The Point of No Return for Pools

Some pools look like they should be easy wins until you’re standing there with a tile brush, extra chlorine, and a customer who expects miracles. We get real about the “lost causes” every pool service pro eventually faces and how to handle them without wrecking your schedule or your reputation.

We start with calcium buildup on pool tile, where the honest answer sometimes is: you’re not brushing that off. I break down what can improve with topical cleaners, pumice stone, and elbow grease, and what’s so thick that glass bead blasting is the only practical path. We also talk through why certain surfaces like dark glass tile and porous stone make scale look worse, and why some spillways and flagstone features may never look perfect even after specialty cleaning.

Next we dig into pool leaks and why they’re different from normal evaporation. If a pool is losing one to two inches a week, you’re not just losing water, you’re losing chemistry. That’s why cyanuric acid, chlorine, salt, and calcium can keep dropping, turning your weekly service into a constant catch-up game. 

We wrap with pool stains, acid wash expectations, and the reality of plaster “modeling” or mottling. Some stains lift if you catch them early, but older metal stains can become part of plaster or pebble surfaces. And modeling often isn’t dirt or a chemistry mistake, it’s a cosmetic variation in the plaster itself that can be permanent. 

• when tile calcium can be brushed off and when thick scale needs bead blasting
• why some stone and spillways will always show mineral buildup
• how active leaks drain chlorine, cyanuric acid, salt, and calcium and why that makes weekly balancing harder
• when to refer leak detection and how to frame the cost vs long-term damage
• why old metal stains can become permanent in plaster and pebble surfaces
• how to talk about acid wash results as “better” not “perfect” and why waivers matter
• why plaster modeling is cosmetic discoloration and usually not a technician-caused issue
• what the zero alkalinity method is and why it’s mainly a newer-plaster play

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Transcript

Why Some Pools Are Lost Causes

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Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about lost causes out there. These are pools with stains or other issues that the customer may have higher expectations, but the reality is you can't do much with certain pools in certain circumstances or situations. Are you a pool 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 swimmingpoollearning.com. I'll start with this first one, which is very common, and that's a customer asking you to clean their tiles because there's some calcium buildup on the tile. Now this could be a new client, and this is one of those things where the expectation you have to really be realistic with them. And there is some calcium you can get off the tiles with some topical stuff and brushing with a tile brush, and maybe even a puma stone can remove some calcium buildup. The puma stone is a really long process, and to me it's a real pain to use, but there are some there is some calcium that it will remove, but there is of course a point where it's kind of a lost cause to do any kind of topical cleaning. You know, the

Calcium On Tile And When To Stop

SPEAKER_00 1:41

calcium carbonate, you know, it's really stubborn and thick. If it's more than one eighth of an inch thick, I would say that it's going to be very difficult to remove it with any kind of topical treatment or any kind of tiles, you know, soap or scale remover. And this is where you just have to tell the customer that realistically there's some buildup on the tile line that you can't remove with any kind of topical treatment, and they're gonna have to call in a professional bee blaster or glass beading beading company as we used to call them. Basically, they they take the glass beads and they put them through a high pressure and they they take the calcium right off. I have a video on my channel that's really popular about bead blasting. You go to my YouTube channel, or you can just type in remove calcium from your pool tile, and West Coast Tile Cleaning is the name of the company. If you just go to Google and type in West Coast Tile Cleaning and click on videos, you're gonna see the video I filmed on it, and it shows the bead blasting process basically from start to finish, and this is what you're gonna have to refer the customer to. Now, the bead blaster charges per linear foot, and so this is something that the customer is gonna have to talk to them about. And of course, you can if you're if you do pool service, you may want to get the equipment and start bead blasting yourself. It's a pretty lucrative uh service to offer, and it's pretty profitable because it's just your time and effort, and you know, you can you can really get a lot of leads with these pools that have this really strong calcium buildup along the whole tile line, spillway especially, and it's something to where you know, depending on the surface, like if the customer has flagstone, a lot of the times when there's like a flagstone spillway or a water feature with flagstone, really there's not a lot you can do with that calcium buildup, it's just a natural thing with the stone. If you ever go like to the mountains, you're gonna see calcium everywhere on the flagstone, and it's one of those things where you can't do too much, and a lot of bead blasters won't guarantee the flagstone either. So it's one of those things where the pool surface itself, or the actual tile, I should say, or the whatever they're using around the pool, is something that's gonna either get a lot of buildup, like if they're using glass tile, for example, if they're using a dark black tile, you're gonna notice the calcium buildup a lot more than if it was a ceramic tile. Another loss cause is a pool that is that has a leak, and you're putting a lot of chlorine in there, trying to balance this pool every week, and it's losing one or two inches of water a week. Now, this is something the customer needs to address, of course, because you can't really keep the pool balanced if it's losing water, that much water. Normally, in a pool where you evaporate in the summertime in my area, about one and a half inches of water evaporates out of the pool. But that's much different than the pool leak because the all the impurities, of course, stay in the water, and also the cyaneric acid stays in the water, the salt stays in the water. But if a pool has an active leak, the calcium level is dropping, the cyaneric acid is dropping, the salt level is dropping if it's a salt pool, the chlorine level is definitely dropping as the water

