Steve's Master Pool Maintenance Tips

In this episode, Steve Sherwood shares insights on pool maintenance, commercial vs residential pools, insurance tips, and new hobbies like sailing. Perfect for pool professionals looking to optimize their business and safety practices.

keywords

pool maintenance, commercial pools, residential pools, insurance, sailing, pool chemicals, pool equipment, client management, pool industry tips

key topics

• Differences between residential and commercial pools
• Pricing strategies for pool services
• Insurance claims and liability management
• New hobbies and their lessons for business
• Pool equipment innovations and maintenance tips

Sound Bites

• "File a claim if there's injury, always"
• "Carry insurance, it's there for a reason"
• "Robotic vacuums save time and effort"

Chapters

00:00
Introduction and Overview of Insurance Obligations

15:14
Understanding Claims and Notifications

17:08
Injury Claims: When to File

18:34
Property Damage Claims: Weighing Your Options

22:48
Special Considerations for Service Companies

24:51
Liability and Insurance Interactions

LaMotte Company
LaMotte Company is a leading manufacturer of water quality testing products & pool test kits

California Pool Association
Pool Industry Trade Organization

CMAHC
The Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code promotes health & safety at public swimming pools

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Talking Pools podcast on Thursdays with Wayne and Steve. Um, it's just gonna be me again with you guys today. Happy belated memorial day to everybody out there, you guys that are opening and closing pools. Man, it is the busiest time of the year for you, hands down by far, not even close. And I've done pools where we have the 100 days of summer when I lived in New Jersey. And now that I live in sunny California Southern California, our pools are open all year round. So I wanted to first talk since it's appropriate for the time of the year. Everybody's starting to go to the beach, everybody's starting to use their pools, everybody's starting to use their boats. I picked up a new hobby a few weeks, not a few weeks ago, like uh a couple months ago. And uh my parents had come to town, and my neighbor has like a sailboat, like a 41-foot sailboat, and I went out with them and my parents had like a really great time. And I told my neighbor that I was like, hey, like I'm kind of interested in this. Like, I know that you're in the sailing community and like you're part of the yacht club up this, you know, up the road from us. So, do you I'd love to, you know, come hang with you guys on the boat or help you out however I could to to learn a little bit more about it. So they were like, Yeah, perfect. They were like, What about next Thursday? And I was like, uh, okay. So I I didn't get a chance to go down with them, but I went on somebody else's boat. And if you know anything about sailing, the first boat we went on was kind of like uh not bougie, but like my dad's 81, my mom's 76, and they were kind of like enjoying it. It was uh an easy luxury cruise where I was part of a crew to deliver a boat from Los Angeles to San Diego, and you're like, oh, like that's not that far. It's only like a you know two-hour drive in the car, three-hour drive in the car. But on the open ocean, that shit takes 12 hours. So we left at five in the morning and we got there at like five in the afternoon. And we were on this racing boat boat called a Far 40. Basically, it's like a no-frills, used to be part of like the Rolex Championship series and stuff. So like it was a serious racing boat, and there's nowhere to fucking sit. So I went on this like 12-hour, you know, cruise basically, and didn't realize that like I needed like something to sit on or like cushioned pants, or like at least like neoprene bottoms or or something to cushion my butt from sitting on this thing for 12 hours straight. Like you moved around and stuff, but when you're racing the sailboats, you're in constant motion, you're not really sitting down, you're kind of crouching and you know, or healing over the boat or what whatever it is. But then I had gone on a uh a smaller boat called a Melges 15, and that was like right up my alley for what it is. So if you know anything about sailing, they're like the little tiny boats that have three sails on them with these spinnakers and a jig and a mainsail. And uh I'm not gonna bore you guys too much with my new little hobby. But what I wanted to tell you is if you have any friends that have boats and they invite you on their boat, don't ever say no to going on the boat. Okay. But I actually just joined like a league with my neighbor's daughter. She's like a 18-year-old girl that's just about to go off to college, and there's like a racing series every Wednesday. So I'm gonna get to crew the boat for this Mel Gis 15 for the season. So it starts uh, well, it has by the time this comes out, it'll have started already. So I'll give you guys some updates on how that's going.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

