Stop The Bleeding - Holiday Woes: Part ll

Steve Sherwood kicks off the New Year’s Day conclusion of the holiday two-parter with a no-fluff reminder: if you’re not doing chemical dosing calculations, what are you even doing out there? This episode is a practical, field-first toolbox talk—equal parts profitability and liability prevention.

Steve breaks down why measuring accurately (liquid and dry) isn’t “extra,” it’s literally the difference between making money and quietly donating it to every pool you touch. He walks through the core measurement tools every tech should carry, then pivots into operational safety: SDS sheets, chemical transport, bonding/grounding awareness at equipment pads, and how to avoid expensive (and reputation-killing) accidents like flooding a yard or dropping a $4,000 heater on the highway.

He closes with a promise: next week he’ll get into a full wish list of gear you should be buying for your techs (and yourself) to make the job easier in 2026—plus he offers to share his calculation sheets if you email the show.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Accurate dosing isn’t nerd stuff—it’s profit protection
Steve calls out the casual “just eyeball it” culture and explains how small overpours multiply fast across a route. A little extra per stop becomes real money by the end of the week and month.

The reality of app-based dosing
Using an app is fine—if you actually set it up correctly. Steve points out the common failure: techs use apps without confirming product strengths (cal-hypo % varies, liquid chlorine strength varies), which makes the output garbage.

Field measurement tools every tech should carry
Steve emphasizes having simple, cheap tools that prevent waste:

• A fluid-ounce measuring cup (so “half a gallon” isn’t a guess)
• A dedicated dry-chemical scoop system (like “smart scoops”) for more consistent dosing—unless you’re willing to go full-pro and carry a scale

Route management: track chemical usage like you mean it
He talks about using modern apps and reporting to review chemical spend by account—so you can see who’s profitable and who’s quietly eating your margins.

Safety and Liability: The Stuff That Can Ruin Your Year

SDS sheets in the truck, always
Steve stresses having a physical SDS binder/folder for everything you carry—because in an accident, nobody else is going to “handle your chemical problem.” If there’s a spill or cleanup, it’s coming back to you.

Bonding and grounding checks at the equipment pad
Steve urges techs to stop ignoring the pad. Take a minute and look. Missing or improper bonding/grounding isn’t just “code talk”—it’s a safety risk that can become a negligence nightmare if something goes wrong.

Carry extra bonding wire
He recommends keeping a roll of the correct gauge bonding wire on the truck because he runs into missing or incorrect bonding more often than he should.

Secure loads in your truck
He highlights straps (rocket straps / heavy-duty straps) because the worst-case scenario is catastrophic: equipment or chemicals falling out at highway speed, causing injury or damage—and liability lands on you.

