Andrea's Greatest It's

This week, Andrea takes listeners on a rapid-fire tour through some of the most misunderstood topics in pool service, water chemistry, equipment operation, and aquatic safety. From saltwater chlorine generation and pH rise to phosphates, storm cleanup pricing, cavitation, combined chlorine, and why nobody should ever trust the phrase "pee is sterile," this episode blends practical field experience with real-world pool science. 

Among the topics discussed:

•  Why salt chlorine generators produce chlorine gas—not sodium hypochlorite—and what that means for water chemistry. 
•  The real reason pH tends to rise in saltwater pools. 
•  Why algae is not always the fault of the service technician. 
•  Equipment failures, power outages, circulation issues, and other overlooked causes of algae outbreaks. 
•  The surprising amount of urine, sunscreen, body oils, and other contaminants introduced by swimmers. 
•  How bather waste contributes to chlorine demand and combined chlorine formation. 
•  Why commercial and residential pool operators should pay attention to damaged drain covers and entrapment hazards. 
•  The importance of maintaining visibility to the main drain and avoiding cloudy water conditions. 
•  A realistic discussion on phosphates, when they matter, and when they may not. 
•  Hurricane preparation strategies, customer communication, and establishing storm cleanup pricing. 
•  Water hammer, cavitation, and the costly damage they can cause to circulation equipment. 
•  How improper chemistry corrections can lead to scaling, cloudy water, and calcium precipitation. 
•  Why Sarah argues the filter is more like the kidneys than the heart of a swimming pool system. 
•  Cold-water benefits, reduced algae pressure, and seasonal chemical considerations. 
•  Heat stroke recognition, prevention, and emergency response. 
•  Why weekly oxidation remains an important tool for managing combined chlorine. 
•  Air relief valves, trapped air, and equipment safety. 
•  Water circulation patterns, dead spots, and their impact on water quality. 
•  The differences between sanitizers, oxidizers, and disinfectants—and why chlorine and bromine serve multiple roles in aquatic environments. 
•  Understanding total alkalinity, carbonate alkalinity, and cyanuric acid corrections in everyday pool operations. 

Key Takeaway

One of the recurring themes throughout this episode is that successful pool operation is rarely about a single chemical, piece of equipment, or magic solution. Safe, clear water depends on understanding how circulation, filtration, sanitation, hydraulics, maintenance practices, and human behavior all interact. Whether discussing algae prevention, storm recovery, equipment protection, or swimmer hygiene, the message remains the same: understanding the science makes better pool professionals. 

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#TalkingPools #PoolService #PoolChemistry #SwimmingPool #PoolProfessional #WaterQuality #PoolIndustry #CPO #Aquatics #PoolTech

