Debunking Water Chemistry Myths with Eric Knight

This episode busts common water chemistry myths, explores the science behind pool maintenance, and discusses the future of industry education. Featuring Eric Knight from Watershape University, it offers practical insights for professionals seeking to improve their water management skills.

Keywords

water chemistry, pool maintenance, water shaping, pool industry education, pool myths, chlorine, pH, alkalinity, CYA, salt systems

Key Topics

• Water chemistry misconceptions
• Proper water testing and treatment
• Impact of pH, alkalinity, and CYA on pools

Guest Name

Eric Knight

Sound Bites

• "The acid column pour myth is not accurate"
• "Adjusted alkalinity is not the true alkalinity"
• "Salt systems do not inherently raise pH"

Contact

Watershape University Homepage

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Water Chemistry Education

04:19
Eric Knight's Journey in Aquatics

07:12
The Future of the Pool Industry

09:52
Debunking Myths about Watershape University

12:55
Understanding the Curriculum and Its Accessibility

14:45
Advanced Training and Certification

14:52
Customer Service in Pool Industry

16:23
Debunking Water Chemistry Myths

23:33
Understanding pH and Chlorine Strength

29:46
The Future of Pool Automation

34:40
Understanding pH Myths in Swimming Pools

40:14
Salt Systems and Their Chemistry

43:22
Cyanuric Acid: The Misunderstood Protector

49:35
The Importance of Education and Automation in Pool Management

The Grit Game
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Welcome back to the Talking Pools podcast, your go-to source for everything wet, wild, and wonderfully misunderstood in the pool world. I'm Natalie Hood, Director of Education and Network Development for The Great Game. And today we're diving into a topic that sits at the heart of our industry, education, what it is, what it isn't, and why so many long-standing myths continue to shape the way people learn, teach, and manage water. You know, across the aquatics world, misconceptions pop up everywhere. And to the chemistry myths that refuse to die, like the acid column pore, adjusted alkalinity being the real alkalinity, or the idea that pH controls chlorine drink outdoors, and you know, these misunderstandings, they influence how people work, how they troubleshoot, and how confident they feel in the field. And nowhere is that more important than in water chemistry, where outdated habits, half-truths, and quite frankly, oversimplified rules of thumb can lead to real world problems. And so whether it's the myth that cell systems create liquid chlorine or that more CYA gives you more sunlight protection, or that pH matters mainly for the bather comfort, these ideas stick around because they sound simple. And even when the science says otherwise, people are still believing them. So today I'm joined by Eric Knight, executive director for Water Shape University, who brings deep expertise in water chemistry education, curriculum development, and the mission behind BU's approach to training. And together, we're going to bust some myths about water chemistry and give you practical takeaways that really elevate how you think about education, your professional growth, and the science that keeps our pools safe and predictable. So, Eric, today before we dive into some myths, could you give our listeners a brief history of your background and really how you came into your role at Water Shape University?

SPEAKER_03 2:44

You know what time it is? Wednesday vibes on the talking pools, not too long and it's on the last time.

SPEAKER_05 3:31

In an industry built not just on skill but on those willing to teach it, there's a call to recognize the people behind the professionals. The Talking Pools Podcast is now accepting nominations for its 2026 Mentor of the Year Award, honoring those who don't just have the answers, but teach others how to find them. If someone helped shape your path in this industry, now is the time to return the favor. Visit cpoclass.com. Click on the Talking Pools Podcast Mentor Award tab, and submit your mentor's name up until May 15, 2026, because behind every Great Pool professional, there's someone who showed them how to think.