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SPEAKER_00 5:18

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SPEAKER_03 5:45

Also appropriate for the time of the year, now that you know everybody's opened their pools, and you guys in the areas in Florida and California, you're just you're just trucking along. Right. Now's the time where like everybody's open, and you know, it's time to focus maybe on bringing on some some new clients. And for for us as a business, with my wife and I, we had a pretty good amount of growth in the last couple of years. So like we're fine with flattening out and not actually getting a crazy amount more of residential clients right now because we're kind of at the max with the amount of guys that we have helping us being able to get it done in a in a timely fashion. And we do a lot of commercial pools, and the commercial pools always have to get done in the morning first. Like you can't, I mean, there's some commercial pools, I guess you could go to the in the afternoon, but like there's always going to be people in the pool, you know, like in a backyard pool, there's hardly ever people in the pool unless it's like on the weekend or whatever or late in the day. But like during the middle of the day, during the week, it's usually you know, carte blanche for you to go whenever you need to go to clean this pool. Most commercial pools want to see you there first thing in the morning. And then if it's a hotel, like they want you gone before 8 a.m. So when the guests come down and the pool is open, like uh you're not around. So I just want to talk a little bit about the difference between and you know, I'm not here to tell you how to do your business, but we do both residential pools and commercial pools. And for the guys out there that just do residential pools and hate the commercial pools, I get it. It's a lot of extra stuff. And I totally understand and and respect that that you just want to do residential pools, and that's fine. But my whole point is if you are someone who's listening and you are on the fence about like, hey, should I start picking up commercial pools? How do I pick up commercial pools? You know, what what does that entail? It's a lot different than going out to a to a residential pool and going a meeting with the homeowner and so on and so forth, where some of you guys are probably doing stuff on like a handshake, but like with commercial clients, you can't do anything on a handshake. Like you have to have uh some sort of a contract. Without it, you're gonna be up shits creek. You know, they're not even gonna let you let you in the door with with without it, more or less. They're gonna want a contract on their end just to protect themselves from from you guys as well. As then that's why, you know, the contract is gonna help protect both of both of the parties that are always involved. So I know that I've mentioned this before on previous shows, but if you are trying to pick up a new residential client, they call you, you pick up the phone, you tell them, you know, your spiel, and uh they're like, okay, cool, I want you to come out and give me a quote. So if if you're in the area, you know, part of the week and you're like over there and it's easy for you to get there, then go ahead and go. But for me, where I live, like I live 45 minutes from downtown LA, I live 45 minutes from Santa Monica, but this morning it took an hour and 40 minutes to get. So it could be like a really big time waster for you to, you know, go out there and then you talk to this person, and then you tell, you know, you shoot your shot, you give them your price, and they're like, Oh, that's too expensive. And you're like, oh shit. So now you've just wasted, you know, a bunch of time going to this client's house, you know, yada yada yada. And then now you're leaving and they're not even coming on for weekly service. So you could do this a few different ways. You could just cross your fingers and pray it works out. You could also take a guess how how big the pool is, or you could go to Google Earth while you're on the phone with the person and ask them for their address and pop it into Google Earth, and it will give you a literal helicopter viewdown of the pool itself. Okay. Now everybody's got a smartphone, everybody can send pictures nowadays. Okay, even the you know, the older generation, they're pretty pretty hip with at least being able to like send a picture over to you. You say, hey, send me a picture of the deep end of the pool, and you can kind of eyeball how deep the end of the deep end of the pool is, and now you can figure out how big their pool is. And the best way to price out your residential pool is to make sure that you are charging enough money. And the only way that you can figure out if you're charging enough money is you gotta figure out how much your stuff costs and how much you need to make. So I always go with worst case scenario, like, hey, if I had to, if this was a 10,000 gallon pool, like every week, I have to put in one gallon of liquid chlorine. Like every time I show up, there's no chlorine, which probably isn't gonna happen, but because we're gonna put stabilizer in the pool, cyanuric acid, and we're gonna come by weekly and and shock the pool to 10 usually. So normally we we wouldn't have that happen. But if you're putting, you know, if you have a 25,000 gallon pool and you're putting in one gallon of liquid chlorine, if the chlorine is at zero, like uh you're gonna come back the next week and it's gonna have been at zero for free chlorine for multiple days. And now you're gonna come back to algae, you're gonna come back to a cloudy pool. And speaking of, like my one client just texted me the other day, and it's big to talk about your, you know, to talk with your residential clients. Like, you're here seven days a week, you get to see your pool seven days a week. I'm I'm there one day a week. And my service guy comes on Thursday, and today is Tuesday, and she texted and she was like, Hey, the pool's like cloudy, so you know, starting to be cloudy, like I don't know what's up. And I was like, Thank you so much for texting me because now, boom, we were in the area, we were in Santa Monica this morning. She lives in Marina Del Rey, which is 10 minutes away. So before my service tech goes on with his job because we met at a commercial pool this morning, he goes over there and checks it. So I go through the progression of is there stabilizer in the pool? Yes, it's at 30. Okay, I'd like to see a tad bit higher, but fine. Is there phosphates? Yes, the phosphates were a thousand. So now we can get on the phosphate treatment instead of my guy coming, shocking the pool on Thursday, and uh, you know, we wouldn't have figured it out for a few weeks when we did a full panel test. So back to pricing the job for residential clients. Now you can at least say, okay, if it's a 10,000 gallon pool, I'm gonna put in one gallon a week. You know, it's gonna be 52 gallons for the year. How much does that cost? You figure out how much that costs, and then you do that with all of the chemicals that you think you might use and how much it costs. Get a number per week that it's going to cost you to do the pool. And then obviously, your number that you come up with needs to be more than that. Okay. And it really depends where you live in the country and how much your chlorine costs, because I know that chlorine costs a lot less in in Florida than it does here. So that's residential pools. The difference with a commercial, and like most residential pools, like maybe they'll be like, hey, I have a pool guy now, but I'm not happy with him. We're gonna, we're gonna start, we're gonna start next month. We're gonna fire him and we're gonna start up with you next month. So it's not always that you're starting like, oh, the next day, or oh, the next whatever, you know, uh month or sorry, next week. Sometimes you're starting the next month. Hey everyone, and welcome to Do To the Internance Interlude with your host, Steve Turlett, and as always, our guest, Pat Vignol from Falcal 242. So, Pat, again, thank you so much for coming on. Always appreciate having you. Appreciate having me, Steve. Thank you. So, our last couple interludes uh talked a little bit on my end of like what's going on in service and what's going on with you know my clients and like you know more. Like, what is your risk factor and there there hasn't been any problems. Now I wanna flip the script a little bit, and there's a problem. So something happened and insert like we're gonna insert a bunch of different things happen, but you know, when do you put in when when do you put in a clean and when do you not put in a clean? Because I after any even after minor shit has happened, I will call you and be like, ah, I'm scared. Now we have a unique relationship, because I can call and tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and like we're just gonna let the chips fall where they may, where you know, a lot of times like guys might they might fuck something up, they might put they might leave a valve wrong or they might have left the water on and they don't want to admit that they were the ones to do that or whatever, but we're we're past that point. We're in trouble. Something happened. And I wanna know most of the time, like you and I agreed that like if nothing comes of this, and a lot of times it was water. It was like, hey, we left the water on and we flooded out this, you know, this hotel's fucking area or whatever, and you know, more than likely nothing's gonna happen. But is there anything that I need to do with this? And you always were kind of like, uh, and like, you know, we don't need to make a decision on that yet. If you want to, you can always do that because you're never gonna say, if I say, hey, initiate a claim like I'm your client, you're gonna say, okay, we'll go ahead and initiate that. But I think that, you know, you as an insurance provider kind of look at the whole situation and say, hey, you know, let's do this or let's do that. And it's always in the best interest of, you know, not only your insurance company, but also for your client as well, too. So let's go over some certain situations where you might not put in a claim. And then are there any situations where like you absolutely have to put in a claim?