“Stop Flooding People’s Yards” Tools

Water timers save your ass
 

Flow meters for smarter fills and commercial chemical tanks

Commercial acid feeding reminder
 

Acid safety 101
 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

And now, as a new year begins and a fresh chapter opens, we continue with the New Year's Day conclusion of this holiday two-parter with Steve Sherwood.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I'm a big fan of the tools out there that make your job easier. And we always talk with our team about working smarter and not harder. And first thing is if you guys like let's say you went to a pool and you know it's a 10,000 gallon, or let's say it's a 20,000 gallon pool. Right. And you do the calculations, which if you're not doing the calculations, then like what the hell are you guys doing? You know what I mean? Like you need to know if your chlorine is at two and you want to bring it up to 10, and you have a 10 or 20,000 gallon pool, like you need to be able to do a calculation that's gonna tell you this is exactly how much you're gonna put into this pool. Um, and like for me, you know, some of them are ingrained in my head. So I know with like baking with most baking soda, it's 1.4 pounds, you know, is the equation that you would use. So 1.4 pounds of baking soda in a 10,000 gallon pool would bring it up 10 parts per million. And you could use that as an easy equation for the um, you know, however big your pool is and how much you need to go up, and then you just divide those two numbers down and you multiply them across. I actually have sheets for my CPO students that makes it really easy to figure all this out. But you know, the one thing that people say is like, I use the app, and it's like cool, you use the app, that's great. But like, did you go into the app and set up all the you know denominations that you're the numbers that you're supposed to be in the back and make sure that the percentages are correct? You know, like what if your cal hypo is 67%? What if it's 70%? What if it's 75%? What if it's 77%? Like I've seen Cal hypo at all different percentages, you know, and liquid chlorine, they usually, you know, if you buy it from Hasa or Abcana, which are the two you know bigger players in the game out there from distributors, you know, usually they're saying it's becomes between 10 and 12 percent. So you're usually using you know 10.7 fluid ounces is what you would be using for for liquid chlorine. But again, like if you had to put 1.5 gallons, so one and a half gallons of liquid chlorine into a pool, right? The first gallon is easy, like you're just gonna pour it in, pour in the whole gallon, one gallon, right? And then you wash it out. Porn in the half gallon, though, like you have to measure that out. And you know, if you are listening right now and you're doing anything other than using some sort of a plastic measuring cup that shows you 16 ounces or 32 fluid ounces, you're just kind of pissing money out the window. Like as you're driving out down the road to your next client, like you're literally just taking money and just throwing it out the window. And that's just the truth of it. Um, you know, if we're going to put in a half gallon of liquid chlorine, like I'm gonna take a 32-ounce measuring cup and I'm gonna put two 32-ounce cups in there, which is 64 ounces, which is half of one gallon, which is 128 fluid ounces. So, you know, if let's just say that we have an average of a hundred stops a week, and my guys aren't measuring out the chemicals, and they put in just a quarter gallon too much into each pool. Just a quarter. That's 25 extra gallons a week. That's a hundred gallons to 125 gallons a month that you literally just pissed away. So, first things first, like the most important thing that you guys need to have on you, other than like the tools that you need to clean the pool and all that stuff, which we'll talk about in a little bit, you really need to have like a fluid ounce measuring cup, and then you need to have like a like a smart scoop cup that shows you, you know, exactly what it is for for bicarb or calcium or whatever, because the the weight for each of them, unless you're gonna carry around a scale, I mean that would be the most that would be the smartest thing to do, but like that's a stretch that I'm gonna have my guys walking around with a scale out there. But if you are doing that, you know, kudos to you because that's that's what you really should be doing. The smart scoop is is pretty accurate, so we use that for dry chemicals, and we're gonna use that if we had to use cyanuric acid, if we were using baking soda, sodium bicarbonate. So it shows you sodium carbonate, which is pH plus. So it shows you a lot of different things on there, but again, like you can't just guess um what you're gonna put in the pool. And if you're guessing, you're you, you know, you you better be guessing in the fucking right direction for you, you know. If not, you are literally losing money. So, you know, I don't know if you guys have ever thought about that and sat down and actually looked at your your chemical usage, but all of the apps out there are are pretty good at starting to track this. And at the end of the month, you can actually, it gives you like a PL that you could like print out and look at for each of your clients with how much you used and you know how much you're charging for and if you're actually making money at these places. So please measure out your chemicals for sure. Are you looking to save money and grow your pool business? The California Pool Association is your answer. Across the country, CPA members enjoy exclusive access to all sorts of discounted insurance. You get access to all kinds of coverage, like general liability, bonds, workers' comp, commercial auto, and more. Plus, members get wholesale pricing on equipment and supplies, as well as professional networking opportunities, all with no monthly dues. So, whether you're new to the industry or a seasoned pro, CPA helps prote helps you protect your business, cut costs, and connect you with other professionals. It's time to level up your business with California Pool Association. Learn more about how CPA membership can elevate your pool business at capoolassociation.com or give them a call. And if you mention the Talking Pools podcast or the promo code TALK Pools, they'll give you a hundred dollars off of your annual insurance cost just for listening to the Talking Pools podcast. So go ahead and join CPA today. Are you looking to save money and grow your pool business? California Pool Association is your answer. Across the country, CPA members enjoy exclusive access to discounted insurance. You get access to all kinds of coverage, like general liability, bonds, workers' comp, commercial auto, and more. Plus, members get wholesale pricing on equipment and supplies, as well as professional networking opportunities, all with no monthly dues. Whether you're new to the industry or a seasoned pro, CPA helps you protect your business, cut costs, and connect with other professionals. It's time to level up your business with CPA. Learn more about how CPA membership can elevate your pool business at ca poolassociation.com or give them a call. If you mention the Talking Pools Podcast as your promo code, they'll give you a hundred dollars off annual insurance costs just because of the Talking Pools podcast. Join CPA today. At California Pool Association, one of the standout benefits is their tailored insurance program. Many pool service providers struggle with expensive or inadequate insurance. 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SPEAKER_00 10:15