SPEAKER_04 4:11

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SPEAKER_01 4:54

Eric, today before we dive into this myths, could you give our listeners a brief history of your background and really how you came into your role at Watershape University?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Thanks for having me, Natalie. It's funny, I've only been on this podcast one other time, and that was, I suppose, to debunk another myth that we had basically customized or changed the Langlier Saturation Index and the Arenda Calculator. Which all we did was like use the actual math and go like a lot more specific than the charts did. But that was the the only other time I've been on this show. So thank you for having me. The question was uh what was my background and how I came into this role? Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

That's correct. What your background looks like.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Well, I started as a competitive swimmer, I guess that's how it got into aquatics, and then got very sick swimming indoors. So my first job in the aquatics industry was right off literally hired off the pool deck at the 2012 Olympic trials. And I started working for a company called Paddock, and I was doing indoor ventilation systems for indoor pools to remove chloramines. And the air quality is what got me sick, and that's what got me into the industry. In fact, I still do air quality help for engineers around the country, uh actually a bunch in Europe as well, because it's a problem that's kind of global. And I re I just want to like put myself out of business as fast as possible. I don't do it for the money, I do it because you have to kind of be bilingual to do that. You have to understand water and air. And my first language was HVAC. So I can help engineers design natatorium air systems, dehumidification, that kind of thing. And uh that's really the reason I'm in the industry. After that, I went to an app startup because I wanted to take that risk and learn a whole bunch of skills before I had kids. And that was in 2015. And we ended up selling a piece of that company. Uh at that point, we we dissolved the company because that piece was kind of like end or roll to what we did. But my partner and I learned a ton. We were pretty happy with it. And then I came on board at Arenda. Had I not done that app startup in between, I wouldn't have had the skill set or the knowledge to do what we did at Arenda, including rebuilding basically from scratch the Arenda calculator that you all know now today. And that start that project started in late 2016. We ended up releasing the Arenda Calculator in February of 2017, and then you know, the rest has just been iteration on iteration to what you see today. Uh I spent a lot of time. And then in uh 2023, Arenda was acquired, and I did two years there and came to Watershape University because I really just wanted to focus on education. And I still do. I I think I've just had the experience of dealing with enough customers that came to me with their problems. You know, customers didn't come to me with their good pools. When you called Arenda at the time, it was always like, hey, I've got this issue or I've got that issue. So my experience, even though I was not a professional pool service technician or a cleaner, all I dealt with was problems. And so I had this like super dense experience with what can go wrong. And so it gave me the time to do research and figuring these problems out. And I am by no means a chemist. I am not an expert. I just know how to research and I'm willing to do that kind of work and figure things out, talk to a lot of people that are far more qualified and intelligent than I am. And by doing that, I'm able to kind of distill down like what's actually happening in this water. And then you get to test it in the field because we had enough customers to do that, and it was great. We figured out a lot of things. We figured out a lot of things were just outright incorrect. And when you fix those behaviors, and I think that's what we're gonna talk about today, when you fix those behaviors, it can make your business go a lot smoother. And we cover a lot of that on my podcast, the Rule Your Pool Podcast. So anyway, I hope that answers that.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah. No, and I love it. I mean, you and I have similar backgrounds, and you and I made pretty big career choices last year about the same time. And like you, I was so used to having people just come to me with their problems. It's very rare in my previous position where I had, you know, a a lot of positive feedback. It was always this is going wrong or that's going wrong. And so, you know, like you, it and again, I loved my job, but I really love what I'm doing now. And that's where I'm able to work with those, you know, true experts and really dive into the research and you know, bring new education to the industry.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