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, I think, you know, we we were talking a couple weeks ago about like a service company's obligation, um, you know, if they've identified a hazard. So, you know, as an insurance broker or agent, it depends on the relationship with the carrier or the contract with the carrier. Yeah, generally speaking, an independent agent works for the customer first and foremost versus working directly for the insurance carrier, although everyone's gotta, you know, live in harmony in this relationship to some degree. So look, if you were to call me and say, hey, there's a potential we could have a problem here, you know, then you know, there's I could very easily I could get with the insurance company and say, hey, look, don't do anything with this, but I want to make sure you know when it's on your radar that there's a potential uh for a loss here, and then they make a note of that, and it doesn't turn into anything formal on your on your loss history unless I call back or or you know correspond back and say, you know, hey, we we need to initiate a claim on this. So it's not like just because you you tell your insurance broker, your insurance agent that, you know, something could be coming, they don't necessarily have an obligation to to put a claim in under the carrier. They can they can just put them on notice. So you should be able to have call and have a conversation about like, hey, you know, what have you seen before? Like, you know, is this what what what can I expect if you've got any experience with going through a claim or a potential claim like this, and you know, be able to get some real world advice. You know, I would say first and foremost, even if it's a scrape and a $5,000 medical bill, like if there's any injury, you should put a claim in. Because that injury, I've seen it so often where it's like, yeah, I had the scrape and then it got infected, and I got recommended seven surgeries, and damn, I almost lost my leg, and all of a sudden you're staring down a six, seven figure.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

