Floc Around and Find Out - Mondays Down Under

Welcome to the episode where three seasoned pool pros from opposite sides of the planet casually admit…

👉 nobody does floccing the same way
 👉 everyone thinks they’re right
 👉 and somehow… they all still get paid

Yes, this is the “we’ve been doing this for 60+ years combined and still argue like it’s day one” episode. 

🌏 What You’re Walking Into:

Lee is holding it down in New South Wales, Nick is on vacation but somehow still talking shop, and Shane is over in New Zealand ready to throw powdered alum at anything that looks remotely green, brown, black… or emotionally unstable.

There’s rugby rivalry. There’s mild political comparisons. There’s a toaster in a service truck.
 Yes… a toaster. Priorities.

🧪 Today’s Topic: FLOCCING POOLS

Or as this episode proves:

“Three techs. Three methods. Same result. Total chaos.”

🧨 What Gets Unleashed:

•  Shane goes full “dump it in the skimmer and let God sort it out”
•  Nick mixes it like he’s crafting a potion in a backyard cauldron 
•  Lee shows up with a watering can like she’s baptizing the pool into clarity

And somehow…

👉 All of it works
 👉 None of it matches the label
 👉 The label contradicts itself anyway

(Seriously… one product says pH 6.5–7… then immediately says 8.2. Pick a lane, chemicals.)

🧠 Key Takeaways (If You Can Call Them That):

•  Floc doesn’t care about your feelings… but it does care about pH, alkalinity, and whether your pump is garbage 
•  Dead spots in circulation will ruin your day faster than a customer saying “it was clear yesterday” 
•  You can underdose floc… or overdose it and create a science experiment that fights back 
•  Sometimes the best method is:
   👉 brute force
   👉 blind scooping
   👉 and emotional detachment 

🧟‍♂️ Real Field Horror:

One pool described as:

“You couldn’t see your fingertip in it.”

Another featuring:

“a new species growing out of the skimmer.”

Congratulations. You’re not a pool tech anymore.
 You’re a biological researcher with a net.

⚡ Rapid Fire Chaos:

•  Floc floating instead of sinking? Congrats, you broke physics. 
•  Cartridge filter + alum tablet? Enjoy your new brick. 
•  Customer vacuuming after floc? Say goodbye to all your hard work. 

🧬 The Unspoken Truth:

There is no single “right” way.

There is only:
 👉 what works
 👉 what you think works
👉 and what you’ll defend in a Facebook argument at 2AM

🏁 Final Thought:

This episode isn’t about floc.

It’s about the reality that in this industry:

Experience beats instructions.
 Results beat theory.
 And everyone secretly thinks their way is the best… even when it’s not.

📬 Got a better method?

Email it in.

Rudy will route it to the appropriate host…

…and they will absolutely argue about it on air.

🎧 Listen. Learn. Disagree aggressively.
Welcome to Talking Pools.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:53

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, good whatever time of the day it is. It is time for Mondays Down Under on the Talking Pools podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you giving us time in your day to learn a bit more about the pool industry and maybe bring some tidbits and tips and tricks to help you undertake your role as a pool technician or maybe in a pool shop. Yeah, so hopefully this helps you along the way. Today I am joined as always with my two amigos, along with me, the three amigos, Shane in Auckland, New Zealand. Hey Shane, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Very good, Lee. Thank you for asking in yourself.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

I am very well. And our normal Queensland counterpart, but this he's come over to the dark side of New South Wales. Nick is holidaying in New South Wales. Hey Nick, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Yeah, good thanks, Lee. I do feel like I am behind enemy lines here. Lots of lots of New South Welshmen around. But I actually forgot to bring my my jumper, my Queensland jumper, so I can't wear it loud and proud down here.

SPEAKER_05 1:58

Well it's not state of origin time, so we'll leave that until the colder months. But yeah, just to for our Northern Hemisphere listeners, there is a bit of rivalry between the state of New South Wales and the state of Queensland when it can comes to NRL, National Rugby League, which you guys may or may not have seen was in Las Vegas just recently. Then we had a few teams over there doing a bit of a show, show and tell, I suppose, what do you call it? I don't know. A big piss-up for all the Australians that went there to visit me, let's face it. So yeah, a bit of rivalry, which is always good. And I have to say, as a New South Welshman, we often tend to lose. Apologies. But I had to suffer through many a conference or a trade show where the state of origin always happens in June or July. May June, July, I think it is. And we usually have to suffer through a couple of games while we're at a conference or two. And New South Wales supporters were always outnumbered by the Queensland out of parts. So it's alright.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Did you wear your jumper as well, Lee?

