Exploring Pool Chemistry with Que Hales

In this episode of the Talking Pools podcast, Rudy Stankowitz interviews Q Hales, a prominent figure in pool chemistry and maintenance. They discuss the formation of OnBalance, a collaborative effort aimed at educating pool professionals about water chemistry and sustainable practices. Q shares insights from his extensive experience in the industry, addressing common myths, the importance of understanding pool chemistry, and the role of research in improving practices. The conversation emphasizes the need for knowledge sharing among service technicians and the significance of environmental responsibility in pool maintenance.

takeaways

• The formation of OnBalance was driven by a need for better education in pool chemistry.
• Understanding the chemistry behind pool maintenance is crucial for service technicians.
• Common myths in the pool industry can lead to ineffective practices.
• Research on acid dosage has revealed significant discrepancies in industry standards.
• Teaching and sharing knowledge is essential for the growth of the pool industry.
• Field experience provides valuable insights that laboratory research may not capture.
• Sustainability should be a priority in pool maintenance practices.
• Service technicians play a vital role in ensuring pool safety and cleanliness.
• Encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing can improve industry standards.
• Addressing long-held beliefs in pool chemistry is necessary for progress.

Sound Bites

• "What is balance?"
• "We need to fix this."
• "I want to hear about it."

keywords pool chemistry, OnBalance, water maintenance, sustainability, pool myths, acid dosage, service technicians, research, environmental impact, industry knowledge

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Mentorship and Industry Insights

09:42
The Journey of OnBalance and Industry Education

12:32
Challenging Myths in Pool Chemistry

15:16
Real-World Applications of Pool Chemistry

18:01
Understanding Water Line Deposits and Their Causes

20:26
The Impact of Chemical Composition on Pool Surfaces

23:19
The Role of Borates in Pool Chemistry

25:41
Balancing Rigorous Research with Practical Application

28:37
The Importance of Field Experience in Pool Management

32:11
Reflections on Learning and Future Research Directions

34:30
Exploring New Ideas in Pool Chemistry

34:31
The Importanc

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Transcript

Rudy Stankowitz (00:01.656)
Hey everybody. Welcome to Friday. This is Rudy Stankiewicz. The talk, this is the Talking Pools podcast. I'm Rudy Stankiewicz. I'm here with Q Hales of PoolClor. One of our top 10 mentors nominated for the mentor of the year award. Q does some stuff. Let me tell you, he gets a little bit into bucking the status quo, which we really like.

So I want to talk a little bit about that, but I do want to talk about some of the things he's done as far as mentoring other individuals. have some questions here. Hopefully we can drag that information out of them. I don't think it's going to be too hard, let's start Q. When is on balance? What is it?

Que (00:46.222)
Well, on balance is Kim Skinner who

who owns PoolClor and me as the manager of Tucson's PoolClor for the last 40 years and a friend of ours, Doug Latta, who was AquaClear in LA. Just the three of us, when we got involved in teaching outside of our own businesses, started teaching at trade shows, at...

conferences, we decided that we needed to have something other than say aqua clear and pool clear. So we formed OnBalance. But technically it's just Kim and Doug and I and when we when we research or learn or want to teach something then that's what we do.

Rudy Stankowitz (01:35.908)
What drove you guys to want to do something outside of your nine to five or not that it's nine to five. I know how many hours it takes, but beyond that for the industry, what drove you to want to get that information out?

Que (01:52.11)
Well for me it started

after I had just been managing a company for a couple of years and I got called out on a couple of situations that frustrated me because I knew that it wasn't something I did but I was getting blamed for it but I didn't know what it really was. Spalling with iron stains in the spalls and they were blaming it on our water chemistry balance. like well then why is all of the rest of the pool intact really nice and yet it has these spalls on the edges of the steps or calcium nodules.

And so I talked to Kim who's the owner of the company and he said well, you know, this is what causes that and I said no, I don't know that and how can you prove it and he has a chemistry background. I have a English education background. And so I'd say how do you know that? And he'd tell me and so I would go out and try it out. Since I don't actually necessarily always know all of the ramifications of the chemistry or didn't at that time. I would just try it out in pools in my lab and whatever I

could do and learn it and it got to the point where I'm like well well if Kim knows it and now he can teach me why doesn't everybody know it so while that was going on we also had a bunch of pools here in Tucson that were we're getting iron deposits on them and and they were blaming the service tax and so I figured out what was really going on at the time which was galvanized pipe to brass to galvanized brass in autofills because autofills were really new at the time

And so I went to the local Ipsa chapter and said, you know what, these two builders are blaming all of this on us and it's really not. And so can I come to one of your Ipsa meetings, even though I don't, my company is too big to be an Ipsa member, but I went to them and said, can I just teach one of your monthly classes and talk about this so that every time somebody comes up against this issue, all of us service techs will be able to know what's causing it and have a united front. And they're like, sure. And so that was huge for me.

Que (03:55.935)
And then my big first big service project or research project that I was doing on the acid column thing again, I was proving it in pools after Kim said the chemistry and Kim said well, you know that people aren't gonna believe your readings because every industry acid dosage chart is 20 % off in the industry and I like no way

This was in 90, probably 95 ish. And I said that there's no way that every single acid dosage chart in the pool industry is 20 % wrong. He said, yeah, they are. And so of course then I, well, why is that? And it turns out it's because lab acid concentrated HCl that you use in a laboratory is 20 % stronger than the pool acid we use. And at the time, whoever designed those, the chemists that had designed all of those charts and then copied from each other,

use concentrated HCl because that's what they were familiar with rather than checking and finding out that muriatic acid in the pool industry is only 31.45 % instead of 37%. And so I published that and nobody made any fan first, but everybody fixed their charts. And so I like to talk. I'm one of those people that likes to talk and I'm not one of the people that gets nervous when I'm in front of a bunch of people. So I said,

This was, think, 96 or 7 by then. I went to the Western Pool and Spa Show and said, I want to teach a class. Don't have any product to sell, just a service company. But I think everybody should know this stuff. I'm frustrated that I couldn't go to my science library at my university. I can find everything that I want to know about English stuff there. They have shelves and rooms full of stuff on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but they have nothing on how to add acid to a bowl, right?