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

As I said, it does not oxidize combined chlorine, not even on the boost setting or the superchlorinate or the whatever setting. It's just not gonna do it. It's just not gonna get there, babe. One of the things that drives me nuts when I hear people talk about salt cells, they are not generating sodium hypochlorite. They are generating chlorine gas. The chlorine gas then mixes with the water and then hypochlorous acid is released into the water. So they are the same, they are both releasing hypochlorous acid, sodium hypochlorite and chlorine generated. I mean salt-generated chlorine. They're both hypochlorous acid. However, the salt cell does not produce sodium hypochlorite. I've heard people say the reason salt systems have high pH is because sodium hypochlorite has a pH of 13 or 14. And that's just not it. The salt cell is generating chlorine gas CL underscript 2, not Na. The pH in a salt system rises because of the electrolysis process in which turbulence and heat are generated. The turbulence does the does the pH rising. The heat does the makes the salt makes the scale. Algae is not always the pool guy's fault. Okay? It's just not. It's not always someone doing a shitty job. It's not always the filter was dirty. It's not always the CYA is high. It's not always because the phosphates are. There's so many different reasons why a pool has or had algae. I had several pools that got algae because the power was not on for one reason or another. One customer turned it off themselves, someone else had the time tripper was loose and it fell off, and then the pool was on was only coming on for like an hour a day. So if you see somebody posting a green pool, don't immediately assume that it's because they fucked up somehow and did some kind of shitty job. Anyway, here's another fun fact: an average swimmer releases approximately 30 to 90 milliliters. I I got that one for you, you guys, for you non-Americans. That is one to three ounces or six tablespoons of urine into the water. So um that is what I like to call poop soup. You'll never catch me in a hotel pool. I don't know if I said that already, especially not a spa. Um, and then people also introduce non-living organics such as body oils, sunscreens, lotions, and all of those things contribute to chlorine demand. Ever heard of her? She's super niche. Don't get too close. And then for the pool pros, even if you're doing residential pools, not just commercial pools, look for broken or missing covers. Entrapment can happen even if the pump is off. All right. I had a customer with a broken drain cover, and I actually got my net stuck on the drain cover, and I immediately showed it to the homeowner, and I was like, you need to replace this immediately. They still haven't, but that's why I'm just letting everybody know. Make sure they know. And I told him, make sure you tell them not to get just don't swim around down there. There's no need for it. You'll get your bathing suit caught on there, you'll get your toe caught in there. I don't know, something. Just stay away. And then this is mostly for commercial pools, but you should not be swimming if the water is cloudy or if you can't see the main drain, all of those things. And so that's pretty much it. That I think that covers everything. You always want to just check the hardware, check, um educate people, help them get the resources. All right. Phosphates, everyone's favorite, favorite. I can't do I can't do it on the microphone. I feel like it would be really aggravating, but I like to sound like the cat Sil Sylvester when he does the sufferin' succotash, put phosphates in there, but make it phosphates. Now these MFs are only a problem if they're a problem, my friends. That means if you don't have any algae problems and you also don't have any problems holding chlorine levels, is removing the phosphates really necessary? If you have a salt cell, yes, because the phosphates are bad for the salt systems. Don't be toilet paper hoarders like the last time. Because you know they may be hard to get later. And then you are gonna want to alert all of your customers of everything. You can tell them everything I just said, especially about the water level. Don't let any water out. You can give them chemicals, you know, you can sell and have them give them the chemicals and be like, here, you could save this, ration it, or whatever. Or what you need to be telling them is that you're gonna charge them for storm cleanups. You have a storm cleanup rate. Because if you've never cleaned up a pool after a hurricane, I wish my job was as easy as yours is. Just kidding. But yeah, charge, charge for storm cleanups, charge for your time that you're there. I used to go by how many times I had to empty my riptide bag if I had to empty it more than once or whatever, maybe two times, depending on how I felt, then I would deem that a storm cleanup, and then they would get my storm cleanup rate. They would be warned that that might occur. Of course, you have to do that. So let me define water hammer for you, okay? Because if you've not heard that term before, you might be going UTH. What's the actual hockey? What's UTH? So according to, I got this definition from a website, DFT Valves. Everheard of them dot com. I added the ever heard of them part. The actual website is D F T val V-A-L-V-E-S.com. Water hammer or hydraulic shock, also known as aka, is a high pressure shock wave that occurs in piping systems when fluid in motion suddenly stops or changes direction, often caused by abruptly closing a valve or shutting down a pump. This sudden momentum change creates a loud banging noise, potentially causing pipe damage leaks or burst fittings due to pressure spikes that can exceed 10 times the system's normal operating pressure. Anyway, the the air bubbles hit the impeller and it erodes the metal and damages it. So some common occurrences, some cause, some common causes of cavitation. We have debris in the skimmer basket or the pump basket, you have a dirty vacuum filter, you have partially closed or restricted suction