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SPEAKER_02 11:58

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SPEAKER_01 12:24

I just absolutely want you to either carry on you, or if you got guys out there that are, you know, running pools for you to get it for them and make sure that they have it on them as well. Obviously, you know, in in all of the states, they require you to have SDS sheets in your truck with you. Anything that you guys are going to carry. And it's not, oh, I'm carrying this now. Like just put in there in the folder and put it behind the one, you know, the passenger seat. And it would just be, you know, a printout with all of the chemicals that you might use on your on your route, you know, or you might have in your uh in your truck at any given time, you know. So it's really important that you guys have that. And that's we talk about that with the insurance interlude with Pat coming on each week, and that's something that we we hit on a lot of you know, something happens and you get hit with a car or something like that, someone hits you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, like nobody else is gonna hold any type of you know chemical insurance, so you're the one that that's gonna fall on or if there's any spills or any hazardous waste cleanup or anything like that. You are they are absolutely gonna be asking you to to foot the bill for that. So, number one, you know, is that included in your insurance? And number two, like, would I even be able to tell them what's what's there and would they even know? Like, it's better you just hand them the whole folder and you're like, hey, this is the stuff that I carry in my truck. You know, this is what was in there at this time. So SDS sheets at all times with you guys, okay? Uh the next thing is bonding in extra bonding in grounding wire, like every Home Depot, every Lowe's you can go to, and you have to get a number eight gauge wire, and I would just get like you know, long roll of it and just wrap it up and just keep it on your truck because I can't tell you how many different times I go to these clients' backyard pools, and again, most of the time when I get called out, like I'm not servicing it. So every time I go into someone's backyard, I'm going to the equipment pad and I am looking shit over. Like, I am making sure number one, that like all the gauges are working, I'm making sure that like nothing is leaking too bad. I'm making sure that like the pump isn't too loud. Like, is there anything that I need to tell the client, you know, that's going on? And uh a lot of times, like I'll go to these pools and there'll be no bomb, they'll just the bombing and grounding wire will just be like super not the right gauge. And I'm like, what's this? And like, this is like thread, like a bunch of like threads and stuff. Like, you it can't be a bunch of threads, like it's gotta be in some states, they want you to have a bare copper wire, and it needs to be number eight gauge or or larger. And in some of the states, they actually want you to like sheath it in green, okay? And you know, bonding and grounding at the equipment pad, it doesn't matter whether it's residential, whether it's commercial, like if you don't have this there and the pool isn't bonded or grounded properly at the equipment pad, and something ever happens where the homeowner goes out there and goes to turn the heater on, you know, that stray electrical current could sit inside the heater and electrocute somebody and they could get hurt or worse. And you know, if somebody dies from electrocution at one of your pools, they're gonna claim gross negligence for that. It's one of the few things, like with the like not having a main drain and different things like that. So every time that you guys are in someone's backyard, please walk over to the equipment pad and just sit there for a second and just uh just look look and listen, you know, is really what it comes down to. Um as far as like on the guys' trucks, you know, and on your truck, like you need to have something to tie stuff down, you know. I I got when I got my new truck, I was like, I looked on the internet and the you know, the coolest thing, not the coolest things that I found, but like they were the most economical for the for the amount of money. And the first thing I got was were these things called rocket straps, and basically they just have it's like elastic and you can pull it, but on on there's like a carabiner on each end of them, so you can like lock it in and just make sure that whatever you have in the back. So if I have chemicals in the back, I can actually like kind of brace the chemicals to whatever side of the truck that it's it's on, so it's not shuffling around and it's not mixing with other chemicals, and uh, you know, there's there's no issues as far as that goes. Okay. The second thing that I got was called rhino straps, and this wasn't like there are a bunch of different straps out there that