Pool Leaks That Wreck Water Chemistry

SPEAKER_00 4:59

is leaking out of the pool, and sometimes you really can't do a lot for a pool with a leak, especially if it's a large leak, except refer the customer to a leak detection company. This is also a pretty lucrative service you can pick up and learn how to do. There really is just getting the equipment and getting the training on how to find this leak. And sometimes you can repair it yourself, or sometimes you have to refer it out to a builder. But this is also something that the customer needs to understand is that if the pool has a significant leak, one or two inches of water a week, sometimes even more than this, there really isn't a lot you can do. You're going to have to set up a surcharge, of course, because you're adding a lot more chemicals to the pool. But sometimes it's just one of those things where week in and week out, you're really losing the battle here because it's leaking way too much water and it's not the same as evaporation. So it's the evaporation process, the cyaneric acid and the chlorine stays in the pool. With a leak, the cyaneric acid and the chlorine are leaving the pool together, and that's why you're going to find yourself adding more and more chlorine to the pool. You know, if you're using trichlor, you're using even more trichlor tablets because everything is leaving that pool. And the leaks tend to get worse over time, and they tend to get really much worse if they're left alone and not addressed, depending on where the leak is. And it's really hard to say, you know, to tell the customer, well, your skimmer's leaking. Most leak detector companies will tell you that's about 30% of the time the skimmer is leaking. Sometimes it's a return jet, sometimes it's the line itself somewhere underground. It's one of those things where you need someone to get out there and pressure test it and find that leak. And the sooner you get the customer to do this, the better, I think, in most cases. Customers are reluctant to do it because, of course, just the initial leak detection costs like $500 in my area, which is an expense a lot of people don't want to invest in. They'll rather just pay a little higher water bill. But that leak will, of course, get worse over time. And maintaining a pool with a leak is much harder, and over time it's going to become even more difficult. So getting that addressed and letting the customer know that yes, it's going to be an expense, and even the repair may cost them a couple thousand dollars, but it's part of owning a pool, and it's one of those things that needs to be addressed, otherwise, it's a pretty much a lost cause on your pool route. I've been to many pool bids where I'm walking around the pool and the customer is pointing at these stains in the pool, and typically they're an old metal stain. I don't really know how it got in there. You know, there's certain things people do that cause the staining in their pool, other reasons are kind of a mystery. But sometimes when you're doing the bid, the customer will have high hopes that you, as a pool service, can remove the stain from the pool. And in reality, there isn't a lot you can do with stains that have been in plaster or pebble tech for a very long time, and it just kind of goes into the plaster. Sometimes an acid wash has pretty good success in removing you know metal staining in the pool. Rust stains are a little bit harder, so if someone dropped a nail in the pool, didn't address it for you know a month

Old Stains Acid Washes And Promises

SPEAKER_00 8:13

or so, or maybe a trichlor tablet fell out of a floater and it went to the bottom of the pool and was on the bottom for a long time. Sometimes you can remove those stains with some acid and sanding the area, sometimes you can't. And so, whenever you do an acid wash, this is a little side note. You want to make sure that you don't overpromise with the pool. You know, you can't guarantee that it's gonna look much better. You can just tell the customer that the pool will look better than before. How much better is an unknown factor. I have an acid wash waiver. If you email me at David at swimming poollearning.com, I can give you that acid wash waiver over to you that protects you from some liability, and the customer coming back afterwards saying that they didn't like how it came out and there was really not much difference. Because acid washes can be unpredictable. Most acid washes really you're going to have a better result. The pool will look much better, but how much better is something that only happens or you can only determine after the acid wash itself. So when you're doing a bid or if you have an existing customer with a stain, don't overpromise either because a lot of times anything topical won't remove that stain very easily. The only success you're gonna have fiberglass pools, a lot of staining is lifted off pretty easily. It's just that surface type, the staining it stains easily, but the stains lift off easily, if that makes sense. For a plaster pool, it's much durable, and so is a pebble tech. And since it has a durable surface, like it's basically like a dryway cement. When you stain it, it's gonna stick to it. And sometimes asorbic acid or vitamin C will remove a rust stain, depending on how new it is. I had this pool where a lot of the fertilizer pellets got in there, the gardener was like sprinkling them all over the place, and ton of them got into the pool, and there is some metal in there, and I these little like rust dots were all over the pool. And this was like two days earlier, so I had two quartz of Hasa Super Stain Out, which is a pretty good, you know, fast-acting stain remover at that, you know, if you catch it early enough. The Biodex Aquadex 50 also is a pretty good stain remover if you catch it soon enough. And I put the two Hasa Super Stain Out quartz in the pool, and it actually took all those stains off, which was to me, you know, amazing. But I think because I caught it early enough, and this is the key, if you catch the stain in the early stages within a few days, there is a chance of removing it with some of these topical products like Aqua Dex Biodex 50 or Hasa Super stain out. I've had really good success with the Aquadex Biodex Aqua Dex 50 with some, you know, kind of like it looks almost like dirt stains in the pool, but they are they are metal stains, and it it does take off or fade the stains pretty good. You know, if you had a trichlor and a floater and it was at the first step of the pool, and you see kind of like a kind of almost like a burn on the plaster. I've actually had pretty good success with the bio Aquadex 50 lightening those stains up. But again, sometimes nothing happens when you put a stain remover in the pool. So don't overpromise with stains either. And if the stain has been there for a very long time, it just is a permanent part of the pool surface at that point. And you can try something topical, you can try brushing it, you can try you know a rust stone on your end of your pole, you can try the stain eraser, you can also try the purity pool, it's a draw it's an acid wash tool that you can use with the water in the pool. Let me get the actual product here for you. Some people have had success with it. It's the purity pool stain remover, and you put some acid in there and you put it over the spot, and sometimes it works. They don't really like advertising it too much because you could damage the pool surface as well. And it's one of those things where only a pool professional should be using this tool. There's other there's another one called the underwater acid wash kit by Purity Pool, and it's one of those things where again it's hit and miss. Usually, if there's a lot of staining in the pool, draining and acid washing it is something that you can do to a plaster and peple tech pool to kind of move the needle, but again, there's no guarantee either of removing the stains at that point. Probably one of the biggest questions I get, and one of the things the customer is gonna approach you the most on is modeling of the plaster. Now we know what the modeling is, and usually it's not your fault as the pool technician. So let's get that out of the way first. And it's typically the plaster mix, usually, if it's a colored plaster, you're gonna see more modeling than white plaster. But white plaster does have a lot of modeling. In fact, the builders in my area don't guarantee the white plaster any longer to the customer, and they sign a waiver saying that there's gonna there may be discoloration or different color variations in the plaster, and the customer is aware of that. So the modeling is not really a mystery to the pool pro because we kind