So changing angles in this industry, it's a very small industry. Let's start there. Changing angles, it's it sounds like the grass is greener, but it's the same industry. It's the same grass. You're just looking at it from the other side. And so whether you're a manufacturer like I was, onto dealing with now an education provider or manufacturers rep or from actual service companies or pool builders in this case. There's just so many different facets to this industry. It's quite fascinating. I and I love it. It's a fun industry, but you know, I think I'm trying to look like five, 10 years down the road. What is the future of this industry? We see a lot of consolidations, we see a lot of things changing. I did an episode completely on AI, which I know you listened to. Uh AI is coming, it's bringing a lot of people into this trade. And I'm trying to think long term, like what's the future? How do we actually get this trade professionalized to the point because we have a lot of talented people? Most people are fully capable of being really, really, really, really good. But we don't have like we we we don't seem to have like some very accessible way to get enough education out there for everybody to get to that level. And I think if we do, the whole industry rises in a good way. And that's that's why I came to Watershape. I wanted to help build that platform. And we have built some incredible stuff just in one year, uh, a lot of automated things. We're getting a lot of our classes online, on demand. We've been working really hard on a service track. I made the mistake of saying, hey, we're gonna have it out by the end of last year. Well, no, there's way more classes, and so we're still producing classes for that. So we'll probably roll it out when we have the first level done. And it's not quite done. We're we're pretty close, but there's a lot of work to do. So it I think it's gonna be very good. It's gonna be a journey that you can take towards mastery, and that's really what we want to do at Watershade. We want to help you achieve mastery in whatever it is you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, no, and you guys are really providing that pathway and you know that what what could be to those that want to get into the industry or those that are currently in the industry. I mean, I think so many people they go out and they take one class and they're like, all right, I'm certified, and I I know what I'm doing, and they kind of stop education right there. And you really have to continue that that learning because there's so many changes, as you just said, and again, in the next five to ten years, it's probably and it will look different than how it looks right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Yeah, it absolutely will. There's no doubt about that. Like you um you hit on something there that a great book is you can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar. Like you can go to the classes, but you have to actually apply it. And that's one of the things that I learned with customers. Like I taught at all the shows for all these years and a whole bunch of trainings and things. And it would take a while, unless you were in the season right then and there, and you could go out there and try it that week, which you can't do, like for the Northeast show, for instance, that's in January. You gotta wait four months, and then people kind of forget what it was. And so it's really hard to take that like really dense packed education and then go apply it four months later. Like you're not gonna really remember as much. And so I would inevitably get calls months later of like, hey, what do what were you saying? You know, I took your class in Atlantic City, and what were you saying about the salt flakes, man? Because I'm getting a lot of those, or I got the crystals on my plaster, how do we get rid of those? So, how how that education gets delivered is kind of what I'm focusing on. It's not just creating classes, it's really how do we get it to you in the most reasonably it's not even affordable, it's like the easiest way, frictionless way. How do we get it to you where you need it, when you need it, how do you find it more effectively? Because you know, you could you could put YouTube video up till you're blue in the face, but you gotta know what you're looking for. And so I want to help with like how you search for topics and things like that. So I'm more of a I'm I'm thinking big picture, like down the road, what does this industry look like? And I gotta tell you, it's this optimistic in my mind what we can do, provided that people are willing to better themselves and not do what they kept doing. And I'll tell you why. If you just keep doing what you were doing in the early 2000s or even in the last 10 years, automation is changing this business in a huge way. You've got companies here that are automating just about everything, and it's a good thing, but you better be up on it because you're gonna get left behind for the people that are adopting it. And it's gonna be an essential part of maintaining pools, I think.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

No, absolutely. I mean, I definitely, you know, here at the Grid Game, we definitely are very up to date with what's going on with AI. Lacey Davis is all over it. And I mean, I'll say I probably take an AI on-demand class every other week or so just to kind of see what's coming out and it's, you know, what what's available because there are a lot of tools you can use. Now you have to train AI, right? You can't just go in and assume everything it spits back is gonna be correct. You do have to proofread, right? Right. And so I think a lot of people, you know, either don't understand that or they shy away from it. But actually, if you can actually put forth the effort in understanding how to use AI, it can be a very strong tool. So you're right.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Yeah, absolutely. So let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, let's do it. So we kind of touched on it a little bit, but you know, one of the big myths that I've always that I've heard is that, you know, Watershaping University is really only for builders. And, you know, I think a lot of people immediately think, oh, well, Watershape means, you know, construction design or high-end builds. And they assume that, you know, service techs or operators don't fit into that world. And what would you say to someone that's listening or, you know, or is currently under the impression of that myth, that Water Shaping University is only for builders?