They show up, they show up a few weeks later in a you know, in a wheelchair and a neck brace.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yep, exactly. Yeah, yep, braces all over. So I don't mess with injuries. If you got an injury, put it in. But when it comes to property damage, you know, look, every policy has a a deductible. Our general liability has a $500 deductible for a service company. So certainly if you can make it go away by giving a couple freebies or, you know, maybe you you waive service for a week or two for the upcoming upcoming months and make everyone happy, then then that's not a problem. You know, not only that, but the rates are gonna go up. I would say if you if you if you're looking at a property damage only claim that is like less than five grand, you're probably it's probably a loan because it'll stay on your loss history for five years, three to five years, depending on the company. So, you know, if you're talking about, you know, two, three, four, five, you know, four thousand, three thousand bucks to make something go away out of pocket, you know, and again, we can we're happy to put it into the insurance company, but you know, rates go up because of it. Some companies are are uh, you know, a couple strikes and you're out, type of thing, you know. So you just want to weigh your options. And sometimes it makes sense not to use your insurance if it's something small from a property damage perspective, and you know, even when it's water, right? I mean stop water bill lesson.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Yeah, just stop for a second, though. But okay, so so something breaks and I pay to fix it. Is that the end of it? Or could they come back and say, like, how do I cover my ass once I've paid for it?

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah, they could. I think ultimately you can you can draw up the same type of uh, hey, it's been fixed. We consider this matter resolved, kind of like a bill of sale if you were selling a used car, right? That you just handwrite on a piece of paper, you know, you're good, I'm good, we're all good. So the the verbiage is we is we consider this matter closed. Resolved, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Resolved. Okay, cool. Yep. No, I mean verbiage is always super important, right, with all of this. Yeah. So it it really depends on you know how you phrase it. And you know, I've just I've had people where they want us to, you know, fix an area of their plaster because it's like rough. Sure, you know, and then you tell them, like, they're like, Oh, we want to do an acid wash. And I'm like, Well, an acid wash, you know, you're taking off more of the layer of the pool, which could make it even rougher, you know, and they're like, No, no, like we want to do it, and then you do it, and then like something's wrong, and you you're like, Ugh, this is like nah, this is gonna be rough. And now they're like, You, you know, you fucked up my whole pool, you know, and that's that's like the I've had that happen before where like the lady was like, You there there wasn't staining before, you know? And I showed her a picture of her pool from six months ago, and I'm like, sure it looks like your pool is uh, you know, stained and it was seven months ago or whatever it was. And I think sometimes a lot of times people just don't pay attention until they start paying attention, you know, and now all of a sudden it's it's not a problem, it's and until it's a problem. That's why for me, like I always tell all of the guys that I work with and work for me that if there's a problem, like you need to like bring it up to them right away.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

Because now, you know, the ball is in their court. And I always like to leave the ball in my client's court a little bit more so, you know, like hey. And today was a a a fine example. You know, lady texted us, one of my clients, and she was like, Hey, the pool is uh it's cloudy. And I was like, Cloudy. I'm like, We're you know, okay. So I sent my guy right over there. He was in the area, and he was like, She has high, high, high phosphates, you know. But I was able to tell her, Hey, you had high phosphates, we're gonna add extra chlorine, which you're gonna have to pay for. We're gonna add uh phosphate treatment, which you're gonna have to pay for, you know, and we're gonna leave the pool on you know service mode for the next two days, and then the guy will, you know, our guy will come back and we'll reassess the situation on Thursday or whenever he comes back. But now the ball is in their court that they understand what went on, they will understand what went in the pool, and because at the end of the month, now they come back and they say, What are what are all these extra charges for? You know, I thought that all all everything was included. And I'm like, Well, you called us out on a different day than we normally came out, and we added extra chemicals to the pool, like, you know, and then they're like, Oh, well, we're not we're not paying for that. You know, so you you get into all these like weird, weird situations with with clients, and I've had a few different ones because we fell a little bit behind on on billing. Like when when Jen and I got married, like we got back and like we were doing CPO classes, and like it was the summer, so it's busy, and like all of a sudden we're like, you know, almost a month and a half back on billing, right? So we like would send you and like a couple clients had left and they hadn't paid like a month and a half before that. So now it's three months of bills that they they hadn't paid, and we're like, Hey, can you pay these bills? And they're like, you know, well, the service was shitty the last. You know, the last three weeks. And I'm like, dude, like what are we talking? What are we talking about now? You know, like everything was fine and peachy until you got the last bill, and now you don't, you know, for some reason you're making excuses why you don't wanna why you don't yeah. So that it gets it just into like weird situations with that. So, you know, so I guess what I'm hearing is basically just talk to your insurance agent on this, you know, and reach out to them if there's any instances that happen and you know, talk it through. Because a lot of times on the on the simple stuff, you don't really have to uh put in a claim. And a a lot of times, you know, putting in a c a claim might be you know not advantageous to to what you're trying to to do or to your to your bottom line at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

