Bob Lowry Explains Why Borates Are a Game-Changer

Your pool can be perfectly chlorinated and still feel like it’s fighting you every week, especially when pH keeps climbing for no obvious reason. We dig into one of the most useful “stability tools” in pool chemistry: borates. Along with industry expert Bob Lowry, we explain what it really means to add borates, why many pros treat them as a one-time addition, and how they help slow pH rise in pools with saltwater chlorine generators, spillovers, waterfalls, and other sources of aeration.

We also get practical about products and dosing. Boric acid tends to be the simplest path because it dissolves easily and causes minimal changes to pH and total alkalinity. We compare that with sodium tetraborate options like borax, which can spike pH and alkalinity and force a muriatic acid correction. You’ll hear why “once it’s in the water it acts the same,” but the setup work can be very different depending on what you buy. 

Safety and compliance questions come up a lot, so we address borate ppm targets head-on: 35 vs 50 ppm, why recommendations shifted, and how to think about toxicity using simple parts-per-million math. 

If you want steadier water, fewer pH surprises, and another layer of algae resistance to support good chlorine habits, this conversation will sharpen how you use borates on a service route. 

• our field test of borates with low chlorine and what happened over three weeks
• borates as a one-time addition with infrequent testing
• how borates buffer pH rise in aerated pools and saltwater chlorine generator pools
• borates as an algostat and why they do not kill algae
• choosing boric acid for easier dosing and fewer pH and alkalinity adjustments
• what happens when you use borax style products and why muriatic acid is needed
• whether 35 ppm or 50 ppm makes a meaningful difference and why some brands picked 35
• the toxicity question, ppm math, and why borates do not bioaccumulate
• residential vs commercial considerations and why rules vary by state and health code
• why many distributors do not stock borate products and

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Transcript

Borates Tease And Coaching Plug

SPEAKER_00 1:09

And if you haven't heard about adding points to full 50 parts per million, this is definitely a podcast for you. Bob Larry goes over the benefits of Bory and a lot of other aspects of using Bory on your pool route. Are you a full service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimming poollearning.com. So let's jump right in here and talk about borates. Now, I'm a big fan of Boreates. I've been using Bore Rates now. I've been testing them thoroughly in different pools, been my test pool. I let my pool run for three weeks without chlorine with a borate level of 30, 31 or 32 parts per million. It was pretty low. I kept it low for the test. And after two weeks, I got a little bit of algae on one step. And then after three weeks with no chlorine, this was in April when it was warming up. The water was about in the 70s. I had the pool started turning cloudy on me. So with borates, it took three weeks for the pool to turn cloudy with no chlorine for three weeks. Don't tell my wife I left it with no chlorine for three weeks, by the way. So let's talk about borates. You want to give the listeners an introduction of what adding borates will actually do, or what does it mean to add borates to your pool?

Boric Acid Versus Borax Products

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Okay, well, first of all, borates are a one-time thing. So it's not something you need to check every week and make adjustments to or anything. You add it once, and you only need to check it maybe once a month, even every two months. And if the level drops down a little bit, raise it back up. The recommended level is 50 parts per million. And so at least that gets us over that part of it. But borates do two things in water. One is they help prevent the pH from going up as fast or as high. So it is a pH buffer to prevent the pH from going up. And they work really great with chlorine generators, pools that have always had the pH going up, it's a good thing to do, especially with pools that have any kind of aeration, waterfalls, spillovers, negative edge, those types of things, all of those things create aeration and turbulence, and that raises the pH. So if you've got pools that are all the time the pH is going up, first thing you do is lower alkalinity, put some borates in the pool. So borates will prevent the pH from going up. And the other thing they do, as you just said, is they prevent algae, they do not kill it. So it is technically an algostat, but it's not an algicide. It doesn't actually have any algicidal properties until you get about 200 parts per million in the pool. But I would not recommend putting 200 parts per million in the pool. But borate is you can buy it in three varieties. The one that I recommend the most is called boric acid. And the reason I like, and regardless of which chemical you buy, once you put it in the water, it is all exactly the same thing. So the type that you buy doesn't matter. But the amount of chlorine or I mean the amount of chemical you'll need to add and the adjustments you'll have to make afterward varies. But boric acid, when you put it in, um you can push it around with a with your brush and and dissolve it. Uh some guys have actually used like a hammerhead without the basket on or without the bag on, and that dissolves it in a second. But at any rate, using boric acid, it lowers the pH of the pool by 0.2, and it raises, it lowers alkalinity by five parts per million. So essentially it does nothing. You know, lowering the pH in your pool by 0.2 is is not a big deal. You probably wouldn't even adjust for it. So you put it in and you're done. The other chemicals are sodium tetraborate penahydrate and sodium tetraborate decahydrate. And both of those you'll need more chemical, but in addition, they have a pH of about nine. So when you put 50 parts per million in the pool, it's going to raise the pH of your pool to nine. It's also going to raise your alkalinity by 115 parts per million. And in order to offset that, you will then need to add about two and a half gallons of muriatic acid to 10,000 gallons to get it back to where you started. So you end up having to make adjustments to pH and alkalinity after you add it. Once it's in the water, they all do the same thing. But you'll just need more chemical, and you'll have to buy muriatic acid and come back and add that. So it just seems easier to have boric acid if you can find it. Boric acid, you can usually find it if you can't find it at your wholesale distributor, uh swimming pool wholesale distributor. You can sometimes find it at landscape and nursery places because they also sell it for you to use in your lawn, in your uh, in your landscaping or gardening to prevent bugs. So it's a good thing and put it in the water and forget about it. It'll keep your pH from going up so high. Then you can use cyanuric acid and your alkalinity to keep the pH from going low. And we talked in the first one about making the pool stable. And the idea is we make the pH and alkalinity stable by using cyanuric acid and alkalinity to keep it from going low, and then we use borate to keep it from going high. And then we use a chlorine that doesn't change the pH. So that makes that whole thing stable. And that's that's the goal, that's the idea.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah, and then there's also some manufactured boric products out there too that are pre pre-mixed so that they don't raise the pH, and they can buy those readily online or at the supplier too.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yes, there are they are compensated, so you just pour them in, and and they may be a little more expensive, and maybe uh you may have to use a little more than than the other types, but there are I think two or three brands now that that are pH compensated.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