SPEAKER_05 3:07

No, I don't I'm not game. I'm not a very proud New South Welshman. My husband would kick me for that one. So, but anyway, we take we have I have to take the good with the bad.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

I have to say. Would you say that your biggest rivalry in Probably Yeah, what would you say, Nick? Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Bigger than Labour versus Liberal, I reckon.

SPEAKER_05 3:32

I think it is the biggest yeah, mate versus mate, state versus state, how good Yeah, and and for our northern hemispheres, Labour versus Liberal is like the Democrats versus the Republicans. So it's uh opposite uh teams. So anyway. But today we're um going to jump in to a topic that sort of came about through a a conversation we'd had off air, um, which was about flocking pools and how the instructions can vary um product to product, company to company, service technician to service technician. Everybody seems to have their their own way of doing it. And what's right, what's wrong, what's works, what doesn't. I think we've all had different experiences. So today we thought we'd share our experiences with you, our listeners, and see if um, yeah, maybe there is a different way of doing things. So, Shane, tell us what do you like to use to flock a pool and how do you do it?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

So my number one will be alum poted. Um, not a big fan of PAC, personally.

SPEAKER_05 4:45

Poly aluminium chloride.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yeah, um, gotta put you to the test Lee. Well done. That probably isn't my go to, just because having to play the waiting game, adding the chemical to the pool, let it recirculate for roughly two hours and then turn the system off. I think as we're well, the majority of us, you know, time isn't always on our side, and usually when we flock a pool, it's coming into the season or at least uh at the season itself. So yeah. Aluminium sulfate, depending on how green, brown, black the water is, you know, the severity of it. Well, I would change my method slightly, but for the most part, it's I would come to the swimming pool, I would test the water for myself. I wouldn't be too concerned in regards to what the pH reading is because I'm gonna hit it hard with chlorine, gonna hit it hard with alum. So that's usually how I would start it. Add the chlorine, give it a really good shock, and then just brush the walls, brush the floor as much as I possibly can, removing as much of the debris prior. Once everything's been brushed, then I would add the alum. Now, if it's a media filter, sand filter, and if I feel that the pool may have some dead zones, I would put it on recirculate and I wouldn't mix it in with any water, I would just slowly add that powder straight into the skimmer, just slowly, not they're usually in a kilo or a two kilo bag. I wouldn't dump it all in in one go, just literally just um slowly adding it into the pool. For the most part, you can see it's covered the entire surface area of the pool within 10 minutes anyway, and then just turn the system off. We did have a pool. I think it was it was a new client that we took on, I think it was at the beginning of the season. So the pool is about 15 meters long from memory, almost 50 feet long, and the pump was on the sides, and there was only three return jets at the far shallow end of the pool. When we flocked this pool, we did leave the system running on recirculate, and you could see that the the flock literally just got halfway and pretty much stopped. You know, it was taking so long to get down to the deeper end of the pool just because the circulation wasn't that great. And with this one, we did we did stay a little bit longer, leaving the system running, and then we went around the pool, two of us. We brush in the walls, rebrush in the floor just to make sure that it thoroughly mixed in. Turn the system off, um, and then either come back 24 or 48 hours later. So that's usually a routine that we follow, shock it and flop it on the same day. Chlorine-wise, depending on depending on what your readings are. You know, if it's high in cyaneuric, tend not to use stabilized chlorine. If the cyaneuric level is still within range or if it's low, then we would use dichlor. That's usually our number one, just because we look dichlor is relatively pH neutral, so we don't really want to affect that pH anymore after adding the um arguminium sulfate into the pool.