But if somebody gets injured or somebody gets hurt, then you you can't fuck around with that and you you gotta you gotta go in.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Even if it's tiny. Yeah, even if it's tiny, if there's any injuries, put it in, you're better safe than sorry. That stuff I see it blow up all the time. But you know, like you brought up acid wash, and and look, I mean, you know, there's a lot of options that are, you know, through associations and in this industry. Um, but like a standard general liability policy for a service company doesn't cover damage to surface or plaster from an acid wash. So make sure you have the right coverage, make sure you have a whole harmless if you're draining a pool or you're doing an acid wash. Um, you know, a lot of times people won't come back around and huff and puff and be like, well, no, it was like that before you got in there and did the work. You know, it's like, look, you know, here's a picture in, you know, like I I told you this stuff could happen. You sign this, you sign the, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

That's so let's let's bring it back to injury though, but it's not your company. So I have a commercial client, they have an HOA, somebody gets hurt at the pool. I don't, I don't, I don't know their policy. I don't know if they know what an incident report is. Like, you know, if you have the JW Marriott as a client, like they have an incident report that's in an app that you just like fill out a questionnaire and it goes to HR in a different state. If you work for a mom and pop shop hotel, like they might not have incident reports. So at what point could I become liable at my commercial client's pool when I'm not even on site? You know, like yeah, you got and like it's not like I that I'm putting in an injury claim for for you know the dude in 2K, but like it's more so like something happened at the pool. I they didn't even think to talk to me about it. I don't I know nothing about it, and now three months later I'm I'm subpoenaed and I'm in the in the middle of a lawsuit, like you know, and I call you and I'm like, how the hell did we get here? You know, because normally you'd stay in front of this stuff, but you know, do they do they have does my client have any obligation to me, like I would tell ask you, do they have any obligation that they have to tell me that someone got hurt at the pool or no?

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Yeah, it unless it's stipulated in a contract, in a service contract, but but generally speaking, no. You know, if something happened where you weren't there, they can initiate with their liability policy for the HOA or for the hotel. And then it's very it could be likely that you know their insurance handles all of it and then comes back around and tries to counter sue or subrogate, they call it against any other insurance policy that they can get, you know, some money back for.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

So theoretically something could have happened at the pool six months ago, they settled it, and now they come around and they're like, This was actually we think your fault.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Turn it in the yep, call me, turn it in the world.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

World shit.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Yeah, yeah. It's more it's more common than you would think. So you generally speaking, they should bring you in earlier. And we see that more often where you know, whoever got hurt has, you know, JW has any service company. Shoot, they got the the maids, the janitors, they got everybody in the world that they can add to that lawsuit. And so that's normally when you'd get pulled in versus JW handles it all and then comes back around uh to other parties. But if it's a mom and pop, that would be more common and more likely for their company to handle it. But their company through the claims process would bring you in. Like you it would be weird that they would come back around after the fact and not have brought you in earlier to pay from your insurance company versus them paying and then coming back to get money from you. So normally you know quite a bit earlier than that, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that you get brought into it months down the road.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

Yeah. So I mean, just kind of scary stuff.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Okay, carry insurance. Yeah, carry insurance, just therefore.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Oh man. All right. So, Pat, thanks again for coming on with us today. We're running out of time. So, guys, if you need insurance or you have questions about insurance, if you've been listening to the show, like uh we do this every week and we've been doing it for over a year, and we still haven't run out of insurance shit to talk about. Just about okay. So, if you guys are listeners and you're not scared to death by this segment, um, I mean, like I thought it was fun to do at first, but now it's just it's made me so much more aware of how I need to, you know, control the situation of making sure that we, you know, because if you just let stuff happen to you and let stuff happen to your company, you know, you could lose your company. So if you stay out in front of it and you make sure that you have you know open, clear lines of communication with your clients and your insurance agent, you know, you're covered in in all aspects with that. So if you're looking for insurance, reach out to California Pool Association, they'll give you $100 off your liability annual plan. And if you have any questions for the show, please reach out to talkingpools at gmail.com and it'll go over to Rudy and he'll send it over to us, and we will bullshit about it on the show. So, Pat, thanks again so much for coming on. And guys, thanks so much for listening, and we'll be talking at you next week. Have a good one.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Thanks, Steve.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

