Commercial Salt Chlorination: Safer, Smarter, and Built to Scale

On this episode of Mondays Down Under, Lee Salisbury and Nick are joined by AIS Water’s Lee Moore and Technical Director Blake for a deep dive into commercial saltwater chlorination.

AIS Water has worked in salt chlorination for approximately 35 years, developing systems for everything from swim schools and splash parks to resorts, 50-meter competition pools, coastal pools, and enormous lagoons containing millions of liters of water.

The conversation explores why more commercial aquatic facilities are moving toward onsite chlorine generation—and why their success depends on selecting actual commercial equipment, correctly sizing the system, and maintaining proper water chemistry.

The three major benefits are convenience, safety, and long-term cost savings. Generating chlorine onsite can dramatically reduce the handling, storage, transportation, and manual transfer of liquid or granular chlorine. It can also reduce the risks associated with chemical spills, damaged dosing lines, incorrect chemical mixing, and chlorine gas entering an occupied pool.

But not every “commercial salt system” is truly commercial.

The guests discuss facilities that attempted to meet massive chlorine demand by plumbing together banks of residential chlorinators—including one installation containing an astonishing 95 residential units. Besides creating a maintenance nightmare, these improvised systems can introduce excessive head loss, restrict circulation, shorten cell life, and still fail to satisfy the pool’s chlorine demand.

Proper sizing requires far more than knowing the pool’s volume. AIS Water considers actual peak bather load, water temperature, turnover rate, sunlight exposure, cyanuric acid use, environmental conditions, operating hours, and the facility’s location. Two pools of identical size—even pools located only a suburb apart—may require substantially different chlorine production capacities.

And just when you thought pool chlorination could not get any stranger, the discussion turns to horse pools, seal enclosures, sea lions, natural salt contributions from swimmers, and one exceptionally important unanswered question:

Just how much chlorine does a sea lion prefer?

You will have to return next Monday for the conclusion.

In this episode:

•  Why commercial aquatic facilities are adopting onsite chlorine generation 
•  The safety risks associated with storing and manually transporting chlorine 
•  How salt chlorination can reduce long-term operating costs 
•  Why an electrolytic cell is a consumable—not a failed chlorinator 
•  How commercial-grade anodes can provide significantly longer cell life 
•  The difference between residential and commercial chlorination equipment 
•  What happens when dozens of residential chlorinators are installed in one system 
•  How excessive head loss can compromise circulation and turnover 
•  Why peak bather load is critical when sizing a chlorinator 
•  How sunlight, shade, temperature, rainfall, and surrounding buildings affect chlorine demand 
•  Commercial systems ranging from low-salinity water to direct seawater 
•  The unusual challenges of chlorinating pools for horses, seals, and sea lions 

Guests:

•  Lee Moore, Sales and Marketing, AIS Water 
•  Blake, Technical Director, AIS Water 

Hosted by Lee Salisbury and Nick on Mondays Down Under, part of the Talking Pools Podcast network.

US certifications for AIS Commercial products. 

Certified to the Highest International Standards – AIS commercial chlorination systems are independently certified to NSF/ANSI 50 for swimming pool equipment safety and performance, UL 1081 for electrical safety, and are approved for installation in Los Angeles County, one of the world's most stringent regulatory environments. These certifications provide independent assurance that AIS products meet rigorous standards for quality, reliability, and safety, giving consultants, operators, and asset owners confidence in specifying AIS for demanding commercial aquatic facilities.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, good whatever time of the day it is that you are listening to us. It is time for Mondays Down Under on the Talking Pools Podcast. Hi, my name is Lee Salisbury and I am the pool shop coach. Today, as always, I am joined by my partner in crime, Nick in Brisbane. Hey Nick, how are you?

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Good Lee. Going well. Very excited for this one today. I think it's going to be a good one. So how are you going?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I'm very good. This one is going to be an absolute corker. Isn't that a naughty colloquial term for our US listeners? Yeah, no, it's going to be a great one. Today we are joined again by Lee Moore, who tells me he's the chief cook and bottle washer. And no, only joking at AIS. He is in charge of sales and marketing and obviously a wealth of knowledge because we got rave reviews after the last podcast. Lots of people said, hey, I've listened to that. That's really good. I enjoyed it. So thank you again for joining us, Lee.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

You're welcome, Lee. We'll try not to get mixed up in the names again, but I appreciate those releases.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

It's all good.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

L1 and L2.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Yeah. At least one's female, one's male. It makes it a little bit easier. Um, but today we're joined by your partner in crime, and that is Blake. Hey, Blake. Blake's the technical director of AIS. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_04 2:21

That is correct, yes, technical director.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

And for our listeners out there who aren't familiar with AIS, and it's AIS water industries? Is that correct?