you can get, but you want like if you have a heater in the back of your truck, like uh it's usually gonna come on a pallet, you know? And it's just something that like I know that some most of the time in your truck, like you could be fine, and this thing is not gonna move around because it's it's so heavy. But the the the real truth with this is like uh the worst thing that could ever happen would be that uh you're rolling down the highway and all of a sudden this three, four thousand dollar heater is now is sitting in the middle of the highway. You know, so for whatever it was, those fifty dollar, seventy dollar straps, you know, I strap stuff down in my truck all the time. Um again, if something were to happen where something falls out of your truck and it hits a somebody else's car, you could be liable, you know, for for for hurting somebody or or okay. So we talked about the you know, the rocket straps and then the rhino straps, right? Which uh, you know, it would be a cool gift to to get your guys if they don't have anything to tie their stuff down in their in their trucks. Some of the things that we get our guys that I think are really cool is and look, if you're a company that like doesn't in your policy, you don't fill pools for people for your clients, like that's cool. I totally respect that. I totally get that. It's just with the pool company that we're running, like we're gonna fill your water. And the worst thing that could happen is that we fucking forget to turn the water off, you know, and now we flood out your yard. I've had it where we've flooded out other people's yards, I've had people that live on hills, and now there's water, you know, in the neighbor's yard, and the neighbors all pissed off. I've had that happen before. And there's a fine line between being, I guess leave your, you know, leave the water on and then coming back. Like my guy was at one of my guys was at my pool at one of our pools this week, and he I know when he was there, he had the water on, but he was only there for I think 35 minutes. So he had 35 minutes, you know, 30 minutes of water running, which wasn't enough. Like the pool, it leaks a bit, like we already know this, they're not willing to break up the ground to fix it, so they have a leak, and it leaks a decent amount. So every week when we're there, we always have the water on as as long as we can, and it's still not enough. And sure enough, I got it's you know, it's uh Saturday today. I got a call from my client, and he was like, Hey, he's like the water level is is real low and the heater's not working, and I knew exactly what it was that my guy just wasn't there for long enough. But what really needed to happen is my service technician needs to text the client and say, Hey, I turned the water on for as long as I could, and it still wasn't enough. Can you please add water over the next few days while you're there, especially if you're gonna want to use the pool? So just have to communicate that to the clients. There's two things that I found that are really, really helpful. And the first one is just a water timer. And the water timer, it's you can get it at like Home Depot, and it's just mechanical. So you literally like twist the top dial, and it's like 10 or 20 dollars, and it's very, very cheap. Um, and you put it onto the spigot, and then you put the hose onto the other side, and now you can turn your client's water on for anything from five minutes to 120 minutes, so two hours of the water on, and then it automatically shuts itself off. And like, I can't tell you how many times this has saved us where we've had to leave the water on, and then obviously you have to text the client and say, Hey, you know, we put this thing on, like we send them a picture of it, the water will be on, but it will be off. We will come retrieve it next week, or if you want to get it off of there, you know, I can, you know, just give me a call and you can tell them about it. It's really simple to use. So that's the first thing. Saved our ass a bunch of different times. I did have one time where the thing didn't turn off because the the mechanism inside of it was broken. Um so if you're worried about that, they actually have digital ones where you can like turn it on for as long as you want for two hours, for four hours, it's all digital, and you can put it on a timer so it goes on every other day for 30 minutes or whatever you want. They get as you know, as high tech as you need. But we had a problem, and to solve that problem, it was a really simple fix. You know, we were now we're able to turn people's water off automatically, and we're not even on site. The other thing that you have to do if you're not willing to, you know, leave a device on your client's spigot like this, is if you Another pool in the area, you got to come to this pool, you got to turn on the water, you gotta leave, you gotta go do the other pool that's right in the area, and then you gotta come back. And again, if you