, Taylor Olamotte test kits. Um, and then I have clients that like no matter what, they're not gonna touch anything, like they wouldn't even touch the skimmer baskets. You know, forget about turning it into spa mode or they want they don't want anything to do with anything, you know, they want to do it from their phone, and that's about it. You know, they don't want to hear nothing. So, you know, everybody has clients that are kind of all over the board. We do a full panel test uh for the residential pools once a month unless there's something wrong. And like we've that works for us just because like we used to do a full panel test every week, and we found that you know, the long-term indicators for us, and I consider the long-term indicators the the calcium hardness, the cyanuric acid, the total dissolved solids, those are those are what I call long-term indicators. Right. And when I go out to a new pool, like if someone calls me out, obviously, and I've talked about this before, this has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in travel time and money, because now I don't need to go out to these pools. When someone calls me, I immediately pull up Google Earth and I get their address and I can see their pool from like a helicopter view. And as long as they know how how deep the deep end is in the pool, which some people don't even know that, but if they know how deep the deep end is, you can figure out about how big their pool is, and I can give you a quote right on the phone before without even having to go out. So if it's not gonna work, it's not gonna work. But they say that you know this fits within their budget, so I'm gonna go out and I'm going to try and procure this new client for us. So I go out to their to their place and uh I'm gonna test the water. And I used to do a full panel test, and I actually stopped doing full panel tests, and I only now test for calcium hardness, total dissolved solids, and cyanuric acid. You want to know why? Because it was scary, all right? Because like people, I I just what and what I started finding out is like the short-term indicator stuff is really none of my business right now, because this isn't my client. And I say that because you could test the chlorine and the chlorine's at zero, and you're like, oh, this they're not taking care of the pool. But like, maybe the pool guy comes later today, you know, and he's gonna shock the pool later today. Or, you know, maybe you test the chlorine and the free chlorine is at 10 or like nine, and you're like, whoa, like what's going on here? Like, maybe the pool guy came yesterday and he shocked the pool. You're not the pool guy, right? So, what I care about is the calcium hardness, right? We want to see the calcium hardness between 200 and 400 ppm. I've also, you know, seen people out there, well, not seen people out there, but people say, you know, if you have a hot temperature body of water or like a spa, you can keep it a little bit on the lower end. But you know, my biggest thing is calcium hardness comes out of the tap different everywhere. I've actually had it at one of my hotels where we filled one pool off of the one hose and we filled the spa off of another hose because it was just closer, like in proximity. And when we tested the water coming out of the hose, because when we first fill a pool, we always do a full panel test on the hose water going into the pool. We found out that one of them, the spa was 70 and the pool was like 550 coming out of the tap. And the reason being is the one that was going the one that was feeding to the spa, that actually was uh coming through like the whole building, and they had like a water softener system on the building. So it's real important to to know your fill water. So if I see, if I come to a pool and I see that the calcium is really high, you know, maybe the water could have been in there for a long time. That's not a definitive indicator of that. I've also seen it happen where coming out of the tap, pretty low for calcium, and then the builder or the person who plastered the pool, it was like chilly out that day, and uh when they plastered the pool, and they used a little bit, they used a little bit too much calcium chloride flakes in the mix to heat it up to get it to cure a little bit quicker. And uh what winds up happening is that calcium will leach out of the uh you know, out of out of the actual surface itself. So I've seen that where people were like, I don't know how the calcium's just going through the roofs like you know in the first couple weeks. This is crazy. Uh, because we tested the fill water and it was it was low. And now all of a sudden we haven't had calcium and it's uh it's through the roof. So, you know, look out for that as a possible problem. The second thing that I'm gonna test for when I go to this new client or an inspection or something like that is the cyaneric acid. And you know, the general consensus is that you want to keep your cyanuric acid between 30 and 50 parts per million. There are some different things that say a few different, you know, a few different values. Um, if you have a saltwater pool, I do know that you can keep it a little bit higher in like the 60, maybe 70 range. But I do know that, you know, the consensus by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is the EPA, they want you to drain the whole pool when it gets to 100. Okay. So 100 parts per million, you should be draining. You know, the ways that you add cyanuric acid to the water, it's not just gonna it's not just gonna appear. It's not gonna, it's not in the fill water or anything like that. So you either have to add cyanuric acid liquid, which is super expensive. People say that it works, but I do feel like you have to use a lot of it. The powder, people also say that the powder works pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of the powder because it like sits on the top of the surface and uh like attaches to like the tile and stuff sometimes. It's just uh it's a bit of a pain in the ass to work with. And then I use the granules. So the granules, the only problem that I have with that is uh you know, they don't dissolve very well. So the method that I've that I use with this is I actually take one of those skimmer socks, and if they have a waterfall