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Uh just AIS water. AIS water.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

AIS water. Right. And so what does AIS stand for?

SPEAKER_04 2:37

Oh, that goes back a long time. So we've been in the industry for about 35 years now. So AIS Water used to be Australian Innovative Systems, but people heard that and said, what does that mean? What do you guys do? So we um we we referred to ourselves of AIS uh for for quite a few time, but made it official just a few years ago to add the water component to let people know that we're in the water game. So AIS Water um was um was named probably about five years, six years ago now, and that's our new trading name. But Australian Innovative Systems was where it stemmed from.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, and it certainly is innovative. I always stumble with that word. Um but today uh we are in the business of chlorinators, of course, and salt chlorination, as we know, is very big in the Aussie market. Um, but it's also gaining a lot of popularity. Obviously, residential, we've been predominantly salt for decades now. But commercial space, it's getting bigger and better than ever. And I know that's something that you guys um swim in that field quite a bit.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Yeah, absolutely. Uh so one of the earlier pioneers of the salt water coronation in commercial spaces, uh stemming back to early 90s, we've been doing the commercial game. So starting off with maybe 300, 400 gram an hour units, um, we've since grown uh to do uh systems capable of up to 3,000 grams an hour in single units. So that's open to us to splash to not only splash parks and swim schools, but going up into the large bodies of water like multi-million liter lagoons, 50 meter pools, resorts, hotels, and we're currently distributing to over 55 countries worldwide. So definitely taken on taken on over all those years.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

That's fantastic. And I know you guys also do chlorinators that deal with salt water, which I imagine would be a huge benefit to those multi-million litre lagoons that are beachside. I would assume they're using ocean water, are they?

SPEAKER_04 4:50

Some some do, yes. We call them coastline pools. So we have a very wide range of salinity options for our commercial units. Uh so starting with freshwater, well, we coin freshwater, which is anything above 1,000 ppm uh in salinity. So that's as low as 950 ppm salt level, is our freshwater eco-line brand. And then our autoclaw starts at 5,000 and can go all the way up to direct seawater. So some of those coastline pools uh they do actually pull in from the ocean, uh, which is an unlimited supply of salt water. Uh they've just got to get the crustaceans and sand and barnacles and things out of that pool, uh, out of that water before it goes into their nice lagoon. But it's a it's a great way to do the top-up water and the salinity as well. Um, some of the pools that we have um are about 22, 25 million liters. So it's an interesting fact I learnt when I went there um probably about eight years ago now, but they actually lose 300,000 liters a day in evaporation alone because it spans acres, these these lagoon pools. So the amount of water they'll be going through, um town drinking water would just be astronomical. So taking in from the ocean is uh is a pretty smart choice after after some pretty decent filtration.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah. Wow, that's uh that's absolutely amazing. But thinking salt chlorination and commercial pools, there's obviously some very strong reasons why commercial pools would be looking at salt chlorination. Do you want to go into those?

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Oh, absolutely. I might just add a little bit to that, Ali, if I can. So I think um, you know, part of the success of AIS in this space probably goes back to what we spoke about at the last um session we had around around anode. So for the the last 20 years, we've been making anode to a completely different level. So because we've got control over what we do in that space, we make a uh I guess a commercial grade anode material that not only gives us the ability to give us much longer time frames, but it enables us to still maintain, I guess, the traditional reversing frequency, um, but also uh make those uh cells on steroids. So I think our longest cell probably runs to a a little over a meter long and is 150 mils wide and has 36 plates, and it takes both Blake and I to lift those. So the secret of the success is a little bit back to that anno piece because we've got control of that, uh because we've been able to take that um material to a higher density or a higher level, it gives us both that longevity, but also the ability to do it in, as Blake said, at the super low sort of energy level. Because of course anybody can do salt water chlorination in in any level, it's how long that cell is going to last that becomes the critical piece of the puzzle. So down to 1200, you've got to be really on your game and have that material ready to go that distance.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

So is the density of the ruthinian different? What's different?