Rudy Stankowitz (05:47.376)
Hahaha

Que (05:49.071)
And so so I just said, you know, we need it we need to fix this and so even though don't have anything to sell I just do this at my own

you know, time and cost and whatever. But I go to on average three trade shows a year now and just try and do, I research stuff that interests me or that affects my company and then figure other service companies have to be hitting the same problems. And then go teach about them to share with people that I know. And I'm also not a BSer, so I'll get up there in front of people and say, well, you know, we don't really know this or people say that, but we don't really know that or I don't know that.

Rudy Stankowitz (06:26.542)
Right.

Que (06:27.788)
But here's what we do know and I can say that with you. So anyway, that was my path.

Rudy Stankowitz (06:32.238)
And you helped, you helped me out a lot because I know when I was doing the, aluminum sulfate CYA removal, mostly it was a rumor that skipped around lips of service people across the country for about five years until you took a look at it and, and backed it up. And I really do appreciate that. And all of a sudden now, you know, it, has a lot more validity. So I do appreciate that, tremendously.

You know, and I learned a lot in your acid column research as well because you do come into the industry and the myths that are there, like it or not, they're there. You believe them because you're starting out and this is what somebody told you and you don't have the chemistry background. And yeah, you know what? If I want to lower the pH without affecting the total alkalinity, I'll just broadcast it like feeding chickens. And if I want to lower the alkalinity without affecting the pH, I'll just borrow it.

slowly in one spot and you know they didn't have anything you can actually see the bike car bubbling off as you pour it in and all of this and it sounds really really good and you want it to work that way because you want to have that control so it makes it easier and then people still for as long as this information has been out there they still cling to swimming pool mythology or folklore almost with a death grip because somebody taught it to them so

Que (07:43.533)
Right.

Que (07:59.565)
Right.

Rudy Stankowitz (08:00.816)
And that's one of the hardest things too, is to bring something to somebody's attention that they'd believed for such a long period of time and all of a sudden it's like almost a shock. And how do you handle that when you run into that? When somebody just gets that blank look on their face like, are you kidding me?

Que (08:21.582)
You know, I have a sense of humor, probably too much of one. So I laugh at people who laugh at me. The biggest thing is that I will get people who will say, well, here's the chemistry of something. And I'm like, well, that's fine. I don't know if it's right or wrong. But here's what I do know. I've managed a company that services 2,000 pools a week. And I've been doing it for 40 years. And so I kind of know what really happens in pools.

Rudy Stankowitz (08:27.984)
Hahaha

Que (08:50.287)
And so I can see if something just feels right or feels wrong. And then I can also go look at our baseline and say, well.

you know, hear what's really happening in the pools that we treat. And then because I do work for a company that is owned by someone who's got similar interests, you know, it means that I can spend time and money during the winter time and just try things out. You we've built these two pools, we've built two demo pools behind my shop and we'll say, well, we'll just try it. We'll do it in our lab, we'll do it in the demo pools, we'll go out and do it in real pools and see what really happens.

Rudy Stankowitz (09:13.85)
fabulous.

Que (09:27.696)
And then if it backs up what somebody told you, fine. But if it doesn't, then we need to go back and take a look at the chemistry and figure out what exponent they reversed the sign on or whatever it might be and say the stuff that you put on paper has to match what really happens in real life. They can't be different.

Rudy Stankowitz (09:48.049)
absolutely, absolutely.

Que (09:49.037)
But it's also, just, I am secure enough in what I'm doing, a lot because I'm willing to tell people I don't know if I really don't know. But I'm secure enough in what I am doing that if somebody says, well, you're just a pool guy and you're full of hooey, I can laugh at them and I don't really care what they say because I know that what I said was right.

Rudy Stankowitz (10:12.528)
love it. In the article just above the water line, which you contributed to an Aqua Magazine January 23rd of this year, you clarified that those stubborn water line deposits aren't necessarily about chemical imbalances at all, but about evaporation concentrations of minerals. When you're breaking a myth like that, how do you decide what

details to share to help it stick with the readers.

Que (10:48.366)
You know actually that's one of the benefits of me going out and teaching at trade shows is that I can see what people get and what they're puzzled about and kind of catch what level I need to discuss something at in order for the average service tech to understand what I'm saying. That particular one was funny because it was and this happens regularly to me. I was in front of a guy with a PhD in

microbiology at this time, he was also a chemist. And he kept saying that if we balance our water, you're not going to get scale at the water line. And I told him that he was full of crap and that that's not a precipitate, it's an evaporite. And he laughed at me and he said evaporite is not even a chemistry term.

And so I just went right back on them and I said, of course it's not a chemistry term because what's going on right there is not chemical. It's geology and evaporite is geology term. It's what makes anyway. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that there are some people with a lot of education that are really respect because.

because they know what they're talking about. But then sometimes people think that they have some education in one area and it extends somewhere where doesn't belong. And that guy actually told me, he said, well, actually it is an LSI issue because if water wicks up on the face of the tile, like you say, then when half of that water is evaporated, that means that the calcium percentage doubled.