And you mentioned some of the benefits already of adding borids that keeps the pH from um going too high. It also uh prevents algae growth. Um, also there's a sparkle to the water, isn't there? I noticed right away.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, you know, I I try to stick to things that you can prove chemically, prove in the laboratory, but they definitely I have I've even made a video at one time of putting some borate in a pool and leaving the camera on. And when you put the borate in a pool, you can watch the pool change. And it actually changes and sparkles when you first put it in the pool. And also, some people claim that it makes the water a little bluer and it makes it sparkle, and some people claim they can even feel the feel of the water is different, but those are hard things to judge in a lab.

35 Versus 50 ppm Plus Safety

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, for sure. And so the accessible acceptable borate level, you mentioned 50 parts per million. Right. I know that BioGuard is now recommending 35 parts per million. Is there a big difference? Because I've tested my pool at 28 parts per million, and then I raised it to 48, 50 parts per million. I didn't really notice a huge difference in in the levels, but is there, you know, is there a big difference between 35 and 50?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Probably not. The advantage, of course, is that it is acting as a as a buffer in an alga stat. So raising it gives you more of both of those. So there is an advantage if you have a problem with a pool that always gets algae or you know has uh the pH going up all the time and so on. So there is an advantage to having a little more buffer in the pool. I know the reason that Biolab uses 35, and it's not it probably isn't for what you think it is, but EPA first of all came out and said that the maximum level for BORA should be 35. And so Biolab came out and said 35, but subsequently uh that was revisited, and some additional information came out, and they said that 50 would be okay. And I actually have some people running pools at 70 parts per million of borate, but the claim is that it gets to be toxic, and frankly, the toxicity of borate is about the same as it is for table salt, so it's not as dangerous as they would maybe have you believe. But the toxicity is that you need to afford to be toxic, probably deathly, you would need to consume five grams of pure borate, which is a lot. And and in order to do that, just to do a little bit of mental math on it, five grams is is five thousand milligrams. So a part per million is a sim is the same thing as a milligram per liter. So in order to get if you had 50 milligrams per liter and you needed to get to 5,000, you would need to consume 100 liters of pool water to get to five grams. And 100 liters is about 26 gallons of water. So you would need to consume 26 gallons of water, and that would all have to be before you let any water out, because borate doesn't bioaccumulate in any mammals, so you would have to keep drinking it until you consume 26 gallons, so which is obviously impossible. Dogs they claim to have a four time are four times more susceptible, but I think that's probably because of size. You know, an average animal is is 50, an average, you know, big guy these days is about 200, so you know, he's four times more susceptible. But even at that, even if you divide that by four, a dog would have to drink six gallons of water without peeing to have a problem. And it doesn't bioaccumulate, so it resets to zero tomorrow. So it's just, I don't think a dog can consume enough to have a problem from a pool, but nonetheless, there is a toxicity for it. But there also is a toxicity for salt. There's also a maximum level for cyaneric acid of 100 parts per million. And look how many pools there are at two or three or four hundred parts per million of cyaneric acid. So we go over those limits all the time anyway. So I think Biolab is just covering themselves in case there was any kind of a legal action ever taken that they could say, nope, we followed what EPA said.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Got it. And then, you know, also you can explain that parts per million is such a small uh measurement in 10,000 gallons of water. So right there is also another thing to focus on, too. It's not 50 parts a million in 10,000 gallons of water is not a lot of the product in there.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Well, yeah, put it this way we think that one part for one percent is small, correct? Yeah, one percent would be small. It takes 10,000 parts per million to equal one percent.

unknown 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Okay, so so we're talking about, you know, a part per million is the same as one inch and 16 miles. Yeah, that's a part per million. So pretty incredible. It's it really is, it's very small.