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Aaron Powell Well, there was a lot of merit to that. I I wouldn't say that was a myth. Uh it's changing. It started um it started in 2019 as it's separated out from the what is now competition. But the founders or I guess the creators of the content did not want to dilute down their life's work, basically. Instead of trying to get as many people certified as possible by simplifying the classes and whatever else. And I don't need to get into all that. They wanted not to set the standard, but to raise the bar much beyond the standard. And so basically most of those instructors got together and said, no, we're we're gonna do this to the highest level possible. And so there's a lot of truth that it was originally for builders, and that is true. There was no service, there was no service consideration at the very beginning. They they kind of wanted to, but they just didn't have that curriculum. So I wouldn't say that's really a myth. I think that's that was true. It is changing. We are developing a pretty massive service track that's-I mean, it's it's a lot of work. That's why it's taking forever. I would actually say it's taking five ever, but creating a lot of classes that, in my experience at Arenda, very well needed, that a lot of information that you might not think of as a service pro. And you could have been cleaning pools for 10 years and you just may not have ever thought about this. And that's what we're trying to show you. So some things that can, even if you just glean one or two things out of each, say, hour-long short class or two-hour-long short class that can help you in the business, it's worth doing. And uh then we're trying to get as much of it online as possible so you can watch it on demand. So, yes, I would say that's not really a myth. It started that way for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

I love it. And again, educate, educate, educate. And I love that people can can kind of pick and choose. And I really like that you guys are focusing on customer service and brand awareness because I think so many operators or companies miss that mark. I mean, you want to really build that relationship with your customer and and you know, kind of grow. So I absolutely love that. I I think customer service is missing from a lot of aspects of the thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

That's what our customers tell us. I mean, I yeah, our students have told us, do you have anything for customer service? And I think uh a lot of pros getting into this. And we're talking like new people. So if you've if you've been in here for a season, I'm not talking about you, but like when you first onboarded, everybody had a first week, right? It was probably about, I'm gonna guess, the basics of what is entailed in the job, like the technical things you have to do, safety and like protocols that the company wants you to follow. They don't usually, at least maybe some companies do, they don't usually talk about how do you introduce yourself to the homeowner? How do you present yourself? Like how how what are you wearing? Are you you know are you just wearing a random outfit or are you wearing a uniform? And that kind of thing matters because you know, one of the things I bring up is if you just had a stranger show up with a box to your front door and knock on the door, you'd be like, Who is this person? But if they're wearing all brown, well, that's the UPS driver.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

I know who that is. There's some security there. So be thinking like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

But yeah, no, you're right. I mean, anytime we see the the the little Amazon swoosh, my husband's like, What'd you order now? What what's coming? And I'm like, Oh, fun fact, this is your order, not mine. So I'll nail it. You know, but it's it's that it's that brand awareness and and that's that recognition. You know, maybe your your ring camera, your simply safe goes off and you you look down to see, and it's like, oh, it's just, you know, it's my pool guy. Sweet. Awesome. He's here. And look how good he looks out there, you know? I mean, dressing professional. So well, that kind of dives into the separate set of myths I wanted to kind of cover, and it's very much water chemistry focused, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:34