And when another half again, then the calcium levels tripled in there. And so that skews the LSI in that water. again, I actually laughed at him, which I think he took offense to, but it is.

Rudy Stankowitz (12:40.528)
What think?

Que (12:44.142)
It's like the time when the Cal Poly professor yelled at me in a trade show in front of everybody and said that I didn't have a right to talk to him about what was going on in those pools because I don't have the education to be able to discuss it with him. I think that as Service Techs, we're in a position where we actually see what happens on the ground. And sometimes that gives us

background and perspective that people in laboratories and offices don't have. And I think that we should be confident when we consistently see something happening in pools that that's the reality and sometimes it agrees with what we're being taught in industry classes and sometimes it doesn't.

Rudy Stankowitz (13:30.9)
Absolutely. they will academics in those areas will drag you a little bit if it differs from their belief. So and that's just one of those things, you know, we can say real chemistry happens in the field. But, you know, it's a combination of the two, it has to happen in both in the field and the lab. But your on balance test pool study on plaster color fading.

You wrote about this in Service Industry News also earlier this year, January 31st, when you compared inorganic mixed and organic pigments under both aggressive and balanced water. What made you choose that range of formulations for the test?

Que (14:19.448)
We...

Kim and Doug and I semi-regularly get calls from both homeowners and service techs asking for help. Because something happened that they either didn't understand or because they're getting blamed for something that they're convinced wasn't their fault. There were consistently pools that were losing their blue, either fading to white or fading to gray. And people were calling us and saying, I'm being told that it's because I maintain the water

and yet I have all my readings, I know that that didn't happen. Why are these losing their blue? I talked to the plastering company that I do a lot of work with and he said, I won't just do blue pools anymore because they always lose blue. Blue is problematic, was his words.

and so what I did was I went to, the suppliers, the, for the plasters and, and, and, pool core, but I went to all the supplies and I got every pool sample that I could find, plaster sample that they're, you know, that are used for sales. and I up collecting about 130 plaster samples. And then I made some of my own too. but, I said there, there's an easy way to find this out. And again,

Rudy Stankowitz (15:28.304)
Mm-hmm.

Que (15:40.563)
you know, it just takes somebody taking the time to do it. I cut every one of them in half. I put half in water and half in bleach, 24 hours, and then glued them back together.

And I figured, you know, that's not going to tell you what's going to happen in a day or a week or a month in a pool. But it is going to tell you if that blues or any other color is going to eventually lose its color because it's not color fast to chlorine or if it is color fast. And so after I did that, I saw that there were consistently some combinations of colors that are used in the industry. There's cobalt, there's the phthalo blues, there's the chromium greens. There's these different colors.

And and so I picked the four that two of them that were the most common ones that I knew were going to lose some color There were combinations. That's that's another thing is that they usually don't just the organic they they make blends of organic and inorganic So when it loses some color, it doesn't go completely white

Rudy Stankowitz (16:26.595)
Yes.

Que (16:39.886)
So I chose the two most common that are used by a different major pigment and material suppliers in our industry and then and then I took the straight cobalt which is Inorganic and the straight Pallablu which is organic and so I have four sections in these pools and that's how I picked them that I wanted to go straight or inorganic straight organic and then have two of them that are the most common blends

Rudy Stankowitz (16:42.597)
Hmm.

Que (17:08.266)
And we're probably maybe about halfway through that experiment at this time. We started it in the late fall, early winter of last year. At this point, the inorganic cobalt blue is still as blue as it was on day one. Both of the blends have lost most of their blue. One of them is backed by gray, and so it's starting to look gray. The other one's backed by chromium green, so it's looking kind of gray green. And the one that's the straight organic has

Rudy Stankowitz (17:08.324)
I it.

Que (17:38.21)
to fade towards white. So we'll just keep going and taking pictures and at some point we'll say okay we've proved our point and then we'll move on to something else.

Rudy Stankowitz (17:49.166)
So in that same study you observed that the fading was more pronounced at the bottom of the pools. How does that kind of field specific detail change the way you advise service professionals to care for surfaces if it does at all?

Que (18:02.668)
Well, we're chlorinating these pools with bleach with sodium hypochlorite. It's heavier than water. And so when you pour it in a pool, it's going to go down to the bottom unless you do something to stop it from doing that. And so you're generally going to see discoloration down low first if it's being bleached from the sodium hypochlorite. What would I say? I'd say...

The same with the acid column. It's not smart to add chemicals where they're gonna sit concentrated in one spot in the pool unless you're doing it on purpose. Obviously if you're doing stain removal, sometimes you add a chemical where you want it to sit somewhere and preferentially affect that part of the pool. But as a general rule, and especially in regular maintenance chemistry, don't add chemicals in a way that they're all gonna sit in one spot. Blend them.

feed them over a working inlet, dilute them, do what you need to do in order to, you're adding enough chemical to affect the entire pool, don't add it in a way that at least for a short time it's affecting just a very small part of it, if you can.

Rudy Stankowitz (19:12.464)
We talk a lot nowadays about alum, borates, things we call ancient pool pro secrets because they kind of went away for a while and now they're coming back. But what a lot of people don't know is that you actually helped Spearhead bringing borate into the industry initially.

Que (19:34.639)
When you say you in this case

Rudy Stankowitz (19:37.356)
You. Poochlor. Correct.