SPEAKER_05 8:06

Interesting with that pool that with the the low flow and the the dead spot in the deep end, because you had less restriction of flow with the media, with it not going through the actual filter bowl. You had less restriction of flow there, and yet still the flow into the pool and movement of the pump is under sized, unfortunately. Yeah, so it goes to show that the flow would be even worse, even more restricted if it was going through the filter bowl. So interesting. And do you worry about the pH? Because that's always that's a debatable question, like pH alkalinity, where do you make sure that's at?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

For me personally, no, I don't. It's something that we can adjust. Usually a green pool, depending on the severity. After the first vacuum to waste, or maybe the second vacuum to waste, depending on how bad it is. That's when we would start bringing the pH up gradually. Um there's not a huge amount of pools out there that we go to if they are really bad. You're not going to finish green pool in one or two visits, it's going to take multiple visits. So we would bring our pH up slowly, just over the course of like the second, third, maybe fourth visit, and then on the final rebalance. So I do remember reaching out to somebody a while ago, and we'll talk about this in a minute, Lee. But just in regards to a lot of the packets, their recommendation when it comes to what your pH should be when you use aluminium sulfate, for the most part, I think we're we can all agree they're probably around eight, eight point two, and what they they specify. Somebody told me a while ago that having actually having a slightly lower pH makes the alum work more effectively. So even keeping it around a pH of seven, in some ways you're actually speeding that process up in making the aluminium work more efficient than harder, I would say. I can remember following certain instructions many years ago, and we did used to bring it up to 8.2. And strangely enough, we used to have more problems with almost like coagulating clouds on the water surface, or the the flock hasn't flopped out as as good as what it should have. It's taken a lot longer than what we're expecting it to uh take. So for myself, no. Um, you know, I know everybody's got their own their own way of doing things, but for us, no, I don't worry about that personally.

SPEAKER_05 10:49

So, what about you, Nick? As a service technician, I know you wear two hats, service technician and retail store. So, what do you do and what do you instruct your service technicians to do?

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah. It's Monday. The cruising is gone. Lee's chain and Nick. Cover Nazi vibes all day on. Got a call from a customer. Who's got some mixture? Sounds like a mixture for the down and the crew. I'm walking up to the pool, it's like a freak though. Salt water quacks swimming round, got the jaws open wide box, jellyfish things, great white, sticking a ride, and then tight pants, beats the brown. I'm the one with the scoop ain't no water and every day. Hedgehog in the pool, gotta get it away. Obviously in me, next to keep we flat talking pools, odds and ends. Dead we joke. On the bobby fit of work, you go to five crocodiles on the dungeon and the ladies on the rise. The reach of mama bumble's worth, some never weaving too. And then next thing we got the proof, ain't nobody gonna mess with the group, watching the power, and the leaf vacuum in the flow, empty in the back is back, watching the filter. Gotta get it right in the water, and ammo feet in the clean. Got the vacuum body of water like the thing from the drain. Under down underneath. I just started, ain't no flick, no flick. Uh-huh. Got the crew, got the steel, got the wild extension to down under.

SPEAKER_05 12:33

So what about you, Nick? As a service technician, I know you wear two hats, service technician and retail store. So what do you do and what do you instruct your service technicians to do?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Well, when I first started, had uh our our go-to was always the two kilos of alum and the two kilos of pH up. I was always under the impression, always told that it needed to be a high pH. That's what we did for many, many years and and seemed to not have too many issues with that. But with the introduction of our new water test program a few years ago, actually took the time to read the back of the packets and and what they recommend. And um our current supplier does not mention pH at the moment, but mentions a total alkalinity and it recommends a to total alkalinity of 150 for the pack flop to work correctly. Which is yeah, a little bit different. I hadn't heard alkalinity come into account with any of the products in the past.

SPEAKER_05 13:32

Yeah, I've um done a little bit of research on the labels, but maybe we'll get to that in a minute. So when you add it, how are you adding your alum sulfate?

SPEAKER_02 13:43

So it would always just be mixed in a bucket of water broadcast around the pool and running the filter for a minimum of a t of two hours to help with that circulation.