And sorry, I don't know anything about water chemistry.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Now that's a myth right there. But I want to dive, let's just get right into it. And a common one is that you know, the acid column pore is the right way to lower alkalinity. And people swear by the acid column. Like it's gospel.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Yeah. When I first came into the industry in 16, well, I guess I was in the commercial industry, but like in residential pools with arend in 2016, the first instructions that we gave in the arrenda calculator said to lower alkalinity, on the dosing page, it said this much acid column pour, because that's what I was told to put in. Well, I I'm not exactly sure where that came from. That's something that I I actually asked Roy Voer in the in the previous episode on the Rule Your Pool podcast. He was going to look into that. And there's a bunch of stuff that I just call it chemistry by committee. I think a bunch of people just got together and they're like, Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, let's do that. And there's a lot of stuff like that. Like there's like the 1500 TDS over tap water. Like, okay, show me the research there. But I think this is my hunch, and I have absolutely, listeners, zero basis for this other than me logically thinking through how this might have happened. Because it's not true at all. Alkalinity is a linear thing. You put this much acid in, it is going to neutralize this much material, alkali specifically. But it doesn't distinguish if it neutralizes it from the water, which is what we want, or if it neutralizes it from a cement-based finish. It's still going to neutralize a certain amount of material based on the concentrations. Acid is about, well, at least muriatic acid at 31.45, which is what all of us pretty much use. That acid is about 18% denser than water. And it means it sinks, it goes down to the bottom. And I did this video in my old pool where I put a bunch of red food coloring in it, and it went straight to the bottom. And it just lingered there. And I was hoping I would see it get pulled into the main drain, but that didn't happen very fast. And it just stayed there for like 30 minutes. I'm like, oh, this is this is not good. This is not good. So what a column pour actually does is it sinks to the bottom. And I think the reason that it came out was if you wanted to lower your alkalinity, yes, it will do that. But you don't notice a reduction in pH. And I think that's because two things. Number one, it neutralizes on the cement. Now you wouldn't have this in a vinyl pool and you wouldn't have this in a fiberglass pool, but you would in a concrete-based pool. It neutralizes on the cement. So you don't see the impact on the pH. But the main reason is because you're already at another pool. So it's timing. If you came back like three hours later, you would absolutely see what you did. But because you don't, I think a lot of people just said, when I come back the next week, the pH is high again. So it didn't lower the pH. Well, what it actually did was slingshot because it etched the plaster, and so it actually pulled out calcium hydroxide, which is a 12.6 pH, and the pH spiked over the pH ceiling. And at the time that this came out, I guarantee they weren't thinking about the pH ceiling because it wasn't really known. It was around, but it wasn't certainly in the um pool industry and not measurable at the time. I think that's where the myth came from. They just observed and they're like, well, the pH is always higher when I come back and do it this way. Whereas if I spread it around, the pH is lower. So I don't know. The the whole idea was let's lower alkalinity without pH. Well, news flash, you can't do that because the re the reaction, the reason acid lowers pH in a pool that has alkalinity is because it burn this is layman's terms, it burns through your alkalinity, converts it to carbonic acid, which is dissolved CO2. That increases the CO2, which recarbonates your water, it brings the pH down. Your pH naturally rises because now you've recarbonated your beer, so to speak, and it has to equalize with the carbon dioxide in the air above the pool. In other words, your pool now has to go flat. So it's going to rise until there's CO2, until the CO2 that you just created by putting acid in the pool, which burned through alkalinity to create it, it leaves, equalizes with the air above it, and you come back and the pH is always like eight something. But if you're using a drop kit that stops at eight, you don't really know what the pH is. If you get a digital probe, you would, and it would be hopefully at the pH ceiling. So the proper way to lower alkalinity and pH is to dilute your acid. It could be the same dose as long as you're measuring it. You dilute your acid so that it takes time to matriculate through and neutralize on alkali before it reaches the floor. That way you're not neutralizing on the cement. You're actually taking alkalinity out of the water like you're supposed to. Right. And that's really all you're doing. You're just increasing the time so that it doesn't just sink. And so you that same video when I did the column pour, I did one in front of the return inlet because that was the second question I would get. Well, I do it in front of the return inlet. That spreads it around. No, it yeah, it pushes it to the other side of the pool and then it sits on the floor. Whereas when I diluted it, I think I only did 10 to 1. I would do more than 10 to 1, honestly. But I put it around the perimeter and it never reached the floor in like 40 minutes. So it took it took a long time. And it's like, yes, that's what I'm after. Yeah. Just dilute it. Put it in a bucket of water. That's why a clean white bucket is so important. Bring it in the backyard, scoop a bucket of the pool, put the acid in there, count to 10, put it right back in around the perimeter, and you'll be fine.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

I love it. Yeah, that that's such that makes complete sense. And again, this this method refuses to die. So I certainly appreciate um the background of that.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