The difference with a commercial and like most residential pools, like maybe they'll be like, hey, I have a pool guy now, but I'm not happy with him. We're gonna, we're gonna start, we're gonna start next month. We're gonna fire him and we're gonna start up with you next month. So it's not always that you're starting like, oh, the next day or the next whatever, you know, month or sorry, next week. Sometimes you're starting the next month with a commercial pool. Sometimes it's a super slow burn. And what I mean by that is like the last three clients that we brought on for commercial, we number one, there's no actually looking at this. I mean, you could look at the pool on the phone or on your Google Earth or whatever, but you have to go out, right? Because like I feel like a lot of commercial people that are working at their sites, like sometimes they're new and they don't know anything about the pool or they don't know anything about pools in general. So now you have to go there and kind of educate them on how big their pool is and you know how much time it's gonna take you to do this job. And, you know, if you are doing residential pools and you don't know how long it's gonna take you to do this commercial pool, you gotta go and see it first. And you gotta guesstimate, like, you know, walk around and see just like how long it takes you to get from the pool to the pump room. And because like sometimes the pump room is like all the way across the parking lot on the other side of the parking structure, you know, or sometimes you gotta get in a busy elevator and go down the maintenance elevator with the housekeepers and the cooks and the maintenance guys and and all that shit. So I always go to these jobs at least once or twice and just kind of do like a dry run of like, hey, let me test all the water for you. We don't necessarily need to clean the pool because we're not getting paid, but I want to know, you know, if I go to a commercial pool to go check it out to give them a bid, I am looking at I'm gonna test the cyanuric acid and make sure it's not over 100 parts. I'm going to test the calcium and make sure that that's not over, you know, four or five hundred. And if it is, I'm gonna test the tap water and make sure that the tap tap water is not the same. So, and then the third thing I'm gonna test is the total dissolved solids. And if that is 1500 over where you started at, which I always assume it's coming out of the tap at like a couple hundred. So I use that as the starter and then I go go from there. But if those levels are all through the roof, then I know that the guy that's taking care of the pool, you know, really isn't taking care of the long-term stuff over the pool. Like, I'm not gonna go there and test the chlorine, the pH, and the alkalinity, it's not my client. Maybe the guy comes tomorrow, so there's nothing. You know, maybe he came yesterday, so it's high. It's not really my business. I'm not the pool guy yet. But what I'm there to do is see like, do we need to drain the pool before we take it over? You know, like what needs to happen at this pool. But anyway, closing these contracts down, I waited like six months for for all of them to close. Like I actually forgot about them, and then they got back to me and they were like, hey, like we had some questions, like uh, you know, could we just update the pricing and all this stuff? And they had other questions and whatnot. But the the big thing that I want to talk about is the the last one that we just picked up is like a homeowners association and it's like uh high-end condos where people own the condos, and there's not like it's not like an apartment building where there's like 200 units or 300 units, and there's like a ton of people using the pool. There's 24 units, so it's like uh 20, 24 units. So it's not huge, it's not small, but it's not huge either. So the they were like, hey, can you because I quoted them and they came back and they were like the chemicals aren't included? And I was like, Yeah, I was like, I said the chemicals aren't gonna be included. So like and they were like, Well, why can't you know everybody our old pool guy includes it in the in there? And I was like, Well, okay. I was like, I don't like like you're literally keeping your spa at 104 degrees, and then you're keeping your pool at like 86 degrees all the time. So, how in the world am I gonna be able to guesstimate how much chlorine I'm gonna be able to use? And they were like, Well, they were like, could we just get a quote for it and then you let us decide? So I had to go like worst case scenario on all of it. And if you're going to do that kind of a proposal, you want to make sure you're not gonna come out on the the short end of the stick with that. So I I shot my shot with a number and they actually went with that, where you know, everything that we put in to the pool is included, except for if we like today, we put in a phosphate bag into the waterfall because it needed and you know, the phosphates were a bit high. So, like we're gonna charge them for that. And then if we needed to use like algecide or, you know, some other odd off chemical, we would charge them for it. Okay. But so they agreed to the terms of the contract, and then they were like, all right, we're gonna start May 1st. And this was in like, you know, the end of April. So there was still like over a month to go after they sent the signed contract back, and they were like, All right, we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and start in a in a month. So the first day that I started at the pool, the pool's a fucking mess. Like, not like super dirty, but like the pool level was so low because they don't have an autofill, it's just like a manual fill valve. They don't uh it was like almost below the skimmer, like the spa was actually below the skimmer. Um, so it was just kind of a weird situation. And I was like, hey, like what's going