SPEAKER_05 13:54

Yeah, with the filter on, bypass all the cartridge out.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Bypass or the cartridge removed, yes, correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 14:00

So I have a little bit of a different take on this. And this was a trick taught to me years ago early on in my time in the industry, and it said me really well. So I'll I'll share it. You might have heard me talk about it previously, and that is we actually turn the pool completely off. We don't mix it at all. We mix the alum sulfate in a watering can, so a few litres of water, and actually a lot of the brands or a couple of the brands do actually say warm water, which is not always easy to do out on site unless the owner's home and you have access to their hot water tap. But anyway. Spa pool. Yes, spa maybe could be some water out of the spa, absolutely. Um yeah, I don't think many of us carry a kettle in our service vehicles, but anyway, my husband does carry a jaffeline, but that's another story. Like that's a toasting.

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Yes, I have heard this.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

He carries a toasting machine in his he toasts his sandwiches as he goes around.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

No, that was hard.

SPEAKER_05 15:15

So always has a hot lunch. He's spoiled. But anyway, so mix the alum sulfate in warm water and or mix it in water, let's say, in a watering can. And then you actually use the watering can to shower the alum sulfate mix across the pool as evenly as possible. And because you're showering it and you're really dispersing it very evenly across the surface, what actually happens is the alum sulfate transfers through the water, and as it sinks, it takes the particles with it. Like they gather together, it coagulates and it sinks. And we found that worked exceptionally well. You could almost see it happen before your eyes because you would be watching it settle and transfer through water. Traverse, I think is the word I'm trying to find. Traverse through the water. So that worked really well. We always have worked by a high pH. And it was interesting because I've started seeing packets like just the odd one here or there that say a low pH. I have seen a couple of packets that actually are quite confused because one hand it actually says a low pH, and then the next breath it actually says a high pH. So I think they're hedging their bet each way, as we like to say. But yeah, I think it goes to show, like, we've all been in the industry now for numerous years between the three of us. Too many to mention, I think between between Nick and I. We're all and Shane, like we've got over 50 years or over 60 years probably of experience between the three of us. And yet here are three people doing the same task differently, but getting to the same end result. So different horses for different courses, maybe. I only ever had one I only ever had one pull that did the floaty things. And at the time we put that down to unbound like a lower pH than we should have. And so we broke that up with a with a hose, like you break up the the flock. Uh broke it up with a hose and corrected the pH and or raised the pre pH and then it did all sync for us. So I have had that experience, but only ever had it once. Have you had that happen? Have you ever had flock float?

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Yes, we have. And yeah, I would always typically put it down to yeah, uh a pH issue. Um and yeah, trying to raise it to to get it to settle back down.

SPEAKER_05 17:44

It's interesting. Yeah, go, Shane. Sorry, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So I just wanted to ask Lee, just in regards to your watering count, and the same with yourself, Nick, you're basically you're diluting it in a bucket of water. Um, especially with you, Lee, because if you're not running the system, did you find that you would get this the chunks at the bottom that haven't thoroughly dissolved?

SPEAKER_05 18:08

No, because you're dissolving it in a bucket of water or dissolving it in the watering can, mixing it thoroughly before you're actually broadcasting it. So it's it's dissolved.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Right. What about you, Nick? Have you ever found that there's almost like um, you know, like chunks of aluminium at the bottom of your buckets?

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah, I think I think if we've had some very old product sitting on the shelf, potentially, um, but yes, nothing that can't be just broken up and and and worked worked its way through.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Yeah. That was something that I found quite often with the product that I was using. Um you know, maybe mixing a kilo of aluminium sulfate in a 10-litre bucket of water once you've tried and dissolved it a couple of times, there's just this little bit of sediment. Um, and that was what's what started me to use adding it down into the skimmer, and because I would add that small, you know, basically that excess part into the skimmer and it would break up by the time it gets out to the swimming pool. But I was just thinking, Alive, because if you're not running the system at all, if you were to have that sediment, but obviously you you don't have that sediment, so there's no issue.