I am ineffective at killing this myth. I will continue trying, Natalie.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Well Now that you know on the topic of alkalinity, you know, uh there's that there's another myth, and it's that adjusted alkalinity is the real alkalinity. And I think a lot of techs get confused here, right? And they think, oh, well, the adjusted alkalinity, you know, it's the number that they should always use.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Aaron Powell Well, I actually just did an episode on this on the Rule Your Pool podcast, so I suspect you might have gotten this from that. But this is a big question, and it's I think because of two. I think it comes from some retail stores have it in their software. So when you get a printout, a homeowner goes and gets a printout and then it'll say something like adjusted alkalinity or corrected alkalinity. What they really mean is carbon and alkalinity. You don't base your acid doses off of that number because you base your acid doses off of total alkalinity, because acid neutralizes on all of your alkali. What the corrected or adjusted alkalinity is actually used for is for calculating the LSI and the pH cealing. So you want to know what it is, but that's not what determines your acid dose. Right. It's not like acid goes into the pool and says, well, I only want to neutralize on bicarbonate ions, not these cyanurates or these borates. Like I just want to hone in on that. No, that doesn't, that doesn't happen. So it's going to neutralize on your total. So just remember your total alkalinity is what drives your acid dosing, and that is your true alkalinity. The corrected alkalinity is what pulls out the cyaneurates, pulls out the borates, and it just shows what matters to the LSI and the pH ceiling. In other words, how carbonated your water is.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yeah. No, I I I love that breakdown. It it definitely makes sense. And you know, in there, you you mentioned pH, and that's always a hot topic, right? And I think, you know, a lot of people might think that, well, pH really controls the strength of chlorine in outdoor pools, right? And I again, this is a a common repeated um chemistry line, but I think there's a lot missing to this.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Yeah. Well, it absolutely controls the percent so strength of chlorine is really speed based on the percentage of hypochlorous acid, which is the active form of chlorine. And of all the things I've taught, this is easily top three most controversial. But I've I've got a lot of data to back it up, and and it's functionally true. It works in the field. So I don't see why it's controversial. But when you don't have cyanuric acid, the pH determines how to distill this down, how connected hydrogen stays to a substance. So HOCL, the hydrogen's connected because the pH is lower, there's more hydrogen concentration, it's stronger chlorine. It activates faster, all that stuff. And chlorine's about speed. So it's about what am I trying to say here? It uh contact time. So if you are activating faster, you're oxidizing better, you're performing better, you're killing faster, everything's good. When the pH rises in a non-stabilized pool, the hydrogens start to separate away. And so you get instead of HOCL, you get OCL, and that minus is the electron where the H used to be attached. And that is a much weaker form of chlorine. It still shows up on a test kit, but it's something like a hundred times. I don't know who measured that, but it's they say it's like a hundred times slower and weaker than HOCL. So the active killing form is HOCL. Well, HOCL binds to something called cyanuric acid when you have it in your pool. And it binds really fast, temperature dependent, but we're talking, according to the scientists I've talked to, we're we're talking under a second. So it's very, very quick. And what it does is it kind of creates this reserve where you have HOCL that it will still show up on a test kit, but now it's an isocyaneurate. I hope I said that correctly. It's bound to CYA, so it's protected. Well, that is not nearly as pH dependent at that point because it just doesn't follow the same pH rules. As the pH rises, however, you start to lose that hydrogen, and now it's at OCl minus, which doesn't stay bound to the CYA. And so that separates, and you'll actually start losing chlorine, even though you have stabilizer in the pool when your pH gets higher. Now, we talk about this at ad nauseum in service 2211, that eight-hour chemistry class I told you about. We go in depth on why this happens. And what it is, is like there's a difference between using chlorine and losing chlorine. So if your pH gets higher, you actually start losing chlorine to sunlight because it's not bound to CYA because it starts jumping away. Well, if your use rate, meaning it's killing and oxidizing and doing what you want it to do, if your use rate is faster than your loss rate, you don't really notice it very well, but you want to limit how high the pH can go because you're not there all week. And if you had a chemical controller, that's a different conversation. But like if you're there once a week, let's be practical about this. Let's not live in theory, let's live in the real world. If you're showing up for 20 minutes a week, well, every time you come back, that pH is rising because of physics. It's not anything you're doing wrong, at least I hope not. It's gonna rise. So, how do you curtail how high that rises? Because if you have a hundred alkalinity in a pool, for instance, let's say it's a liquid chlorine, cal hypo, or even a salt pool, your pH ceiling is gonna be higher. Well, you're gonna start losing more chlorine because the difference between 8.9 and 8.39, remember, pH is not linear, pH is logarithmic. That's a huge difference. You're gonna lose a lot more chlorine at 8.39, and you're likely to have scale. You're likely to have an LSI violation on the high side.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