SPEAKER_03 8:11

You know, probably we won't go too deep into you know our.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Do you know what to give any trade secrets a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 8:16

There's our 11 herbs and spices there, Lee. But definitely we are talking about um a higher density, more layers of that material. And of course, the the complexity in that is as you continue to add more material, the risk in production becomes higher and higher. So you need to have your production absolutely down pat because if you get anything wrong, you can't rescue that. So that's again another big part of the success of AAS.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

And we know and we know how expensive that ruthenium is, so we don't want to waste any absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

There is there is no margin for error. You know, you get it wrong on you know, uh in a later layer, then there is no rescuing that that material. But it is uh absolutely um the key, the key to the success in that space. And you know, Blake and I see this regularly where we've got units that are six, seven, eight, nine. I think most recently there was a cell that was ten years old. Well looked after, well maintained. Um the people that are actually on site know what they're doing in that space, and they've got 10 years of life from the South, all because we've taken it to that next level.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Well, as I mentioned, I got about 11 or 12 years out of my AIS cells, so it comes down to good water balance, let's face it. Absolutely. It's well well looked after now, Dave.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

For immediate release, the Talking Pools Podcast announces the 2026 top ten pool industry mentors because mentorship still matters and can't be replaced by an app. These are the people others call when things go bucknutty. The water is giving you some serious side eye, and nobody wants the blind advice of some chooch on YouTube who couldn't spell Pool Pro yesterday. They are the ones who pick up the phone, teach a person to troubleshoot, and help them solve the mystery without dropping spoilers, without seeking recognition, or looking for a trophy. So we're going to recognize the top ten and give each of them a trophy, and in October, one of them will get a championship belt made by the folks who make belts for MMA and WWE. The 2026 top ten mentors are Chris Kavanaugh, owner slash manager, Kavanaugh Pool, Spa and Patio Inc., Madisonville, Kentucky, Greg Beard, 2X Top Ten Mentor, Owner, Greg Beard's Pool Service, Garden Grove, California, John Poma, 2X Top Ten Mentor, Owner, A Plus Pool Service, Lakeland, Florida, Jerry Wallace, owner, Swim Chem, Sacramento, California, Jeff Hampe, Owner, Hampy Pools, Largo, Florida, Terry Tammanin, CEO, Alta C, Port of Los Angeles, California, Peter Wiederman, Launcher Director, B and I Business Network International, Perth, Australia, Lacey Davis, two X Top Ten Mentor, President of the Great Game, Hudson, Florida, Brandon Reid, Owner, Pool Volution, Rancho Cucamonga, California, Tim McDowell, owner, Waco Pool, and Spa Waco, Texas. This year's recognition kicked off with 103 nominations from across the swimming pool and spa industry. Because apparently there are still more than a hundred people out there willing to say something nice about another human without fear of FB haters and Instagram trolls. After the first pass, the pile got hacked down to twenty finalists. We're not gonna lie, that task was a mother flocker. Then each nomination was stripped of names and identifying details before being presented to the talking pools of podcast hosts for blind scoring so that bias could be eliminated and merit could become the sole focus. The judges kept it simple. They looked at what each nominee did for the people they mentored, and the acumen and ongoing success of those people they had taken under their wing. Mentorship is not picking up the phone every ten minutes and becoming the answer guy or gal, said Rudy Stankowitz, Grand Poo-ba of the Talking Pools podcast. Real mentorship teaches people how to think, how to wrestle problems to the ground, and how to get to the right answer without needing to call a lifeline every time one of their customers says, their pool water tastes cloudy. A mentor builds people who can function without turning every Tuesday into a rescue mission. That difference was the spine of the 2026 selection process. The top ten designation is one of the program's biggest honors, not just another laminated handshake in the great industry trophy swamp. Each of the ten selected professionals brings a different flavor of mentorship to the table. But they all share the same annoying habit of making the people around them better. Title sponsors Blue Ray, XL, and United Chemical, Gold Sponsor, Lamotte Chemical, Silver Sponsor, Revid Up Apparel, and Supporting Sponsor, Aqua Comfort Water Group. Back the 2026 Talking Pools Podcast Mentor Award. Their participation serves as a cornerstone of professional development, knowledge transfer, and the continued growth of the pool and spa industry. About Talking Pools Podcast. Talking Pools Podcast is an international swimming pool and spa industry podcast network featuring experienced pros from the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The Talking Pools Podcast hosts are straight shooters who aren't afraid to challenge conventional thinking, question industry assumptions and push the conversation forward. They are more concerned about getting the truth out to the pool professionals than they are about editing F-bombs out of the episodes. Each host is a recognized expert in their own area of the pool industry, bringing decades of real-world experience and practical knowledge to every episode.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Inversely, we see lots of uh commercial pools that use our residential gear, and when they're running for 24-7, you know, you not you won't necessarily get that same amount of residential grade materials.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