SPEAKER_05 19:21

Well, I suppose you probably like you might end up with a little bit of residue in the bucket in the bottom of the watering can, but just add a little bit more water. I suppose it's a little bit like stabilizer. When it doesn't dissolve, you just add a bit more. Oh, actually, I shouldn't say stabilizer, but like chlorine. When I'm mixing chlorine in a bucket of water, I always do a couple of passes of water to help it dissolve and get rid of all the granules so that they're fully dissolved by the time they're added to the pool. But I just think it's interesting. Like here we are, three people with a lot of experience. Shane, you add yours into the skimmer box. Nick, you add yours into the pool mix in water, and uh both of you run your equipment for a short period of time to circulate. And then here I am doing a complete different watering can and no movement. Like it's it's quite like I say, it's really but they all work. So quite interesting. I did do a bit of a a research and I asked good old um AI why what stops alum sulfate from actually settling? And it says improper pH levels. So alum works best with a pH range of between 7.5, sorry, 5.5 to 7.5, with the sweet spot typically being being between six and seven. If the pH is too low, so below 5.5, the alum remains dissolved and does not form the necessary flock. If the pH is too high, i.e. above eight, it converts to soluble aluminum uh aluminiate, uh, which also fails to settle. So interesting. Aluminium sulfate has a very low pH. So as it's working in the water, it's actually reducing the pH level. So I wonder if your pH is too low, then does it go too low and not work? And if your pH is and that's why I always made sure my pH was high, so that then the pH would lower with the adding of the alum. So yeah, go figure. Lower alkalinity. So alum um consumes alkalinity to form the gelatinous precipitate that traps the particles. If the water lacks sufficient alkalinity buffering capacity, the pH will crash, resulting in weak flock and poor settling. So, Nick, that answers your question about your supplier has a uh an alkalinity level that they like. So that sort of answers that question for us. And then cold water temperature. So cold water significantly slows down the chemical reaction of hydrolysis and preventing the formulation of flock. It also increases water viscosity, which slows down the settling rate. So, yeah, and you can actually underdose flock and you can overdose flock. So you want to make sure that you are doing the right amount according to the manufacturer's instructions. They all do seem to be pretty much the same when it comes to dosage rates, which is at least something. It is it is interesting because I like Nick, you deal with one company, Shane, you deal with another. I've dealt with a couple over the years, and I've just pulled up a lot about three different product labels, and they actually all give slightly. different information. One in particular. No, not in dosage, in actually how to how to add it. So one particular product actually says adjust the pH to between 6.5 and 7. Optimum coagulation yeah optimum coagulation occurs in this range but then it actually says label recommends 8.2. That's like within the within the within the same two lines of the instructions on the back of the packet. So it says adjust it to between 6.5 and 7. This is optimum range and then full stop label recommends 8.2 that's got to be a typo. That's crazy isn't it um 400 grams per 10,000 liters which is fairly standard. And alum is acidic in the water and can lower the pH and total alkalinity. So that was from one um company. Yeah the other labels that I've been able to see because sometimes you can't always see on the back of them they seem to be fairly consist can fairly consistent. So this another one says to dissolve in a bucket of water and put the filter to research so like you're doing Shane and distribute the dissolved flock evenly across the pool surface. So there I go. Sorry I'll correct myself there. Putting the filter onto research so they're actually creating water movement and distributing it evenly across the surface. So that's probably more aligned to what you're doing Nick. That's what you mentioned you were doing. So nothing going down the skimmer box here. So yeah just interesting and Shane I know you mentioned you're not a fan of the PAC or the polyaluminium chloride. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Um couple of reasons I I don't feel it works as good personally as aluminium sulfate. Probably used it maybe in my career maybe six or seven times and just in in those times of using it one yeah the strength of it I just didn't feel was as effective as aluminium sulfate and also just having to wait around or having to return you know after that two hour window of recirculating as I said you know you've usually when you've got a green pool you're coming into the season or it is peak season. So time isn't your friend should we say so it's good just to get in in and out as fast as you can um and just having to use their their method having to come back in two hours time it just didn't work for us.

SPEAKER_05 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Nick is that a product you sell or use in service much well it's it's funny that you say you're doing it well for time when a lot of those products are are labeled as rapid, as quick, but yeah we we would typically go with the powdered but we would have a lot of reps that would come in and say that they sell lots and lots of it and they have really really good feedback but I'm with Shane with the if it's a an average pool and you and the pool requires flocking, you're just going to go straight to the one that you know is going to work.