So if you could curtail that with the pH ceiling by limiting how carbonated your water is to begin with, you can limit how much chlorine you actually lose, not because it has anything to do with chlorine itself. It simply makes sure that the pH doesn't get high enough so that you don't have as much chlorine jumping away from CYA. So it just stays protected from the sun longer. And um and that's a big thing because stabilized pools, I guess I should get back to the to the question here. PH does control the strength of chlorine when you don't have stabilizer in there. It can't, it still impacts it on a uh on a stabilized pool, but very, very minimally. Like we're talking less than 3% of the chlorine, and then of that 3%, and that's a 30 parts per million stabilizer, of that 3%, if you're at 7.5, half and half, you have half HOCL and half hypochloride ion. Well, if the pH is higher, well, maybe it's 30% HOCL, 70%, whatever it is, it's an equilibrium. Is that really a huge difference? I mean, you're talking less than 1% in most cases, and you're using it all the time. I think this would be a much bigger deal if it was like 20% of your chlorine is not stabilized. But it's I mean, the higher you go, let's be real. How many of you actually have only 30 stabilizer? I mean, the higher you go, the smaller and smaller that becomes and that's why I say, and it's controversial, I call that negligible. Yeah. What really matters is not having too much CYA and having sufficient chlorine every week because all CYA is doing, it does protect and but it's slowing down chlorine. So you get this feeling of comfort after seven days, go, oh, I still have chlorine. That's great. Yeah, but you have algae in July, don't you?

SPEAKER_04 29:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Right? So maybe you don't have enough active chlorine, but that's a different conversation. I think I'm going into the weeds. So yes, it does if you don't have stabilizer. The caveat is huge. If you have stabilizer in there, that is a completely different transaction. And if you want to see what I'm talking about, open the Arenda calculator. I think most of your listeners probably have it. Everything that's underlined is a link to learn more. Just push CYA in the middle of the calculator, just tap it, and you're gonna see a graph. Look at the graph on the right. That's what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

I'm gonna have to play around with that app a little bit more. It's been a while since I've I've gotten into it. But you know, I mean, again, this this this myth, I I think people they just need to get out there and actually do the research. And one of my biggest things is just because someone is saying, oh, well, this is the reason for that, doesn't mean you can't stop and go, well, I want to research that more because that you might uncover something that someone else hasn't seen.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Well, I I think the other myth uh on that while while I'm on this podcast is uh people will put words in my mouth and say that I think the pH doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

No, I don't say the pH doesn't matter. What I'm saying is it's going to naturally rise. What are you going to do about it? Because pH, it does impact just about everything, but the impact that it has on stabilized chlorine is so minimal compared to non-stabilized chlorine. And in the grand scheme of how a pool is actually used, that's not really the concern. The amount of CYA is a much more important thing to determine if that pool stays safe, clean, and clear. And I care about stormer safety above all else. I was one. So like you can you can feel good about yourself all you want by trying to keep the pH down. Good luck doing that for seven days without chemical automation. Hence, what I said earlier, automation's here. I think it's gonna grow and grow and grow because things like this. I think automation is going to be the future and we better start uh learning it because it's not going to be Yeah, no, it's not, it's just gonna get more advanced.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

And that kind, I mean, pH, definitely on the subject, and we're talking about it. I think a lot of people believe that it's important because of bather comfort and that, oh well, you know, I know there's swimmers that that will say, oh, well, I can feel it. But that's I don't think that's really the main issue, right? Saying, oh well, PHA is important because of the bather comfort.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

How many service pros have really spent a lot of time in pools?