line, you have a throttling valve on the effluent line, not properly restricted, so there's too much water going through there. Um, or there's a leak in the plumbing on the vacuum side of the circulation system. Now, cavitation signals an issue, it's an underlying problem, it's like a symptom, there's something wrong. And as I said, can quickly damage the pump or even the motor if you don't take care of it. Now, when you have the scaling and cloudy water problem, what happens is it's not necessarily from a high pH. I mean, it is from a high pH, but it could also be from a pH spike. So what'll happen is so, say for example, you have a pool that whatever, you just show up. It's not your pool, it's you just showed up and it's you're there to fix a problem. You test the water, and the pH and total alkalinity are super low. So your first instinct is, oh, I'm gonna raise these, or I'm gonna raise the the alkalinity and then the pH. So what happens is when you do that, and if you spike it too fast or too too high too fast, anything that was dissolved in the water is now going to just kind of like out. That was the technical term, by the way. It's an industry term, okay? It's gonna precipitate, it's gonna blast out of there, and then it's just gonna sit and deposit onto the surface. That's what causes or contributes to the staining. And then, like I said, the uh cloudy water, if you have calcium carbonate floating around, it's just gonna be turbid. Um, and that's the explanation of that. I always hear people say that the filter is the heart of the system, and I disagree with that. Now, here's why is because the heart pumps blood, and filters don't pump anything. So for me, if I'm gonna compare the pool parts to body parts, I would say that the filters are more like the kidneys, I guess. I wanted to say lungs earlier, but you know, the whole air thing. We don't like air in the filters, so and kill kidneys filter blood. So there we go. That that's where I'm going with this. That's what my whole thing's based on. So now the filter, not to say that it's not important, but meaning you know, when I say it's not the heart, it is important. It's the the pool is only as clean as the filter, right? So the last two benefits that you get from cold water, because that's actually what this episode was about. I don't know if I mentioned that in the beginning or not. You get less potential for algae blooms. Obviously, since the water is cold and algae prefers warm water, you've taken away one of its conditions for being able to bloom. And then on that note, you also are able to use less chemicals than normal. Since the water is already kind of corrosive, you could maybe you don't need as much acid and maybe you don't need as much chlorine. Me personally, I just kind of use the same amounts. I I don't usually like to lower the amount that I'm using. I it's I'm not saying that like I disagree with doing that or anything. It's just, I don't know. I don't like the idea of a transition. I don't like the idea of like I have to do this because it's this time of year, and I have to do this because it's the I'd rather just do the same thing all the time. Speaking of chlorine not killing everything, I've seen people, I've seen nurses specifically comment things like this. Pea is sterile, so it's okay for me to pee in the pool. And no, nurse Becky, it is not okay for you to pee in the pool. Now, pea may be sterile, but pea contains what? Ammonia. And ammonia plus chlorine does what? Creates combined chlorine. And combined chlorine does what? Reduces free chlorine, which is increases the risk of water-related illnesses due to other contaminants such as fecal matter. So by peeing in the pool, you are reducing the sanitizer necessary to disinfect the poopy. Okay, my dog agrees with me, as she usually does. Symptoms of heat stroke include nausea, vomiting, body temperature over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I didn't look up the Celsius, I'm sorry. Confusion, disorientation, all of those things. So if you are having heat stroke, please stop what you're doing, call 911, get some help, have someone help you. Seriously, you need to sit down, seek shade, get out of the sun if that's where you're at. And then this is pretty important from the CDC website. It says to not drink anything. I don't if there's like a health professional listening, maybe you can explain why that is the case. It seems like your first instinct would be to, well, because you're supposed to cool yourself down, right? Or cool the person down if you come upon a person suffering from heat stroke or heat exhaustion. You have to help them cool down as quickly as possible. But it did say do not drink anything. The drain game, discourage, touch the drain or sit on the drain games, or any kind of drain that in a game that involves swimming down to any drain or standing on it with your feet or doing a handstand over it like I used to. It's amazing, I'm still alive. None of that. Even if you have a VGB cover, VGBA cover, even if you have a compliance equipment, other safety, just don't teach your children, teach your clients to teach their children that drains and not just the main drain. We're talking about any suction outlet here. Stay away from any grates in any gutter systems and any commercial pools. Just don't even, just don't mess with them, don't touch them, stay away from them. It's like finding Nemo, right? Remember when finding Nemo got too close to the fish tank filter and he got sucked in. Okay, that was that's uh cautionary. Okay, that is definitely a thing that can happen. So just remind everybody of that. So speaking of combined chlorine, you want to be getting rid of that. I'm gonna do this without saying that S-word, all right? I'm not, I'm just not gonna say it. You can say it if you want to. I it just has made me so angry lately. And I'm fine if you want to say I'm going to shock the pool or your pool needs to be shocked, or weekly shocking is necessary. Just don't call the chlorine shock. Okay, you're not gonna shock the pool with shock, you're gonna shock the pool with chlorine. I