No, that that's absolutely to be expected. Um so like we were asking um why is salt chlorination so attractive for that commercial sector.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

There's quite a number of reasons why. We actually coined a bit of a top 10 a few years ago, doing the top 10 reasons why. Um but I think it really comes down to pretty much the top three, I would say, would be convenience, safety, and cost savings. So talking about the the safety of it, um, this is probably one of the bigger ones that touched that will really resonate with a lot of people, is the fact that you're not needing to handle and store um liquid or granular or gaseous chlorine at your sites anymore. So you're not having to have those big thousand-liter tanks sitting there that have that potential to leak or um or have the dosing lines crack on you and spray liquid chlorine all over the all over the plant room. You don't have any risk of mixing chemicals. So whenever you hear an incident in the pool, nine times out of ten, that incident will be improper mixing or some form of off-gassing because of that chlorine. Uh, not having that on site um in the quantities that is traditional is the the one of the biggest things that people resonate to, just the fact that they don't have that um risk anymore. Uh cost savings, again, with uh the cost of transportation now going up. Um essentially the cost to repla to replace that chlorine plus get it delivered now is uh becoming a real expense to a lot of these places, especially in remote areas. So the um the amount of money spent on liquid and grass and liquid and granular chlorine basically can pay for a chlorine, uh chlorine generator in as quick as two years. So it's two years of chemicals and you've got the capital for the chlorinator, and then the rest of is all savings. So once you look at a 20-year lifespan, the savings are extremely attractive. And then the next one is convenience. It's just the fact that you're not having to handle and you're not having to keep worrying about the level of chlorine at your site because it's all being generated in line, on site, on demand. Whenever the probe calls for chlorine and that demand increases, the system kicks in and generates it for you. All you have to do is look after your chemistry. Um, a lot of people who have electric vehicles now uh call it range anxiety. I'm sure in aquatic centers they've got the chlorine anxiety as well. So they're thinking, oh, we've we've only got you know, we've only got a couple of you know 50, 80 liters of liquid chlorine left. We don't know when the next delivery is going to come. They say it's gonna come tomorrow, but we don't know. So there's always that anxiety. If that runs out, it runs out. Um, we've heard a lot of places in it that basically close their doors because they can't maintain that level. So with having our systems or having a chlorination, uh chlorination, inline chlorination system, it's just that piece of equipment that is sitting in the plant room, um, quietly holding the balance, quietly doing its job. And a lot of people uh don't even realize it's there. It's actually quite funny. After after years and years and years of our system being installed, I get a phone call saying there's this big machine with blue chambers in our plant room. We've never dealt with it before. Um, but you know, what's it actually doing and how do we look after it? And I ask how old it is, and they say, Oh, it's about four or five years old. So that that's that's how little hands-on maintenance um these systems can actually be.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yeah. No, some huge benefits there. Um, the the work health and safety element, uh, the the reduced risks. We always talk about work health and safety mitigating risks, and certainly this um goes a long way towards that, or actually with can even eliminate, I suppose, in some circumstances, absolutely for liquid chlorine. So um, and then the OHS of carrying a liquid chlorine, like especially within 20-liter drums, things like that.

SPEAKER_04 19:11

We've done a few sites now where they had to have staff two, three times a day manually handle 20-litre drums walking down flights of stairs and ramps, and there was a few in um in in big aquatic centers where they had to walk it across where everyone's um basically trying to relax and enjoy their day with their kids. Here's an operator walking down with two drums of of liquid chlorine. Um that's I believe that wasn't the most dangerous part for me, and I just couldn't believe what was happening. Um, they could only get the chlorine deliveries into a large, I think it was a 2,000-liter bunded tank. They only had that one place. So what they had to do is the truck came in, delivered to that tank, but then they had five other pools. And the way the center was designed is they didn't have shared dosing through the other plant rooms. They only had the one source. So they had to manually decant that liquid chlorine from that tank. They had to, I'm not talking, you know, get the tube and suck it out and pour it down. It wasn't that primitive, but they still had to have equipment and full PPE and they had to suck it out of that tank and actually fill up individual 20-liter drums in the plant room, do them up and then have it to walk them to other sites. So when I said, well, just for this investment, you get to have a system on each water body, it was a it was a bit of a no-brainer, and they they they converted very quickly because that risk of decanting that liquid chlorine was just so high. And this site actually had an incident many, many years ago where that truck actually leaked. That that um that truck had an incident when they were they when they were pumping into the tank, and there was a skate park directly next door, and it actually went out, overflowed the bunding, and went into the local skate park.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 21:00