Plaster Modeling You Cannot Fix

SPEAKER_00 13:20

of know what this is. It's not dirt, it's not something that we did, or it's not something the chemicals we put in the pool that caused this to happen. It's really a lot to do with the way they plaster the pool, you know, the troweling of the pool, and you know, if they add too much water, this is a problem. There's also some kinds of some things that are just natural part of the plaster mix itself. There really isn't a lot of additives anymore that you can put in the plaster to keep it that pure white, you know, back in the 60s and 70s, they and 50s, they would add asbestos to the plaster mix to give it that kind of beautiful consistency that you see. But of course, you can't use asbestos in anything now, they know not as harmful, and it's something that you can't fix either by doing anything topical, putting stain removers in there. The only time I've seen the modeling actually lessen, and this is in a new pool build when you know it was filled, and the modeling was pretty pretty out of control. It was, you know, it would look like a top topographical map, you know, when you look at it and the different colors on a map. That's how this pool was. It was like a gray kind of plaster, and it did look really bad. So the builder did what they call zero alkalinity, where they dropped the alkalinity and the everything down to zero, turned the equipment off, they put a submersible pump across the middle of the pool on rope, and they ran it like this. And I did see the modeling actually fade quite a bit in this pool. You can look up the zero alkalinity method, and you can maybe try it if the pool plaster is fairly new. I've I haven't seen much success on older plaster, nor does an acid wash correct it in some cases because it's just the the color of the plaster, it may lighten it a little bit, but basically, the builder should inform the customer that if they're using plaster, color plaster or standard white plaster, there's a good chance that you're gonna see color variations in the pool. We call it modeling in the industry. The customer really doesn't like this to hear that there's no cure for it, and sometimes the patterns are really bad, sometimes the patterns don't look that bad at all, but it's just part of getting a plaster pool built nowadays to have the modeling effect. Quartz seems to resist the modeling a lot more, and of course, pebble tech is just river rock, and so you don't have that problem with pebble tech surfaces. You could just tell the customer that I'm sorry, but this is what we call pool modeling, it's more cosmetic, it's a discoloration of the plaster surface, and you're gonna see care it's characterized by, of course, irregular, light and dark, it looks like cloud-like patterns. I kind of describe it as one of those topographical maps kind of thing, and it's caused just by inconsistent hydration of the cement. If you walk around your neighborhood, I tell them, look at the sidewalk, look at the driveways, and you're gonna see the similar effect. It's just that when you fill it with water and the sun hits it, you're gonna see it a lot more in the pool, and it's a permanent variation in the masonry itself, it's not a surface stain, and really emphasize that and it's really it's made really visible when the light hits it at different times of day, or when the shadow, the cloud goes over the pool, you're going to see more of this effect. And if the sun is shining directly on it, you don't see it as much because it's really bright. But at certain times of the day, when the light is at varying points in the afternoon or the morning, you're gonna notice it more. And there's really nothing you can do as a pool professional to fix this. You just have to explain and educate the customer that modeling is just part of the pool surface itself. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swimmingprolearning.com, and on the banner, click on the podcast icon. There'll be a drop down menu with over 1900 podcasts for you to listen to. And if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a great rest of your week and God bless.