don't want to put water into people's pools, that's awesome. But what I've found is that you know, most of my clients, whether they're on disability and struggling to make payments, or their house is a $10 million house, none of them are touching the water. You know, especially with my residential clients. With the commercial clients, you can get them to, you can be like, hey, we're leaving the water on, come check it in 90 minutes, and they'll set a timer and you can talk to an individual engineer or the director of engineering or something like that, um, because it's a bit more of a complicated operation. So there's that. So we also use it's like a flow meter, and it will tell you. So we use this for when number one, when we fill pools from the beginning, when we're starting them up, we will put a GPM flow meter on it. So once we start filling the pool, we'll just reset it, and then it will actually tell you exactly how much water it just pumped into this pool. So once it gets done, you can be like, Oh, this is a 13,500-gallon pool. This is a 10,000-gallon pool, whatever it is. Makes it a lot easier to figure out what you're working with. What's what we really use it for, where it's really successful for us, is a lot of our commercial clients have you know auto, like not auto, not auto-fills, but they have these huge tanks, right? Where you have to mix acid and water into it. So they have these automation systems, right? And that automation system is connected to a peristaltic pump, whether it be like a roller cam or a stenter pump or something like that. And then it's usually connected directly into like a gallon of chlorine, like a 15-gallon carboy or something or something like that, because the chlorine can be used at full strength because it's only like 10 to 12%. The rest is all inert ingredients in there, right? So with the acid though, you can't just use straight muriatic acid. And if you guys out there are listening, like if you have a commercial client and they are putting acid in their pool through a feeder, it cannot be full strength acid. And the reason being is like imagine if there was a leak or something happened, and you you know, you're supposed to have number one secondary containment, but like now you have full strength muriatic acid, you know, seeping out of something, whether it be a broken tube or a broken injector or a uh, you know, the little duckbill check valves that they have in there and things like that, right? So if you mix, and it's usually you usually start like one part acid to four parts water, right? But in chemical safety, the first thing that they teach you is you always add the acid to the water, you're never gonna put the acid in there first, right? So what we need to do is sometimes these tanks are like 150 gallons or you know, 350 gallon tanks, and they're not marked because they're double walled, so you can't really see, you can't really eyeball it uh with the water because it doesn't get dark enough, and uh, you know, now you're kind of just blindly putting in X amount of water, or you gotta sit there like a like a schlup and have an empty gallon and fill it up and then spray stuff all over yourself a bunch of times, and it takes you know really long to fill it up. So what we do, we just put this flow meter that's on the onto the spigot, we put the hose on it, and then we put out 20 150 gallons of water, we put out 200 gallons of water, it doesn't matter. It is literally just gonna market for you, and you can kind of just go from there, you know. So those are the things that you know I think that your techs need. There's other things that I think that your your techs are gonna want, but we're gonna talk about that next week. Um, but really, you know, you know, I wanted to talk not just about really a wish list. The wish list is really gonna go into the into the next show because I'm gonna talk about different things that you can buy that you should be buying this year for your employees or for yourself that are gonna make your job easier when you're actually out at the pool. But I wanted to talk just a little bit about general safety for you know you, for your employees when they're in the trucks, and you know, just covering your ass a little bit with you know not flooding out people's pools or be putting in too much water. Um, and these are little tools that you can use and they're just gonna make you save time, money, and energy. Right, so I hope that everything is healthy and profitable for you guys. And I just really appreciate you guys tuning in on Com New Year's to hang out with me for a little bit. And if you want to reach out, especially about those calculations that I was talking about at the beginning of the show, I have sheets that we actually give out to our students, so I would have no problem sharing them with you. So feel free to reach out to me at talkingpools at gmail.com. And uh I'll uh talk to you guys next week. Um, have a good one on New Year's Eve. Thanks.