It was a pretty big incident. Um, and that's the thing, you hear this all the time. It it doesn't quite make international um news, but if you look, if you Google chlorine incidents or chlorine um or or pool incidents or safety incidents at pools, it's heavily reported in in local media. And almost every time, as I said before, almost every time there's an incident at a pool, uh, when it when it comes to this type of incident, it it always comes down to some leak, spill, off-gassing, or or major issue with chlorine.

unknown 21:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

You often do see it on the news where chlorine and acid has been combined, whether it be in the system or by incorrect filling of a team member or however it's happened, and it's gassed the place out. Uh worse yet, it's got back to the pool, and then the people that are in the pool with their heads just above the water, that's what they're they're breathing in. There's been some um terrible incidents of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:59

So that's the that's the off-gassing. That's the that's the the the bad one. That's where the filtration temporarily shuts down, so there's no actual flow, but the dosing system doesn't quite detect it. So it's dosing chlorine and acid together in a stagnant line. And then someone goes, Oh, something's wrong. I'll flick this switch, and then all that time, all that chlorine gas has built up inside the return line, and then that's pumped directly out into the pool. And that's where you get that really, really bad incident.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

So Yeah, can cause some serious health issues with that. So it um, yeah, if an aquatic facility can avoid work health and safety issues and and the risk of those types of things happening, then it's a a win win. And the reduction in the cost. Now we know cells are expensive and we know they're even more expensive have recent with ruthenium going through the roof. Um but you have to pay one way or the other chlorine cells. It's an it's a I can't say it's it it wears down, but it it has a lip shell.

SPEAKER_03 23:14

It's a cons it's a consumable part way. At the end of the day, it's you know if you were to uh sort of bring it to a a car type analogy as Blake said there before with range anxiety this is this is the tires on your car. Ultimately they are going to wear out over time. When your tires are worn out though it doesn't mean that your car's worn out. So as Blake said before we we've got uh systems out there that are 20 21 22 23 years um in situ in that place so if the if the power supply is done correctly then you can continue to refresh that cell and often I mean I've got three or four real life examples where the payback on the cell is 125 days. So the the um the operator might have a reaction to that price of the cell oh my God I wasn't expecting that cost because it wasn't in my budget. We will go back to liquid chlorine or they might suggest that you can do something with the quote that uh you know might be a little bit hard harder to handle. But when you do the calculations and you work it back and you understand the cost of liquids and that's not even talking about the cost of them changing their infrastructure you come back to a number that's you know 125 days I think is the best one I've come up with. I did one just recently it was around 200 days. And then you need to look at the opposite side of the equation. So if the payback is 200 days but you just had seven and a half years worth of life from this cell that means that you've had seven years worth of we'll call it free chlorine because it's not exactly free because you are paying for power and you do need to add salt but you've got a substantially reduced um cost of delivery delivering that chlorine to the pool and the risk is almost completely mitigated you've then got six years worth of no cost in that and when you do the opposite side of the equation it's usually when people go ah light bulb on I can now see the benefit and you know similar to what Blake said there before we've got people that go there's a machine in the corner I don't really know what it's doing and they're they're unconsciously aware of the cost that they are saving that daily weekly monthly cost of whether it's granular liquid gas whatever that might happen to be is not on their PL. It's a bag of salt once a week which you know as we all know depending on the size of the pool or particularly if it's low salts it might not be any salts because we've got systems where we'll call them the swimmer introduced salts and I think uh for everybody that's listening will probably know exactly what they are but they still create chlorine they've still got chloride in them and there are there are tools that report very rarely adding salt because they're batherload and swimmer introduced salts is so high. Wow you don't find that in our marketing brochures though it doesn't say swim in yeah especially those swim up bars in Bali Haley absolutely not absolutely not we can call them that call them natural pools hey a natural addition but it's uh yeah it's it's probably one of those misconceptions that um the cost is there is a capital cost to get it at the start but that capital cost can definitely pay back not only in the first cycle when I've got my car and I need to put new tires on I'm not I'm not selling my car because my tires have worn out I'm just going to get a new set of tires and I might get five sets of tires out of my car. So that's that's sort of how you need to look at that investment. Yes you pay a lot for the car when you buy it but that ongoing consumable piece really shouldn't get in the way of you um continuing to drive.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