on with like all of this stuff here? And he was like, Oh, like I think the guy that we fired, he wasn't really paying attention the last, you know, really doing his job the last few weeks. And I was like, no shit, you know, obviously he hasn't been been doing his job, but what I should have done and what I suggest you guys do in the future is, you know, if you have a client and they give you like a long timeline like that, like, hey, you know, we have to finish out the contract with our current company, I would still be like, okay, cool, I want to come out one more time, at least in between now and when we start, to at least see what's going on and make sure that there's nothing like too catastrophic that's that's going on. Because this guy, he knew he was fired, and there's nothing worse than a lame duck, you know. So at that point, like you know you're getting fired, you're not putting the right amount of chemicals into the pool, you're not really paying attention, you're not really cleaning it the way that you're supposed to. And then another thing about cleaning it. So I'm a really, really big fan of the robotic vacuum cleaners, and I've said this uh a million times on all the shows. I I love robotic vacuum cleaners. When I was on the East Coast, the like PB4 booster pumps with the you know the pressure side cleaners, those those worked pretty well too. But they had a dedicated pump for them, right? So it was fairly expensive in in itself. Where the robotic vacuum cleaners, they're they're pretty expensive, but they've come out with like the cordless ones in the last like uh you know, they've had them out for like five years or so or something like that. But the battery on them kind of just sucked, right? So you would put them in the pool and it would give you like one cycle or whatever it is, and like uh after like an hour, you would have to take it out and you would have to recharge it again. And I always say, like, it doesn't matter if my client is a doctor or they're on disability, like they're not going and grabbing the vacuum multiple times a week, taking it out, you know, cleaning it, charging it, putting it back in. Like, no one's gonna do that on like a regular basis, right? And I get and understand and respect that fact. So that's why we like the robotic vacuum cleaners for the residential clients, because it can just live in the pool the whole week and it goes on every day. So now instead of you giving them a half hour, 40 minutes of vacuuming or whatever it is with the Olay or whatever, this thing is a dedicated vacuum that goes on every day for like an hour and a half to three hours or whatever you set it to. The new ones are all pretty smart. So I had told you guys that the way that I sell my vacuums to my clients is that I give them one for a few weeks. I give them a demo vacuum, but like I had to procure this vacuum, right? So I think at the beginning, my rep from Jandy just he literally just gave me one. But I would have been willing to buy it anyway. Okay. They don't give out stuff like they used to anymore. But anyway, I I got one of these vacuums. I think I have like four of them now or five of them now because clients would be like, oh, like we want to we just we don't we don't want to fix this, it's too much money because once it's out of warranty, some of the parts get pretty expensive. You know, you gotta buy a new motor, it could be you know 600 bucks, 700 bucks. If you gotta buy a new cord, it could be 500 bucks, 400 bucks, something like that. It's a lot. Um, but they do give you like a two-year warranty Polaris on the like alpha IQs and the forget the name of the other one, the VRX IQ. That one's made specifically for Leslie's. So with that, I wasn't a big fan of the the cordless ones, like the cord, the cord, the corded ones are the ones for us, right? But now that I have a decent amount of commercial clients on my rosters, and like not all of them get super dirty, but like there's a few of them that are near the beach that man, like there is just sand in the pool, especially on a Monday, like all of the time. And they all have ladders and railings and stuff. So, like, number one, the the automatic vacuum, the automate automated robotic vacuum can't live in the pool because it's can't, you know, the pool's open to the public now. And that the second thing is it would always get like stuck around the like handrails and stuff, and now it's not doing its job vacuuming the pool. It's literally just you know walking around in circles. So come in with the card with a cordless vacuum on this, and I think that that is a could be a real winner for your commercial client. Because let's say you're gonna be there, you know, three days a week or two days a week, you could even come in in the morning and put it in first thing, and then you test the water, you do a few other things, you backwash the filters, you take your readings, you write them in the logbook, you know, all that stuff that you need to do could take 10, 15 minutes, whatever. Now the pool is getting cleaned while you're there. But if you work with somebody there that's cool and capable of just, you know, if they get in super early, six in the morning, just throwing it in the pool for you, and then you come and you take it out and you clean it, like that's fucking money. Like you, you know, this these things are are really, really good. So I wanted to tell you about SCP. And like I said, I don't really shout out the distributors very much uh on here because they're not sponsoring us, and you know, they are they are they are the businesses. Um, so I just call it like it is with them. But SCP, which is Pool Corp, if you have an account with them, if you sign up for the I for like the Hyper account, which is A I P E R, and they're a vacuum company, they specialize in cordless vacuums. Uh they will actually, if you sign up with them, they will give you in their welcome kit a free