or anything like that, it's ideal to like hang it on the waterfall so it just kind of like drips over it. If they don't have any like feeders or anything like that, I mean you could put it in the skimmer and just leave it there. I wouldn't, you know, people would people would you know put me put me down for for saying that. Um, but you do have to just make sure that you check, you know, on the other side that like there's no trichlor feeder or bromine feeder or anything like that. And that's the same thing with like when you know a lot of people would be like, oh, I just put like a cow hypo into the skimmer. And like I don't do that, especially because like uh if you have a lot of pools, like you just maybe you you know mindlessly do it one day and now it like uh goes into the trichloro feeder, the inline trichlor feeder or whatever, and it mixes with the trichlor, and it could definitely go go boom. So just be careful with the stuff like that. But I I do you know realize and understand that like it's a pain in the ass to put this side, you know, that cyanuric acid that way into the pool. It's uh if you're just gonna pour it into the pool and brush it, like it's it's still gonna be there for sure. So the other way that you could add cyanuric acid to the pool is through those like three-inch hockey pocks uh through stabilized chlorine, right? Where you put in a bag of trichlor or dichlor, or you have the trichlor tablets where the you know what the three-inch or the one-inch or whatever it is, they have really high potent chlorine inside of them, but they also have cyanuric acid built into it as well. So for me, getting back to the pool, if the calcium hardness is is high and the cyanuric acid is you know within range and the TDS is within range, then like I'm okay with that. It could be they just have high calcium hardness, you know, uh could be from the area or whatever. But if the calcium hardness is high and the cyanuric acid is high, the cyanuric acid that tells me that like the pool guy that's taking care of the pool isn't checking the cyanuric acid every once in a while, right? So in our residential pools, like I said before, we test the cyanuric acid once a month. But like if the cyanuric acid, if we need to add cyanuric acid, right, we put the cyanuric acid in, and then what do we have to do the next week? Right, we gotta test for the cyanuric acid again. I mean, it seems like oh, that's so simple to do that, but like a lot of people would just wait until the next month or whatever it is, and you can't wait if you're trying to figure out what it is. Um, and I've even gone places where I've had to put in chemicals and I like came back the next day to see what it went up to or whatever. It's a little bit different of a game with residential and commercial, but right now we're talking about you know residential pools. So the third thing, long-term indicator that I'm gonna talk about is total dissolved solids, right? So they want you to basically during your whole pool when your TDS gets 1500 above where you started at. So it's real important to know where you're starting from. So I always I buy, you know, I have a Lamotte meter. So Lamotte, thank you, was one of our flagship sponsors. Um, I use their meter to tell me what the TDS is. They do have TDS strips, but like they're just not super accurate in that. I mean, it might tell you that it's like over a thousand, or but what if it's a salt water pool? Like, how are you gonna differentiate between the salt and the TDS? So, you know, theoretically we start at zero. They want you to drain the whole pool when you get to 1500 for total dissolved solids, 1500 above where you start at. If you have a saltwater pool, then you're gonna start somewhere between three and five thousand, depending on what type of unit you have. Uh, but let's say you start at three thousand, you would drain the whole pool when you get 1500 above three thousand, which would be 4,500. But realistically, coming out of the tap, this is why you have to test the tap water. I have seen because we have trace amounts of metals and minerals even in our drinking water, it was coming out of the tap at like 275, 300 for TDS. So, not uncommon that you have a little bit of that in the in the hose water as well. So, if the TDS is super high at this pool, um, and the TDS basically it's just tells me the age of the water more. Or less. Um, I like to say that the water becomes used up. And like if you think about it like a bathtub, right? Uh, if somebody uses bathtub water and you fill up the bathtub and you use soap and stuff and you clean yourself off, and let's say five more people got into that bathtub one by one and washed themselves off in that same water, like Viking style, right? That water is gonna look disgusting, right? So that water's ready to be gone, it's used up already. But like they all, you know, they all bathed within 45 minutes. So like that water got used up in 45 minutes. So I don't ever like when somebody tells me, like, oh, we just filled up the pool like uh, you know, three months ago, or we just drained the pool six months ago. Like, I got some pools that got swim schools at them, and they have to drain the water like once every three to four months. The whole thing. Drain it all the way down, fill it up with fresh water, because they just have so many bodies that are going in the water that the TDS just winds up going through the roof. So your water being used up isn't a isn't a linear thing like a like a lifetime, right? Like it's not like, oh, it's it takes X amount of time for it to get used up. Um, the more people you have in the pool, the the quicker your TDS is gonna go up, and the more often you're gonna have to drain the pool. So again, I come to this pool and I test for the calcium hardness, cyanuric acid, and total dissolved solids. And if all three of those are through the roof, like it's telling me that like we need to start over. So my conversation with the homeowner is gonna be hey, in order for us to take care of this pool for you, we are going to have to drain the pool and start over. And like a lot of people don't like to hear that, you know, and I I understand that and I I respect it, but also, you know, working with a pool that has a really high TDS and a really high