So when it comes to commercial like if some if an if an aquatic facility's experience with salt hasn't been so good and I would say without a doubt they haven't been blessed with one of your chlorinators what are some of the mistakes that people have made in the past with their chlorination systems, with their salt chlorination systems that's turned them off salt and or trying it again?

SPEAKER_04 27:32

The biggest one that we see quite often, especially going into the US market would be the the difference between a commercial and a residential system. So quite often we've been to sites um everywhere around the world um but we've been to sites where they've said no I'm not interested in chlorination. We tried that once and it simply didn't work. It broke down all the time it didn't keep up we don't like it we you know we were not interested to go down that road again. I then asked to see what the system was you know tell me about the system that you had and they'd bring out some photos of I think my biggest one was I think it was 95 residential coronators all stacked in together. 95 95 of them it was about a it was about a two million liter pool maybe a four million liter pool and they had 95 because residential systems most of them top out at 30 to 40 grams an hour. So the the imagine the contamination of that pool and only need and only having access to about a 45 gram chlorinator you can imagine how many of them you needed to have the the amount of chlorine that would be needed for that pool. So they had 95 of them in my best one but most of them hover around like eight you know maybe maybe four eight maybe up to 20 is is quite quite normal but there's still a large number of them um and being residential some not even reverse polarity um that would be heaps of maintenance weekly cleaning always taking them apart and then of course every time you're cleaning them if while it's cleaning it's not generating so that that is offline. So that's part of the reason why it's not keeping up and the fact that most of these residential systems are maybe between eight 1000 hour material running 24 hours a day and they were they were reporting that these cells were being changed every year every 12 months if they're lucky and maybe 18 months um if they are well looked after but um they said no we're just not interested um because it was just all it was all residential equipment being used in and a commercial landscape so how do you how do you plumbing 95 cells? Look I've I've seen a 20 sites here in WA and that was impressive um but it was I think it was just stacks. So they they have them all plumbed in so one cell connected to another connected to another all in line and they have about 10 of them in one big loop and then that goes up on the wall and then they do another 10 and another 10 and another 10 with all the power systems all connected to it.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

And I'm just looking at that going that's a water chemistry nightmare because the intensity of the chlorine by the time you get to those last especially to the last couple of cells maybe even halfway around the ring the intensity of chlorine gas in in that the corrosiveness and the damaging of of that in that environment must and not to mention the fact that the chlorides are not available I think yeah it's all being consumed anyway so that poor old cell on the last of that line would be would be struggling.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

The thing that spooked me most in these sites is they were backing the system on a on a commercial plant room that wasn't designed with that kind of head loss. So everyone knows that a chlorinator cell will will provide some form of resistance some form of head loss and they've had a system designed for like a four-hour turnover everything spec's correctly and then they whack this monstrosity on the head loss the water flow restriction of that system was just unbelievable. So when we would show um show a commercial solution with all those machines can be in one one skid mounted piece of equipment that was no bigger than a heater um it was a bit of a shock to them. You know this is one of our biggest units is 3,000 grams an hour and it's one and a half meters long by about one meter wide it's no no bigger than a thousand litre tank. It can basically go anywhere in the plant room and they were shocked because they're coming from such a system that took up half the room to just a neat little unit that sits in the corner. And even then it was like they still didn't quite understand how such a large system could produce such a small system could produce such a large amount of chlorine. But that's when it all comes down to sizing as well. That's one thing that we um we're heavily involved with and one one of our little passions is sharing our 30 years of experience when it comes to sizing this equipment because it's um a bit of a bit of an Aussie saying she'll be right um doesn't quite float in this industry um you've got to do it right first time uh so the old she'll be right now that'll do um isn't words that we typically use um so we take in every bit of information that we can about that pool um the the the volume the bather load the filtration turnover um if they're using cyanoric acid or not the temperature location we we take in everything there's about 15 questions that we we we ask and then we put those into several calculations um to make sure that we're getting the exact amount that is required for that specific pool there's no cookie uh there's no uh cookie cutter um solution for anything um quite often we'll see two pools a suburb apart Haley I mean there's been a few a suburb of part and they couldn't be more different um same volume so they're all about 400 000 liter 25 meter pool one was I think we sized about a 300 gram unit because it just it wasn't being utilized that much it was just a um it was part of a like a community center so it wasn't used too much and the other one was a public pool where they would have the maximum bather load at all times and that was nearly double the output.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