Que (19:38.391)
You mean pool. So pool was started in the mid 1950s. The company that I manage here in Tucson was started in L.A. in the 1950s and of the three chemists that started it, that's when they first started using chlorine gas in residential pools. And so was three chemists that started. Well, one of them had worked for a U.S. Borax company. And so when they needed to buffer the water stronger than what the carbonate buffer system does in order to withstand

gas injection, they said we need a stronger buffer in this water. So they started using Borax and that was in late 1950s. So pool chlor originated that but they were specifically at the time doing it because of buffering and then over time as we continued to use it we realized that it makes the water feel better on people's eyes and skin, that it's got herbicidal or herbostatic qualities that

Yeah, it affects water clarity. complexes with calcium to form calcium borate. So it lowers deposits and clouding from when you add...

base chemicals to a pool high in calcium. It's just got all of these other side benefits. We kept that as a trade secret probably up until into the 90s. But in the early 80s the John Gerven company started selling it over where you're at in the Gulf Coast and patented it. And we were using it in the West.

Anyway, the long story, but we kept using it because they didn't want us to break their patent for them. But once it got out into the public domain, then we said, OK, fine, it's in the public domain. And so we started teaching about it.

Rudy Stankowitz (21:16.4)
you

Rudy Stankowitz (21:26.64)
Fantastic.

You've said, it's fun to see real world results after demonstrating these effects in a lab setting. How do you strike the balance between keeping research rigorous and making it engaging for the working pros who read your work?

Que (21:48.575)
You know, almost every time that I do something in lab, it's because of something that's happened either in the field or it's because somebody said something in a class or something that I didn't believe. So the lab usually comes afterwards. An example is a couple of years ago when people in classes were commonly saying that cyanuric acid and other chemicals will stratify in a pool. And that just wasn't my experience. But I said,

There's one way to find out and and so so that's when the lab work and the and the pool work in I mean I got those long, you know sucker things that they sell for for for a biologist to suck water off of the bottom of a lake or a pond or a street and and and I started pulling water, know from the bottom the middle and the top of you know a hundred pools and then tested them all for cyanuric acid and calcium and pH and all those things but again

Rudy Stankowitz (22:34.736)
Mm-hmm.

Que (22:48.408)
I tested it in the lab.

It was based on something that somebody said and then going out and doing field work. I could say the reason I didn't believe them when I heard it in the trade show is because I've done work before where I pulled water out of a pool, the surface of a pool, but also pulled a sample out of the hair lens strainer pot, whatever you call them on your country, and tested them and found that there were consistent readings.

Rudy Stankowitz (23:21.103)
Right.

Que (23:22.094)
And then also, you know, we have customers occasionally that don't have working pump filters and they think, oh, that's fine. You guys just take care of it so that we know that it's not going to grow anything nasty in it while we're working on towards getting a, you know, a motor repair, whatever it might be. And so in those cases, I'm like, well, can we do that? Can we add chemicals to the surface of the pool and expect that the bottom of the pool is not going to grow stuff? And so I've tested. So anyway, like I said,

Usually, everybody has this happen. You hear something, you think, I don't think that's what really happens in my pools. I'm just in a position to be able to go and check it out.

Rudy Stankowitz (24:04.346)
wouldn't think pools are typically, I mean I know this wasn't the point, the pools are typically deep enough for stratification to be a concern. Although, I don't know, I guess the questions come up with the lower speeds of variable speed pumps if that plays a role.

Que (24:26.22)
The only time I've actually seen variability that way is when there's enough of a layer of mud and leaves organic crap on the bottom of pool so that they're actively.

Rudy Stankowitz (24:38.446)
Okay.

Que (24:39.456)
contributing to the chemistry, either putting off acids from the decomposition of the leaves or harboring biofilms. There's been some active ingredient. In a clean pool, you're probably right. Depth is probably part of it. But I've never seen stratification in a swimming pool.

I mean, on a long term basis, obviously I can cause it, right? I can pour a gallon of bleach or a gallon of acid into a pool and dye it, which I have done repeatedly, and then watch where it goes and both bleach and acid will puddle in the bowl of a pool if the pool's not circulating. And so yeah, technically I guess you could call that a form of stratification, but they're both volatile enough that over time, even if you don't turn the system on, they are going to, there's enough iron

movement of the chemicals in the pool that's going to blend through the pool eventually but as soon as you turn circulation on it does it with it.

Rudy Stankowitz (25:40.08)
want to jump back to something you said a minute ago because I know somebody's listening and they're going to say, wait a minute. He said they used borate in water to manage the pH when they're adding chlorine gas. Chlorine gas has a pH of zero. That stuff is super acidic. I thought borates only prevented an upward drift in pH. What's your response to that?

Que (26:01.102)
I would teach them a little bit about buffers is what I would do because a lot of times in the pool industry we equate alkalinity with buffering but they're technically not the same thing. Alkalinity is how much alkaline is in the water right? Carbonate, bicarbonate, borate, cyanurate, pretty much anything that ends in eight.

Rudy Stankowitz (26:26.615)
Yeah

Que (26:27.886)
is alkalinity. And when you test for alkalinity, it's going to get anything that can accept acid, proton. Anyway, they're all in the total. That's why we use the word total. But it and then in the moving back and forth between their base and their acid forms is what buffering is. So if you're looking at a chemical like the carbonate system.

You have carbonate at pH's mostly 8.3 and higher and bicarbonate below that and then it shifts to carbonic acid when you get even lower down in the lower sixes. So it's the shifting between those, right? That's buffering. So if I have a regular pool and I start adding acid to it, the bicarbonate is going to convert to carbonic as it...

Anyway, we could do a whole class on that. But if I start adding a base to it, the bicarbonate is going to shift to carbonate.