SPEAKER_05 26:10

Yeah. And I I think that's the thing it really depends on the situation you're dealing with. So we've talked here about flocking green pools so my husband's a bit like does likes to do things like shane shock it and flock it all at the same time. He'd throw everything at it but the kitchen sink, broom it, scoop it the whole lot and then let it do it let it do its thing. I would actually say depends on the pool, depends on the situation depends on how black or how green it is which stage in the colour spectrum it's it's got to but I like obviously you want to broom the walls and floor as much as you can because you need to loosen everything off because if you're going to do a vac to waste you don't want it to be stuck there. So that is always my first tip when I'm teaching people how I I do things. Yeah and scooping out the leaf debris and leaf leader even though you can't see it like I I I call it blind raking you probably do too like rake the pool blindly. You can't see what you're raking but getting as much of that debris out because if it's got debris in it and you're vacing to waste your baskets is going to clog so much quicker and you're going to be stopping and starting so much more frequently which is then going to really hinder the whole vacing um job that you're doing. And actually you raised an important thing there Nick too about vacing um the pool or setting the pool up when you flock it.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Yeah if customers have their own vacuum gear there is to have it all set up ready to go have the hose full of water the vacuum head in the in the step sitting on the step ready to go connecting up to the pool. So as soon as you get there the next day with hopefully a a nice clean water and dirty surface a dirty floor you can turn that pump on and and get straight to work.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

That's a really good idea actually Nick yeah because no matter how gentle you try lowering that vacuum head it's always going to happen you know yeah you're always going to disperse a flock.

SPEAKER_05 28:21

Yep you've got to try and be as smooth as possible that is because so otherwise it just fluffs up and um you lose that flocking or not lose it but you unsettle the flock which is what you're trying to avoid. So yeah um that's a really important point that you raise there Nick so yeah brooming the floor brooming the walls and floor uh mind raking it getting as much as you can out of it. I actually say there's two ways you can do it. You can either treat the green first and then flock it or you can flock it first, remove a lot of the green and then do a um algicide and chlorine after you've actually vacuumed a lot of that green out or black as it might be out of the pool because the less that's in there is the less that you actually um have to kill or the less aggressive you need to be with with the amount of chlorine. We've all had those pools where you chuck in a whole 10 kilo tub of granular chlorine or a couple of containers of 15 liter liquid chlorine containers into a pool and it barely touches the side because it's been a cesspit. Yeah they're pr they're pretty horrendous those pools.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

We had one of them last year it was just after our new employee started. So it was a good initiation for him and uh luckily still around but it was probably the worst pool that I have been to there was um a debris cover over the pool and I hadn't been running for a couple of years. So once we pulled it back it was literally black you know if you were to put your finger in the water you could barely see your fingertip because it was just it was it was so dark. But the smell as well it was absolutely revolting. But after I think it took three visits of scooping because it was it was it was a relatively big pool but I had so much debris in the bottom and big you know big big branches.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

And um even with the wind cover on it.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Some of the some of the areas the pegs have broken and I don't know um so yeah I had these big fern branches in there and it it was pretty nasty but just in regards to adding the flocculant the aluminium sulfate and the skimmer actually gave me a very good idea of where the return jets were on the swimming pool as well. Because I couldn't see where they were so you could see the aluminium coming out getting you know this nice white cloud in three different points it's like okay so I now I know where the return jets are released. So you know that's that's another advantage about adding it down the skimmer.

SPEAKER_05 31:08

It would have been a very interesting water sample.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Yeah yeah I'll send you some photos it it actually had like I don't know it was like a new breed of bloody algae or something growing out the walls of the skimmer as well and it was that one that's a really large petri dish. It was nasty.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

But I did find I sold aluminium uh sorry polyaluminium chloride the pack liquid pack it is typically called quick flock, power flock those sort of names because they it tends to work faster than the aluminium sulfate but it isn't as thorough. So I certainly didn't use it in bad green pool cleanups. I used it often when people had had a green pool that they'd cleaned up but they had the dead algae floating around in suspension and really needed to get that to settle. So the polyaluminum in sorry polyaluminium chloride the pack was actually really good for that. And so I would say I'd use it when a pool needed flocking maybe it's cloudy and it's not unbalanced water. We know that cloudy water can be unbalanced. So as long as the pool is balanced whether it's cloudiness, dead algae, um a light green things like that, yes you can actually use the polyalum chloride to actually clean them up but I wouldn't use it for a difficult situation. But it is good because it does work fast. So they typically say some suppliers say four to six hours some say six to eight or six to twelve whereas your aluminium chloride does typically take twenty four to forty eight hours to truly see a decent flock drop um for those sort of situations. So I think different different horses for different courses maybe.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Definitely it'd be interesting to see what the other guys brought on on the other side of the world if they're if they have a different routine as well if they're um flocking a pool.