Yeah I think that batherload definitely is the biggest biggest contributor. Yeah we we we know is a very simple calculation to work out how to hold three past the million in a million litres of water. It's a very very simple calculation but when you start factoring bether loads um and particularly on new sites it can become a challenge but even on even on existing sites I know I was at one recently in Perth um when we had been given sizing information for that pool we were told there were 35 people um maximum peak batherload so that's the including school teachers in that pool and I stood poolside uh having a discussion with them about um the challenges that they were facing in this pool and I did a quick head count and went there's 67 people in this pool and they said yeah this is not this is not absolutely at its maximum and when we went back and looked at the details that they gave us we were off by not we were off they were off by 50% in their batherload calculations and it just immediately came back to why the chlorinators were not quite keeping up because we had such a high demand from that batherload and you know I think as somebody said there before we've got you know a low-risk bather somebody that showered before they get in the pool we see that in Europe they force you to shower I don't think I've ever been to an Australian pool where I've seen somebody shower before getting in the pool probably they always shower when they get out of the pool but um that makes a huge difference and uh you know of course you've then got the the the typical swim school type environment where you've got young kids and lots of them lots of parents and they're on a very very tight cycle of a 30 minute class so that in effect means you've got twice the number of people in that pool in the one in the one hour. Yes. It's all getting sort of sanitized by the chlorine in that one hour so they're all sh they're all shedding they're all shedding yes yes so for for me that's the most critical critical part um we we often see other other factors like UV come into play or environmental I know we've got one where the reflection from the building next door has a d almost a double UV effect on the pool. Wow not something you can see unless you are standing on pool deck.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

I was actually going to ask like obviously geographical location plays a big part because of temperature and weather events but also the local environment so what's around around that pool and and here you are saying a building next door can make a a difference that would have never been something I would have thought about a golf course or a pine forest or something like that. Yes I go yep I can understand it but a building never thought of that.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

We we brought on a new customer in Oman recently and you know obviously we're an Australian based company we're used to a hundred days of rain a year you spend a little bit of time in that market and you go why are there no gutters on the buildings? Why are there no trains in the streets? It's because they have three days of rain per year. So you know concepts of um phosphates and runoff and dilution and all of these things that we deal with every day here in Australia don't factor in that marketplace.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

When it does rain though it obviously rains very hard but only three days a year and then the the and then the flip side of that is um we did one at the Gold Coast uh not too long ago where the the building was so large they cast a shadow for about 80% of the day. I think they had three hours of sunlight in the morning um and then it was in a per perpetual sh uh shadow the rest of the day so we we took that into account because we knew the chlorine wasn't being destroyed by UV because it was in the shadow of the building most of the day. So interesting we we we take all that in we take all that in of of virtually every site that we that we go to we we we ensure that that sizing's done correctly because the the last thing we want is to have a system that is too large for the site because that's wasted capital and then we don't want a system that struggles to keep up.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

So we we've got two two and a what two and a half thousand reference sites as well to to lean on so often it can be that one where we go and you know Blake uh has probably seen more more of them than than I have but it will be that question of hey I've got a site that looks and smells a little bit like this what other site have we seen that we've got our equipment on that we can take that reference point from um ah it looks like this particular site yep that one absolutely perfect for a 400 this one perfect for a 1200 this one perfect for low salts and then we got the curveballs how much chlorine does a seal take what about a what about a horse how what do they do we've done a few horse pulls you know how much chlorine does a horse take when it gets dipped and goes into a training so I've I've I've got a seal pool on the go at the moment and it took a little bit of research to understand the difference between seals and sea lions I probably should have studied harder at school but um there is a significant difference both in their size and the amount of oil in their skin and where they like to do their business in the pool. So you know interesting little little snippets and this one here absolutely will be seawater.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

And did they seals have a preference for how high the chlorine's allowed to be thank you for listening to Monday's Down Under with Lee and Rick today.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Check back next Monday for the exciting conclusion of AIS Water with Lee and Blake and find out just how high a sea lion likes its chlorine level. Only on Monday's Down Under