hyper scuba P1 vacuum, which like it's not like the creme de la creme of the vacuums and shit, but like it's a free four to five hundred dollar vacuum. So thank me later. Okay, but now you got a demo vacuum. And like this demo vacuum, like you can just tell the client, like, hey, you know, I'm gonna leave this here for the for the week, or you know, hey, come out, check this out and and show it to them. Or, you know, you could just get a corded one as well. And like the Polaris VRX IQs, the retail price on them, or the alpha IQs, like they're pretty expensive. They're like uh $1649.99 plus tax. So like after you add tax in, it's like $1,800 or something. You don't have to go with that one if you don't want to. There's other vacuums out there that you could use. You could use like the the Dolphin DX3 works really well and is more like in the $700 range, $800 range, but those are only good for 35-foot pools because the cord is like 33 foot. Then they have a DX4, which I think believe I think has like a, you know, I think a 50-foot cord. And now we're getting more into the price of like a thousand dollars and over. You can also get like the older models of the Polaris, like the 9650, it just doesn't have the functionality that it has in that. So those are just some of the things that I was thinking about with this, because I always preach, like, hey, you know, get a demo vacuum for your clients. Um, I always feel bad, you know, telling you guys to suspend however much it is to buy one of these vacuums. So I thought that this was just an almost awesome opportunity to shot out SCP and shot out hyper vacuums because they are going to give everyone that signs up a free vacuum. So I I can imagine that like if uh all of a sudden the whole pool industry went and signed in and did this, like they might run out of them. So I would do it as soon as possible to make sure that you you get one. But but the the thing itself runs through June 30th, so for like uh another month or so. So the the last thing that I want to leave you with with the commercial clients, and like you really should do this with your residential clients too. Like they should have all of their own vacuum equipment there and stuff. But like normally we'll bring like our we really like the Polaris, not the Polaris, sorry, the Pool Blaster Max CG, which is like a really nice handheld sand vacuum. And then we also like the Leaf Demon and the Leaf Masters. The Leaf Demon's also made from Water Tech, which is the same company that makes the Pool Blaster. And then I like the Leafmaster, don't get me wrong, Riptide, Hammerhead, Bottom Feeder, we love you guys too, but like not everybody has fucking uh, you know, 2600 bucks to throw to a to a vacuum system. The other thing I want to tell you is like I just told one of my service guys I like met him at a commercial pool last week and he didn't have have his vacuum to waste on him. And like if you live in an area where you know you don't have a bunch of sand filters or you don't have a bunch of multiports, like multi-ports let you vacuum to waste through the system, which is amazing. But like if you have a cartridge filter or a DE filter with a push-pull valve, like there is no vacuum to waste. Okay. So now if you wanna, if there's dead algae in the pool, like you just did an algae treatment, you just did whatever, and you need the vacuum to waste, like you need to have some sort of a vacuum to waste system, at least have like some sort of a pump with a plug on it that you can, you know, take some of that shitty stuff that's in the pool that you need out, out, and then you kind of go from there, you know. So again, just wanted to hop on here because a lot of the stuff that I do is like teaching classes and training and education and like consulting and stuff. But at the end of the day, I I still own a service company and I'm still out in the field with my guys, not as much as a a lot of people are, just because they do such a good job and they do a really good job on their own. So I'm not out there all the time with them. But uh, you know, we do have a service company, and there are a lot of things that help me out with the experience that I've I've gained over the time that I've been in the pool industry, just being able to, you know, know the difference between a client that you want to take on and a client that you didn't want to take on. And that's the last thing that I want to tell you that this client that took this last client that we just picked up, like what when I went and met with them, I walked in and I was like, this is the type of place that we want to take care of. So I made sure that like with our with our contract with that we put out with them and and all the things that we did, like that we were just top notch and that you know they came back and they were like, hey, like you're a bit more expensive than the other companies out there. But he was like, I really was impressed with you guys when you came out. And he's like, you know, I know that you guys pick up your phone and that you're gonna do a good job. So he's like, I'm gonna, you know, try this at the at the higher price and see how it goes. And already, you know, we've only been there a month and he really enjoys, you know, working with us. And when you get those commercial clients that you enjoy working with, sometimes you can be with them for for decades. So if you guys are thinking about uh you know going into commercial pools and you don't know where to start, feel free to hit me up at talkingpools at gmail.com. It'll go to Rudy, he'll send it over to me, and I can answer your question right on the show. And uh I hope that you guys had a good memorial day, and I hope that now that summer is going to be in full swing, you guys have a happy, healthy, and profitable season. So we'll be talking at you next Thursday. Thanks so much for listening. And uh this is Steve Sherwood signing off. See ya.