calcium hardness, it's you're gonna have inherently more problems with that type of a pool than if you had started over. And you know, for me with salt cells too, I always tell people like, oh, you want to convert over to salt. Like we should really, unless we just filled up the pool, I usually will want to drain the pool down as well, and then put that put the salt into that fresh water that we just filled up, just to kind of keep the salt in the in the water for as long as we can, more or less. So, again, with this full panel test, I was talking about the the shows earlier. So, Natalie, you're doing an awesome job. Um, thank you so much for coming on. And she's with the grit game. So, check out her show. Uh, like I said, she had Dewey on and they were talking about the testing stuff before. And then Rudy also has uh you know a cool couple last shows. He was talking about uh going back to the basics, and uh he talked about you know pH in the one episode and alkalinity in the in the other episode. So for the remainder of this episode, I I want to talk, you know, continue on with the testing. So residential pools, again, like most of these pools we only see once a week. But with a lot of our commercial pools, we're seeing them, you know, two times a week, we're seeing them three times a week, we're seeing them, you know, five times a week. So with those commercial pools, we're doing a full panel test once a week. You know, just because there's there's so many people that are you know going through the pool. And it's not uncommon for you know some of these spas at some of these hotels that we have that there might be 50, 60, 70 people, you know, hitting this spa during during the day. So that's a lot of people that are that are going through it. And uh, it's just hard there, you know, when you go into a commercial realm of things, like it just makes it just quantifies every it just it just multiplies everything, and now it just gets harder and and harder, you know. So with testing a commercial pool, um, like I said, we want to do a full panel test once a once a week, but how often do you really need to test? And this is something that you know Dewey and Natalie were also mentioning on their show, that it doesn't really matter, like every every state has a different bathing code, and every state is gonna say, like some of the states say when the pool is open, you have to test the the pool every two hours. Some pool some states say like, hey, you need to test the pool, you know, three times a day. Some say you need to test two times a day, but if you have an automation system, you can test, you know, one time a day. I don't care what state you're in, like there is zero chance that if there is people in your pool that you would be able to test the water one time a day. Like that's crazy, crazy town. Okay. So for us, and this is this is you know, this is what I always say and what works for us, but you know, a lot of people come through my C R CPO class and they say, like, what's the what's the minimum that we should be testing here? And you know, if there's nobody in the pool, I suggest that you test three times a day. Like if it was an overcast day like it is here in California right now, and there's nobody in the pool, but like the pool was open, so like you got a lifeguard there, you know, how often do they test? I would say three times a day. And look, if you're in New Jersey and they say you gotta do it eight times a day or whatever, like sure, do it. But if let's just say they're saying like you only gotta test one time a day, like what do I think? I believe that you should test the water three times a day if nobody entered the pool at the beginning of the day, at the middle of the day, and at the end of the day. All right, as soon as people start getting into the pool, or as soon as you start hitting the water, or as soon as it gets sunny out, you gotta start testing more often. I think that you know, once every hour is appropriate at the beginning, you know, if there's a lot of people in the pool, just to kind of get a handle on things, and then you can kind of dial it back once you have everything kind of all nicey nice. So it really you're you're not you're not really gonna get a handle on things if you if you don't test the water. And the biggest thing for me with with testing the water, especially when you have, you know, you have a bigger, you just grow and you have a lot more clients. At the beginning, like I've we never used test strips, and you know, if you guys don't know, it's a it's illegal in all of the states to use test strips, just test strips for commercial pools. Um, there's some that are like certified that are strips that like you put into a thing, and those are totally different. But as I've grown as a service company, you know, from me servicing pools to now having other people that service the pools for you know for our company as part of our team. I wanted to get more exact with knowing what the chlorine was at. And like, look, let's not bullshit here. Like, as a business owner, you want to go to these pools and put in the littlest amount, the least amount of chlorine that I can and have the pool still be clean, clear, swimmable, no bacteria and viruses, right? And you know, in our residential pools, we shock our residential pools up to 10 parts per million once a week. And that that's you know, when you bring it up to 10, it's called shocking your pool, and that's what gets rid of a lot of the bacteria and some of the viruses. And we know, like, you know, cryptospritium that takes 12.75 hours at 20 parts per million to kill, which is like uh one of the more chlorine-resistant diseases. So everything is not equal with this, but for 20 years I've been shocking all of my pools to 10 parts per million once a week, and it's uh it's been doing us pretty good. But here's the thing like I was finding out that like uh some of the guys they were doing the you know the DPD method where you're putting in you know a couple drops of this and a couple drops of that, and it makes a pink color. And you look at the block, and the block says one, three, five, seven, ten, right? And it's just not conclusive to what the chlorine really is. Like I want to know if it's 2.5 parts per million, I want to know if it's seven