Residential And Commercial Use Questions

SPEAKER_00 14:08

And the Fool Bay Podcast Show is teamed up with UPA to bring you affordable, reliable liability insurance starting at just$64 a month. Get up to$2 million in coverage, and the members of my coaching group get an even lower rate. Protect your business and your peace of mind. Sign up with UPA today by clicking the link in the podcast description. So I've heard this before, you know, using bore eights in a residential pool. Florida in particular, I've heard this mention. I don't think there's too many boring products that are NSF approved. I'm not sure I haven't researched it, but they are EPA approved. And so can you use borates, you know, if you're looking at the law just legally in a residential or a commercial pool?

Why Borates Are Hard To Find

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Well, residential, there are no there are no rules, regulations, guides, health codes. There's nothing but residential pools. So you can put whatever you want in this in a residential super. And most health codes do not say that you can't use bore. They don't specifically say you can't use it. And until there is a guideline for it, then you can use it. And there are no health problems with doing it. Many pools in a lot of areas in the country, you can use it. And whether or not you want a product needs to be NSF approved, that goes state by state and almost health code by healthcode. So you can't, in general, say that you can or can't use it.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Why do you think that so many distributors and pool stores don't even stock a Boray product?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Well, Boreate has only gotten popular in the last two or three years. And part of it has to do largely with me and me pushing my books and people getting my books to take care of their pools and stuff, and realizing that bore is a good thing. But Borae's been the first patent on using Boreate in a swimming pool was in 1984 by John Gervin. The John Gervin company was actually Don Gervin. And they had a patent on it from 1984 until 2001. And then they let the patent go, and the Gervin company wasn't around anymore. But they sold a product that was borate and chlorine together. It was mixed already for you. But nonetheless, it was a great product. It does a great thing in pools. Boric acid and borates have been used for 150 years to do laundry. Boric acid is used in eye drops. Boric acid used in foot powder. Bora borax is used in foot powder. You know, it's it's used on humans and around places all the time, you know, and you can put it in your garden and then eat your tomatoes, you know. So what, you know, it's it's not a problem. And the problem is that it just hasn't been popular, and distributors are, you know, supply and demand. You know, if there's something out there that that everybody wants, they're gonna cover, they're gonna handle it. And if not, there are plenty of places that that you can buy this material from. It's not difficult to get, it's a little bit more expensive, but you can actually buy borax at the grocery store. You can buy it in the laundry section to do your laundry in. And a box is about five pounds of borax. So you can go buy a bunch of boxes at the grocery store and throw it in your pool.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

But then you have to adjust that the pH in that particular one.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

But you still need to adjust uh, you will need to adjust your pH back down. But many guys that I've told, once I start calling landscaping places and Home Depots and Lowe's and stuff, saying, you know, can I talk to the garden department, not the pool department? Can I talk to the garden department? Did you sell pork acid for my for my garden? Oh sure. Got a 50-pound bag? Yeah, we sell it that way. So you may find out that it's available from other distributors, and it might be a little cheaper than a pool distributor. But some of the pool corps in California, for instance, they have it. And I don't know whether it's an SKU yet, but I know that they they do have it. So, and service guys, you know, some of these service guys decide to switch all of their pools and they want to go buy a pallet of it to switch all their pools. So great.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, good information on Boris there. I think people that don't know about it are gonna really open their eyes to something that is relatively new, I guess, talked about. And I think it's something that people need to actually know that's available on the market. Um, and all the benefits that we talked about. Let's talk about it.

More Resources And Closing Links

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I personally think it's a good thing. I've written about it, I've pruned it, and I've got on on my website there are five technical bulletins that you can read online for free on my website, or you can download them as a PDF. And one of the Borate uh technical bulletins is nine pages long. So and Boreates are a chapter in the Pool Pool Chemistry for Residential Pools book.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Got it. And if you're looking for other podcasts, you can go to my website, Zoomingpoollearning.com, where I have over 1900 podcasts for you to download and listen to. And of course, I have a lot of podcasts with Bob Lowry as well. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a good rest of your week. God bless.