So it's working in both directions. If I'm talking about borax, putting in borax in a pool, at pool pH is about between 6 and 10 % of the boron is in there as alkali, as borate, and 90 % of it is there as the boric acid. So if I start adding acid to that pool, that 6 to 10 % of it that's alkaline borate is going to start pushing back.

But if I add a base to it, then it's the opposite. Then you're shifting boric acid to borate. So buffers work going in both directions.

Rudy Stankowitz (28:15.216)
Okay, so before I continue with my questions, is there any topics or anything like that that you wanted to specifically touch base on today? Anything that you're working on, anything that you want to get out? Because I want to make sure you have that opportunity also.

Que (28:28.63)
I don't know. You know, the fact that it matters that even though you and I have become professional friends, I'll give you my deep, dire secret. that's up until last week, I hadn't listened to a Talking Pools podcast. just so, so I spent most of this weekend listening.

Rudy Stankowitz (28:46.416)
That's okay.

Rudy Stankowitz (28:51.173)
did you?

Que (28:52.312)
that I like binged on Talking Pools since Friday, because I wanted to know like what level you hit, what tone you hit, you know, how you talk. And I've been fascinated. I've seen, I've learned things in here that, I learn things all the time when I listen to Service Text and just to be, you know.

script of what I do. know, 99 % of what I do is chemistry. I have employees work with equipment, but I don't work with equipment. And so listening to it, I learned stuff from the gals that do the Wednesday one, I learned from Wayne and them. I'm sorry, I'm

Rudy Stankowitz (29:34.32)
Sarah, Wayne. Yeah, no, you're good. You're good.

Que (29:38.607)
But I learned stuff. It was fun. I also heard some things I said, you know, we could talk about that. And so at some point, I think it would be fun to talk about some issues that came up. I'll probably be doing some research based on some of the stuff that they talked about. You know, everything from, you know, why is it not OK to add chlorine during startup or, you know.

There were just things that came up that I'm saying, you know what? Or somebody talked about chlorine lock, you know? And I'm like, that will be fun. This winter, I'm gonna work on that. And then I'm gonna go to Rudy and say, you know what? This is what was said in one of your podcasts. I don't have to say who said it or when they said it anything, but this was said that a lot of people believe in. And it turns out they were right or it turns out they were wrong. We'll find out. So anyway, I didn't.

Rudy Stankowitz (30:05.303)
You

Rudy Stankowitz (30:26.808)
Actually, I look forward to that. I welcome it. So, okay.

Que (30:30.338)
So I don't know that I really brought anything to today to say, you know, that I wanted to talk about other than maybe let people know that we did use our demo pools here for the first one to work on on cyanuric acid removal. And that was a lot of fun. Right. We're doing the the pigment color fastness when that's done. And I'm going to be using them to do startup chemistry comparisons. We'll divide them into four bodies of water and and do acid

said, buy car, but render and traditional startup methods and, and show what they are, you know, in a controlled environment, the differences and things. So that's, that's basically where I'm going. That's one of the reasons why I was focused in on what people said about startups on the, on the podcast. Anyway, it was.

Rudy Stankowitz (31:14.66)
Okay. I like it. Yeah. Well, good. I'm glad you enjoyed it. you know, when I was first approached and cause this was not my idea, I was like, you know what, there's already a lot of podcasts out there. What do I have to say? What can I add to it? There's only so many different ways you can talk about what is pH and, and the one thing was, is that, you know, we would have to be different. We would have to appeal to a niche market. And I think we, I think we do that. So definitely,

Definitely are on the outskirts of...

the norm. cool. All right, back into it then. So you've managed pool chlorine Tucson for years and you've partnered with on balance on research from nano filtration to plaster chemistry. When you write for a trade audience, how do you decide when to introduce the advanced methods versus sticking with straightforward familiar solutions?

Que (32:17.806)
You know, I would say it really.

Rudy Stankowitz (32:18.17)
How do you, basically it's, how do you figure out, yeah.

Que (32:22.414)
It comes to audience. There are things that I write that are specifically directed to my customers. And so I have a whole series of technical bulletins that I call technical bulletins for my customer, but they're really basic things that they don't know about either our service or about, you know, what will a pool cover really accomplish and should I, you know, whatever it might be. So I write those and I wrote those because I know that they don't really know that much.

On the other hand when I go to a trade show and teach experience service techs You know they can learn in the basic class that if you want to take an alkalinity test You're gonna be dropping the clear stuff into the colored stuff until the colored stuff changes color, right? But if I'm gonna talk to service techs, I want to tell them well, yeah, I mean that that that Sample has has buffer in it alkali in it and I'm gonna add

I'm going add a color indicator that's going to change colors at pH 4.6 because that's the zero alkalinity mark. And then I'm going to put a specific strength of acid and drop, drop, drop. And it depends on the drop size is important and all. And so I'm going to tell them that partly because I want them to know some relationships between pH and alkalinity that are inherent in the titration method we use. Because once they understand that, then I can start teaching them about everything from acid columns

to bicarb chemistry to whatever it might be and they already see those relationships. And then there are some times when the only right way to do it is to put all of the chemistry formulas in there and do the math. So I do that but then what I've developed starting back in the late 90s is a technical journal and I write, I put the chemistry in there.

And I encourage as many technical people in the industry to do the same thing. And then I publish that in a peer-reviewed technical journal. So if you go to my website, which is poolhelp.com, if you go there, and again, remember, everything's free on there. I'm not selling anything. So I'm not trying to use your vehicle here for selling anything. It's all free. But I have on there my trade show handouts that are written mostly at the intermediate level.