parts per million, I need to know if it's you know one part per million. But I've actually with my team done this before, and you know, we took the same sample, used the same test kit with different blocks, and we all took a reading and we were like, what does this look like? And every time we would get like three to five different answers, which that's just that's wild. So if you guys out there that are listening are testing your water, obviously we're fucking doing pools, so I hope you're testing your water. Okay, like I'm not here to show you how to test water, all right. Like we can talk about the different things with it, but the bottom line here is if you're serious about making money, you need to know what the chlorine actually is. So get yourself some sort of an electric meter, or at least use some sort of FAS DPD kit where it's color metric, and what color metric means is it turns from one color to another color. So, you know, a lot of times it'll turn pink, and then you add you add your drops, and every drop is you know 0.2 or 0.5 parts per million free chlorine. So now if you put in three drops of liquid um and it turns clear, you know, you know exactly what the chlorine is. Like you you can count every drop, and you'll know it's uh you know 1.5 or 3 parts per million, depending on which test you did. But you know, when I do these calculations, I'm not we're doing it like basically to the to the fluid ounce. You know, so what I realized my first 10 years in business is that I I didn't really understand what the chlorine was, I was just kind of guessing. And it's not because I I I just didn't know any better, and I didn't know that these other types of tests were were out there, you know, and uh like the color queue, a lot of guys out there are um colorblind. So Lamotte makes a color cue where you put the sample in the water and then you put it in and it gives you a digital readout. Even something like that, where it tells you exactly like, hey, it's at this. So I think it's really important to, you know, before the PL and before figuring out, like, are we making money on this client and so on and so forth, you really need to go back to the basics of what it what is the chlorine, you know, and if the chlorine is at two, how much chlorine is it gonna take to bring this pool, this 20,000 gallon pool, from two parts per million to 10 parts per million. And if you're not measuring out your chemicals before you're putting them in the pool, like you are out of your mind, okay? Like uh it's 2025. Any chemical that goes into the pool needs to be measured out, and beforehand, you need to figure out exactly how much of what chemical is gonna take the pool to exactly where you want it to be. Right? So there's a lot of different things with with the testing, and you know, in future shows, I'll touch a little bit deeper, you know, some of that stuff. But I I really for today's show, I really just wanted to, you know, make sure that you guys understand that number one, like your clients, you need to talk to them and you need to communicate with them. Communication is the the number one thing about having a successful business. And if you don't communicate, um, you know, things are gonna get lost in translation and you're gonna leave money on the table, you're gonna forget to do things, and uh, you know, the best thing to do is to learn how to communicate properly. And then the other thing is to just make sure that when you are testing these things, that you you know what's going on, you know, and I think a lot of people rely a little bit too much on like the apps and stuff where like it's just telling you what to put in, and you know, um that's why in our CPO class and with all of our guys that work for us, I make them do the actual formula every time to show their work and to show they know exactly you know what they're doing. And you know, the more often you test water and the more often you do this, the more comfortable you're the more comfortable you're gonna become with it. And you know, I want you to be out there being the most successful pool pro that you can. Part of that is you know doing your job correctly and making sure that uh, you know, everything is where it's supposed to be, and that's not looking back into last week's logs and saying, Oh, I put in a pound, let me put in another pound just because I put in a pound last week. Because maybe last week you needed a pound, but maybe this week you only needed uh three quarters of a pound. So now you just wasted a quarter of a pound in this pool. What if you have 200 pools? You know, imagine if you have two, three hundred pools and you have technicians working for you, and they just look back in their logs and they were just like, oh, we'll just put in one because we put in one last time and it's 0.25 too much at all those pools. That's a lot of wasted time, chemicals, money, energy. And I've said this before, but you know, in my parting notes here, one of the last things I want you to understand is that with business, it costs time, money, and energy. And I always look out for ways in my business to make it less time, make it less money, make it less energy. So if there's a product out there that uh you know is gonna make my life a lot easier, I'm gonna try and use it. And one of those things, like I said, is the electronic meters and the FAS DPD kits. And uh Chris Galvin, I was talking about his poll doc last episode, but I couldn't get the word out. So if you guys want to check that out as well, too, um that makes your life easier as well. So, guys, thank you so much for listening to the show. I love being here with you guys, and I just love chatting away. And uh hope that uh you guys have a good Thanksgiving because next week will be the week before Thanksgiving, and I'll be talking to you on Thanksgiving the week after that. So everybody have a safe, profitable, and happy week. And uh we'll be coming at you next week. And if you have any questions, you can always direct them to talkingpools at gmail.com. We always love to have your questions and your comments and your insights. And uh a lot of times we'll talk about your stuff straight up on air. So don't be afraid. Send your stuff in, and uh, we'll be coming at you next week. Thanks so much. Have a great day.