had a guy on my TikTok be like, I'm not gonna tell the customer I'm gonna shock with dye chlor. Well, don't then. Just say, I'm gonna shock your pool. Anyway, I really hate it so much. Do it weekly, whatever you want to call it. Remove the combined chlorine, add a bunch of extra chlorine, test first and dose properly, but do that weekly at a minimum. If it's a bigger pool, if it's a higher use pool, if it's an Airbnb MFR, more often if you can. A normal byproduct of a centrifugal pump, which if you'll remember from last week, that's the only type of pump that we use on pool systems, is the introduction of air into the system. And this air usually collects at the highest point of the plumbing in the plumbing, and this is usually the filter. This is why we have the air relief valve. I saw somebody comment and I couldn't find it again to reply because it was a little while ago, but somebody commented on one of my videos where I was doing the little air relief thing. I was I had just opened the system and closed it back up, so I was letting the air out. And some random guy, because of course it was, decided that he was gonna tell me that, you know, you could just leave it alone. You don't have to do that, it's just gonna bleed out on all that. Well, you know what? You could just leave it alone, or you could protect yourself and anyone who's near that equipment in the future from personal injury and yourself from liability by just standing there for 30 seconds and letting the air out. Infectant levels are often lowest at the surface, which is where users are most likely to ingest the water because everybody hangs out and it gets in your ears and it gets in your eyes, and everybody's spitting water at each other, and it's disgusting, unless it's my pool, and then you can do that because my pools are clean. I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. All pools are toilets, and this increases the risk of contamination to people. The placement and control of surface and return inlets largely dictate water flow patterns. These specific patterns help prevent dead spots, which would otherwise allow algae to grow and cause dirt and debris to accumulate. If you've ever gone to a pool week after week and there's just a little pile of debris sitting in the same spot every week, your flow pattern. You may have heard them used interchangeably or used together or whatever. So disinfection actually refers to the elimination of microorganisms that are capable of causing diseases in humans. Disinfectants remove most pathogens, and then sanitary water contains minimal, if any, pathogenic organisms. The primary disinfectants that we use in swimming pools are chlorine and bromine, and these both function as oxidizers, and that just means that it changes the thing to oxygen, essentially. That was a very basic description. Don't come for me, scientists. So chlorine and bromine react with and eliminate microorganisms as well as oxidize various contaminants to maintain water quality. So chlorine and bromine are sanitizers because they leave a residual, as I said. They're oxidizers, sanitizers, and disinfectants. They are all that. Now, the disinfectant residual functions to inactivate or eliminate microorganisms and oxidize contaminants upon their entry into the water. This is what keeps people safe from diseases and guk schmutz, as Rudy puts it. Don't be toilet paper hoarders like the last time. Because you know they may be hard to get later. And then you are gonna want to alert all of your customers of everything. You can tell them everything I just said, especially about the water level. Don't let any water out. You can give them chemicals, you know, you can sell have them give them the chemicals and be like, here, you could save this, ration it, or whatever. Or what you need to be telling them is that you're gonna charge them for storm cleanups. You have a storm cleanup rate. Because if you've never cleaned up a pool after a hurricane, I wish my job was as easy as yours is. Just kidding. But yeah, charge, charge for storm cleanups, charge for your time that you're there. I used to go by how many times I had to empty my riptide bag. If I had to empty it more than once or whatever, maybe two times, depending on how I felt, then I would deem that a storm cleanup, and then they would get my storm cleanup rate. They would be warned that that might occur. Of course, you have to do that. Anyway, the the air bubbles hit the impeller and it erodes the metal and damages it. So some common occurrences, some cause, some common causes of cavitation. We have debris in the skimmer basket or the pump basket, you have a dirty vacuum filter, you have partially closed or restricted suction line, you have a throttling valve on the effluent line, not properly restricted, so there's too much water going through there. Um, or there's a leak in the plumbing on the vacuum side of the circulation system. Now, cavitation signals an issue, it's an underlying problem, it's like a symptom, there's something wrong. And as I said, can quickly damage the pump or even the motor if you don't take care of it. So total alkalinity refers to the capacity of water to buffer against fluctuations in pH. As a buffer, it consists of ionic compounds that help maintain stable pH levels in aquatic environments, which is the swimming pool. The total alkalinity measures bicarbonates, carbonates, acid, cyanuric acid, sulfates, nitrates, and hydroxides. So this is why we need to correct for the cyanuric acid interference because you're kind of counting it one and a third times, kind of right? If you want to know what the carbonate alkalinity is versus the total alkalinity, you subtract one-third of the cyanuric acid level from the total alkalinity. So if your stabilizer is 60 and your total alkalinity is 80, that means your carbonate alkalinity is 60. 60 divided by three is 20. 20 minus, I mean 80 minus 20 is 60. Get it? Okay, that's how you do it. Don't come at me with that other company's stuff where they it's a whole like dependent on pH and stuff. That's fine, but this is just easier for me for now.