Que (34:46.736)
in my on balance section of there, but there's also the technical journal in there and if people want to go in there and see what the actual chemical formulas are, the mathematics behind what we're doing, they can go in there and take a look and I find that even though I don't necessarily always follow all of the math and all of the chemistry because it's not my thing, I do learn what the issues are and I learn what the path is to and sometimes get an idea of what...

Rudy Stankowitz (35:09.189)
Right.

Que (35:13.518)
whether something's full of crop or not.

Rudy Stankowitz (35:18.0)
I've been in this situation, this example I'm going to give you, it's... I just want to get your feedback on how you would handle it. You're standing in front of an audience, it's a session, you're giving a presentation, you're talking about chemistry, and all of a sudden you realize that you're going pretty much over almost everybody's head.

What do do?

Que (35:42.659)
back up. If the goal is education, sometimes the only thing you can say is, the green stuff's going to turn to red stuff. I think that's all you can do because that's what they're ready to learn at the time. As an educator, I would say you have to get acquainted with your audience and realize that there are different levels at which you can teach the same material.

I think that even if you're teaching something basic, much less intermediate, you need to have the technical or you don't really know what you're talking about.

But yeah, there have been plenty of times when I've been in a class and just had to back up and say, you know what, this is going to be a little bit too... I will tell them if you want to know the actual details about this, either email me or go to my journal online. The information's there. But for today in this class, we're going to have to talk about it with the pretty colors instead of the formulas.

Rudy Stankowitz (36:46.136)
You're really good at talking in your articles and I've heard you speak and I've seen presentations, whether in person or video, explaining the why behind things. So not just how to fix it, not just what the problem is, why you do, why it happened, why we fix it this way. Why do you think giving the why changes the way a professional approaches the work?

Que (37:18.28)
boy. You know, one of the famous things in our family is that even though I'm an English brain and not a math brain, I'm competent with math. I have a daughter that is very, very competent with math. But when she was going to high school and I would help her with her homework,

she could have a really naughty problem and I could help her find the answer, but I wouldn't do it the same way that the professor did. And so she would go in there and say, well, this is what I got. This is the right answer. And they would agree with that, but still not give her the credit for it. And that's because they didn't use the right method. And at first that annoyed me.

because I'm like, what does it matter? I got the right answer. But the professor rightly said, yeah, but as soon as I change a couple of the numbers in there, you're going to have to rework it all over again. But she's got the formula. So she can just plug in a few extra numbers and get the answer just like that.

And I learned from that experience. And I found that in pools, can approach every pool one by one and try and figure out what goes on in that pool and figure out how to deal with problems in that pool. Or I can try and learn the principles. And once I learn the principles, why this happens the way that it happens, then what I learn is applicable to all of my pools.

And so I guess that's why I think it's important that we learn the whys and not just the what's because it has more of a widespread applicability.

Rudy Stankowitz (38:49.84)
We touched on this a little bit before, but you have published findings that do challenge long-held beliefs from the causes of surface residue to how pigments behave to, again, the acid columns. What's your strategy for presenting research that might not be what readers expect and getting them to consider it?

Que (39:12.458)
You know, that's funny. My very first time that I published in a nationwide forum was the dosage charts for acid. And to this day, and that was in the mid 90s, to this day I feel bad because what I did was I specifically pointed out four different major manufacturers that had problems with their charts. Named them by name. And they were talking, and it came up because the acid column, so I named them by name and said,

you know, the misinformation is being out there and here's the, and although I was correct,

I wasn't very nice, I don't think. Looking back on it, I wouldn't have done it the same way. An example is Taylor. I said, yeah, Taylor's got the wrong stuff in there. What would I do now? I'd probably call one of my acquaintances at Taylor and talk to him about it first. And so I think I've learned from the experience that sometimes people are putting out BS because it's good for their product and those people need to be

don't know, put in their places or anything, but it needs to be pointed out that they're BSing people and it's wrong.

Rudy Stankowitz (40:26.915)
Yeah, I agree.

Que (40:27.65)
But other people, think, are putting out stuff that they genuinely think is right. You know, their hearts are in the right place. They're doing good as a business. Like those acid charts as an example, they did their due diligence. They went to a chemist. They said, what's the right dosages? What's the numbers? How can we build charts? And it was a mistake that somebody used concentrated HCl instead of meridic acid. And so all of them had good faith in there. so I think that now when I do that, I try and feel people out.

and figure out why. This is a big influence from Kim too. He always wants to know not just if somebody's making a mistake, but what did what led them to it. Because if you find out what led them to it and find out you know at what point something went wrong, then you can teach them and do it you know without being so threatening. So for instance like in this last week I heard one of your podcasts where people were talking about not

you know, not putting chlorine in a pool when you're first starting up the pool. And so of course my brain, because I, you know, my ADD kicks in, and so my brain immediately says, why?

Why does that matter? Why can't I put chlorine in a pool? As soon as I get there and the pool's full, I don't want to turn green. It's 100 degrees outside, right? So my brain will immediately say, why? And then sometimes I can rely on my mentors and call them and say, And I have people I know in the chemistry business, the plastering business, whatever, and I can call them and say, Where did that come from? Why do we do that? And then I find out, well, you know?

Probably the biggest reason that we don't do that is because if the water has heavy metals in it and you oxidize them, you're going to stain brand new plaster. OK. So then my question is, well, wait a minute. I teach all the time that you should test the tap water before you put it in a pool. And so there's going to be problems. You pre-address them, right? And so what happens if I test the water and I find out that there's no appreciable copper or iron in that water at all? Then can I chlorinate it on day one? So anyway.

Rudy Stankowitz (42:10.672)
Bye.

Que (42:33.614)
I don't even get to that. Anyway, just, know, you, that's where it was. You try and find out why people think what they think. And sometimes you learn something that way, and then sometimes you can help them learn something that way.