SPEAKER_05 33:15

Yeah yeah absolutely like we say there's more than one way to do something as long as it works for you. We've all used our own methods tried and tested them and and they've worked for us. And as long as they they work then that's all we can really judge it by. And I suppose the same goes for products. So I might have a great experience from one supplier with one type of product you might have a completely different experience with it. It's the products that we have confidence in and the methods that we have confidence in that we can then take out into the field or share with our clients because we can do so because it's rooted in our own experience. But we can often learn from what other people do. So I don't I don't um discourage I shouldn't say discourage I don't um what's the word dismiss I don't dismiss somebody else's experience knowledge I take it in and learn from it and I think we're all the better for for taking that in sometimes it's right sometimes it's wrong sometimes it works for them sometimes it doesn't work for us. Everybody's different but I think you've got to be open to these things.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

I'll I'll try anything once I'm gonna try a few different ways now eagerly awaiting my next green brown black pool.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

And then you can use the watering can yes Scott swears by it so it has worked it has served us very well over the years. Easy way to broadcast it reminds me of having having a shower like if you pour something straight into water you've just got that funnel of water going in but if you shower it through like a shower nozzle a watering can spout with the actual shower nozzle on it then you can broadcast it really gently across the pool and the good thing about it is you can really flick it right across the pool and you can almost reach the other side and that's what Scott used to do just walk around and actually shower it across the surface as he was walking around the pool and walk around the entire pool and just do it until you'd gone through how many kilos of flock that you need to to go through. And the other thing is that I well we have here and I I hope they have them in the US is the aluminium sulfate tablets which are one of my favorite things. I think your sales in the shop went up quite a bit when I was there yes they did yes they did not a bad thing. They're a great tablet and I used to actually like to couple it with a liquid clarifier. So if somebody did have a pool maybe they'd done a green pool cleanup hadn't quite got all the particles out or maybe they'd flocked it and hadn't got quite everything out that was a little bit still left behind, a little bit making the water hazy I would often go to a liquid clarifier and an aluminium sulfate tablet. Now word of warning here aluminium sulfate tablets are not suitable or most of them are not suitable for cartridge filters. And if you use one in a cartridge filter it needs to be a light dose one and it will very much clog the cartridge so um yeah up to you whether you to use pointing that out yeah up to you whether you want to use it use it in that sort of situation. But liquid clarifier makes the particles in the water coagulate so it's a chulating agent and chilating agent depending on how people pronounce that word and gathers things together makes them denser and easier to catch and then the alum sulfate actually makes the sand media the glass media in a in a media filter puts that layer on the top of the media and makes it a better catcher. So if you make something easier to catch and you make your filter a better catcher the two are a match made in heaven and I've talked about this on the podcast before how we used this during the fire cleanups when we had we were surrounded by bushfires worked exceptionally well and I it was always my go-to so great sell in the shop easy an easy sell in the shop and gave the customers really effective results. So I used to actually have customers come back and buy another satchel of clarifier and another tablet and just say I'm just keeping them for just in case so yeah they're a good one. But I think that brings us to a close for today's we're we're all we're all flocked out how that we're done and dusted we're flocked done okay so thank you very much for listening we appreciate you um spending some time with us today but we hope that you've got something out of it and some maybe some food for thought or maybe a different way of doing something maybe you're gonna give something new a go. If remember if you have any topic suggestions any questions drop us a line at talkingpools at gmail.com and Rudy will serve that question or topic out to the most relevant podcast show host and yes I stuffed that up again. But if you particularly want us to answer it just put it on for Mondays down under on your request. Until next week thank you Nick enjoy the rest of your holidays. I will hopefully I'll be working in my tan and don't go near the plant room at the at the caravan park. Otherwise I'll be in there thank you Shane for joining us as always I hope everyone has a great week and we look forward to you joining us again next week on Talking Pools Mondays down under. Thanks guys.