Rudy Stankowitz (42:51.472)
Your body of work spans plaster analysis, filtration research, water chemistry standards. Is there a common approach that you bring to all of these topics, regardless of the science involved?

Que (43:05.656)
Bye!

Yes, I suppose there is. My baseline is always going to be do I have field experience, empirical knowledge that leads me to believe that something is right or something is wrong. That's always going to be my first. My second is going to be to go to someone who has direct experience in something, whether it's chemistry or plaster or whatever, and say this is what I see and this is how I feel about it. What do you think?

And they're going to bring expertise to it that I don't have.

So that's my approach. I'll go from what I know to what resource I can find and then I'm going to say, well, can I duplicate that? Can I duplicate that in one of my customer's pools if it's appropriate to do that? Can I do it in my demo pools? Can I do it in my lab? And then say, can I, you know, and again, Kim is constantly frustrated with my saying, uh-uh, he did it.

I just did it to him this morning when he made a statement. I'm like, uh-uh. And then we sit down and we figure it out. So that's what I like to do. But my baseline is always going to be my experience, what I think is actually happening pools. Because whatever they're going to come up with, if they don't match, if there's a disconnect, then we have to figure out why.

Rudy Stankowitz (44:30.224)
Do you have things that you write that you just don't publish? You plan on putting it out and then just sit on it for a little bit? Ever? For any reason? What makes you decide to hold it?

Que (44:39.256)
Sure, sure.

Que (44:46.574)
If I hold something, it's because I'm not 100 % sure if I'm right. So you have to understand that Kim and Doug and I are not.

Rudy Stankowitz (44:51.119)
Okay.

Que (45:03.202)
Right? And although Kim had, you know, went to college for chemistry and Doug for business and me for English, fact that matters that we're pool guys. And, and we have knocked down a lot of people's idols.

told major people in the industry that they're wrong about something. And so I guess I kind of have the feeling that I can keep doing that as long as nobody catches me being wrong about something.

Rudy Stankowitz (45:32.919)
Hahaha

Que (45:34.223)
And so I'm not going to publish something that I think is right. I'm going to publish something that I've been able to demonstrate. I'm not going to publish it because one of my chemist friends gave me a formula and said this is what's real until I've done it at least in my lab and preferably in a pool.

So yeah, I've written things that are sitting on my computer and haven't been published, but it's going to be because I'm going to wait until, because again, the first time that I are on balance puts out something and then somebody comes along and says, well, you're full of crap and here's why, and are able to demonstrate it. I'm going to feel like, dang, we used up all the goodwill that we've developed over the last three decades because people are going to worry about whether or not.

to

Rudy Stankowitz (46:26.672)
This is

Que (46:34.232)
You know, I make my own chemical reagents that my employees test pools with. I'm not going to go out there and publish all of the recipes for how to make your own reagents because I just don't need to. Or I'm trying to think of another example.

Well, Borax was an example. That was proprietary to pool chlor up until for us. We didn't talk to people about what we did and why we did it probably up until into the 90s, even though the protein supreme was out in the mid 80s.

And it was just because I don't really feel a need to Somebody else was out there selling it fine. Whatever But then again it got to the point where everybody knew something about it and then it became the right time to say well We might as well just take what we know and share it with everybody Yeah, it's it's not a competitive advantage anymore because everybody's using it. So I'll tell them what I know

Rudy Stankowitz (47:34.704)
There you go. At least in current research that I've read of yours, there seems to be a thread of sustainability. I mean, I can go further back and I'm sure it's there as well. But how much of a role does environmental impact play in what you do?

Que (47:57.677)
it's.

Probably not my top first ranked concern, but it's probably in my top five. Probably the best way to explain that is when I hire a service tech, and my service techs we don't repair in my company. Like I said, we're taking care of a lot of pools, but we either do the chemicals or we do the chemicals and cleaning. And one of the things that I find out a lot is that when somebody is cleaning pools,

really, really easy for them to start having a baseline assumption that the most important thing they think that they're doing in that yard is making sure that they walk away with it being a clean pool.

Because that's what the homeowners are to come home to. They're going to look at it and say, wow, I could have done a better job than that. And so they really focus on the cleaning. And my service techs, a lot of times, they'll really focus on, well, did I leave with the chemistry ready so that it'll still be good in a week when I come back? And so that's their focus. And I have to train these people that those are secondary. The primary thing for a service tech is to make sure that someone's not going to get sick if they get in that pool.

everything else is secondary. Or maybe if there's gates and covers and everything, then right up there is going to be, am I walking away from this pool in a way that it's safe for people, know, kids, pets, whatever. So those are all.

Rudy Stankowitz (49:26.16)
I'm still safety still. Yeah.

Que (49:28.514)
first, right? And then the next thing is what are they paying me for? And in addition to making it safe for them to bathe, they're paying me to clean the pool, to maintain the chemicals. And so that's going to come next. Once we talk about that, though, then we start being able to start going into the things that would be nice to do.

And the fact of the matter is that I'm enough of a 40 year boy scout leader trying to take care of the environment and teach boys to do that. That I start getting concerned with the thing that you and I talked about, think, with the citric acid removal is when I start looking at our national standard, and it's a good standard, but it does say if this happens, if the calcium level is too high, if the citric acid level is too high, if the TDS is too high, drain the pool.

of course the first thing I didn't want to say is there's a reason for that, but it's not always the only option. So are there options to drain, know, and if all I need to do is take out cyanuric acid, or if all I need to do is lower the calcium hardness, there are ways of doing that without draining a pool. And so then I'm all of sudden on a conservation level that's the next tier, which is, boy, if I don't have to waste water, I'm not gonna waste water, especially since I'm living in the desert.

Rudy Stankowitz (50:46.842)
Seriously.

Que (50:47.246)
you

going to waste if I don't have to. If I have to, I have to. If there's buildup disinfection byproducts and if there's multiple reasons why they're going to drain the pool, then they ought to replace the water because that's the safe and right thing to do. But if they don't have to, then let's find alternatives. And now filtration, RO, chemical approaches, there are other approaches that we can teach service techs and homeowners that when they're the right thing to do, then

we can be smarter about how we manage our resources.

Rudy Stankowitz (51:22.682)
How many texts have reported to you over the years? Do you know? In all the years of you doing this, do you have a roundabout number?

Que (51:31.556)
I do it's just over 400

Rudy Stankowitz (51:33.968)
400, how many of them have left and started their own business in the pool industry? Do you know?

Que (51:41.007)
two or three? Three or four? Most of the guys, again...

Rudy Stankowitz (51:42.384)
Two or three.

Que (51:49.231)
My service techs, most of them will go into a backyard, test the chemistry, add what the chemicals need. Again, not to balance it now, but to make sure it's still be balanced by the time they come for their next visit. So they add chemicals and then they leave. And they can do 40 pulls a day. So most of my guys are working their way through college. That's how I worked my way through college, is a tech. And so most of my employees, the 400 plus employees over the last 40 years,

Most of them been kids that are going out and doing route, going to class, maybe finishing their route. And then they move on to whatever they were going to school for. It's a very small percentage of them that have been with me long term.

But there have been a few But but yeah, I can't think of a single one of them that decided they were gonna set up shop doing cleaning and chemicals in competition with me I have some that gone went into various aspects of the building the plastering The repair Interested well, you don't do repairs if I start my own repair company Will you refer the parrot repairs out to me, you know those kinds of things so that's happened, but I

Rudy Stankowitz (52:59.44)
But what you see more is, well, a lot of it, at least, and what I'm hearing you say is that it's served as a starting block for doctors, lawyers, accountants, and they've managed to take, how does that make you feel? They've managed to take things that they've learned from you into all these different fields.

Que (53:19.427)
Bye.

It's a blast. get to talk to people that work for me. know, Tucson isn't that big of a town when I've had 400 guys go through here guys and gals go through here You know, I see them and it's always fun to see how they where they ended up You know, especially when I see one that was kind of a goofball You know, I really had to work with to make sure he did his routes well and everything and now he's you know his dentist office is a couple of miles away from where I live and I'm like

Rudy Stankowitz (53:39.14)
Hehehehe

Que (53:50.017)
Good for him, you know? So that's happened a lot and yeah, it gives you a of a tickle to know that they went into something that's important and meaningful to him, but to them, but that I was able to help them work there with their school. That's a good feeling.

Rudy Stankowitz (53:50.48)
Yeah.

Rudy Stankowitz (54:08.506)
So if somebody wants to look through your research that's at Pool Help, PoolHelp.com, that's the best place to find that? Okay. And what if somebody has an idea, somebody has a thought, somebody has a question about something they ran into in the field and they're like, well, hey, this might be something. Is it okay for them to contact you? And how would they get you?

Que (54:15.895)
Right.

Que (54:19.438)
Uh-huh.

Que (54:32.138)
Absolutely. They would either email me, queatpoolhelp.com or queatpoolcler.com. just look it up on Google and get PoolCler's phone number in Tucson and call me. I just tell people because there are literally thousands of people who go through classes that I teach.

And I tell them, you know, if something comes up, don't, you have a problem with the pool or something. I run a business.

Not trying to sell products and so I want you to be calling me about I don't do that I'm running a business, but if something weird happens don't call me about the routine, please But if something weird happens, I want to hear about it And so I like when people call me as long as they're willing to get told sometimes hey, that's interesting But I can't deal with that until wintertime Because things really really slow down around here in the winter Or if they if I say well, you know, hey, I just can't do that But but but I'm regularly talking to people about about plaster problems

that they have or chemical questions or people will send me samples of plaster or water because I have a lab that I can test things for them and as long as it doesn't get out of hand I just do it and tell them what I found out. just especially like I said if something strange is going on then those are fun to look at.

Rudy Stankowitz (56:04.24)
If you could say one thing about the status quo to everybody that's listening, what would that be?

Que (56:14.84)
Probably that even though I deal with the weird ones, the fact of the matter is that there are, I don't know, thousands and thousands of service techs, millions of pools out there that go right. And that we can be proud of our industry. We're providing a recreation and exercise vehicle that's healthy for them, it's good for them, it's fun for them, and most of the time when somebody decides to buy a pool, when somebody pays somebody to take care of it for them,

go right. I just like to keep that in mind. I don't like it to skew the fact that I'm looking at the wrong things because the fact of the matter is that they are the unusual usually.

Rudy Stankowitz (56:56.176)
There you go. Everybody, thank you for listening. thank you for being here with us. I really appreciate it. If you want to get a hold, you're quite welcome. Again, top 10 mentor in the industry this year. One person will walk away with the belt, but again, all 10 great individuals. Q, definitely rightfully among them. And everybody listening, again, if you want to get a hold of Q, it's Q at

Que (57:03.224)
Thanks for asking.

Rudy Stankowitz (57:25.36)
poolhelp.com or queue at poolchlor.com. Either way, see something strange, something weird, hit them up. Until next time, I'm Rudy Stankiewicz. This is the Talking Pools podcast. Be good, be safe.

Que (57:42.095)
Thanks.