SPEAKER_01 31:48

That I love that. I think you should ask it again.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

I mean, realistic, and I mean in pools, because Natalie, you were a competitive swimmer. You you took it a long way. I was a competitive swimmer. I mean, I've got my 10,000 hours in a pool, and I could tell you the just like if you go on Rule Your Pool, listen to the Roy Vore episode, the chemical byproducts of chlorine, the chloramines, the trihalomethanes, the the byproducts of chlorine oxidizing uh nitrogen compounds, organics, and things like that. That's what's irritating swimmers. And yeah, I use the example in the chemistry class and wherever I teach it. I had these two bottles of smart water. One of them is in the black label, which is alkaline, like 9.5, and the other one is is the blue label, the regular stuff, and that's like six. Well, that's 10,000 times difference, basically. Yeah. Or I guess it's 5.5 to 6 or whatever. I watched a YouTube video. But the point is like it's thousands of times more acidic, and I can barely taste the difference. It's not going to irritate my eyes. Now, if it was a pH of one, okay, well, that's an acid at that point. But realistically, where we have pools, if you have a pH below five, you're doing a hot start, probably. You're doing a no-drain acid wash. People shouldn't be in the pool. No. Even if you had a pH below six, you're doing something way wrong or very intentional. And you should have told people don't be in the pool. That's the responsible thing for a pro to do. But realistically, like I swam in Europe and I remember I was in Italy and got to swim in in a tournament over there. And they had their chemistry at 6.5. I remember because I I was asking, right? Because I was care I cared about the air quality. Oh, it's asked too. But they had 1200 calcium. Interesting. So 6.5 pH, that water felt great, but they also operate to the DIN standard, the DIN standard is the European standard, which is like half a part per million chlorine. Well, if they don't have stabilizer, which they don't, 6.5 pH makes a very small amount of chlorine really active. But it didn't bother me. It was great. The water was super clean, it was clear, it didn't irritate my eyes or skin or anything. And that was 6.5 pH. And then on the high side, your pH is up every week anyway. Like, how does the swimmer know what it is? Like, unless you're at like 12, you know, you see what I'm saying? It's not the pH, it's the byproducts, which is very well documented. Like, super well documented. There's lots of research on this. That's what's irritating. And then to that myth, like, oh, it's the pH of your tears. Okay. Well, it is 7.4 is the pH of your blood. It should be between 7.4 and 7.5. I had a pulmonologist on my podcast to talk about that. And the way you regulate that, because it's water chemistry, 80% of your body is water. And the way the the reason you breathe out CO2 is because that's how you regulate the pH of your blood. Because if your pH gets out of whack on your blood, cells die and you can die. Well, the difference between a pool and a body, there's a lot of differences, but the main one is your kidneys. Your kidneys can actually offset it the other way, whereas a pool, the pH only naturally rises one way because you're losing CO2 to balance with the air. Whereas your body can drive that back down. And so to regulate the pH in a pool, it's about CO2 management, which is a good proxy because that's where the hydrogens are bound up. Anyway, to that end, when you have a pH that is controlling just about every little element of pool chemistry, and you can't control it, even if you had a controller, all that is is pH suppression, because physics are saying go up until it goes flat. Right. You have to build strategies around that so that you're okay in all of those pH ranges. There was an NIH study that looked at the pH of your tears, and I cited on the Arenda website, and it was basically saying the pH of your tears can vary somewhat wide because of how hydrated someone is. So they took a control sample. I don't remember all the details, but like it was not just 7.4. Like you had some in the high sixes, you had some in the eights, and all that stuff. So like there's a pretty substantial gap of like what your tiers could be based on how hydrated is. So that's a myth. I don't know where it came from. I think it just sounded good. People were like, yeah, that sounds good. Let's just, you know, it is so ordered. But no, there was never any. I think it just sounded good, honestly. And yeah, call me controversial, but prove me wrong. Prove me wrong. Show me the research and I will change my tone. I have no problem with that. I always have, but I have not seen anything that indicates that it's pH that does that, unless it's extreme. But we're not talking extreme. It's chloramine byproduct where there is more research than you could read in a month if all you did was read research. There's more on that than just about anything else. So yeah, it's a chloramine byproduct.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

To your point, I mean, as a longtime swimmer myself, and I still swim to this day, um that's never it's never come across my mind. And I just want to point out, I did look at going to medic medical school, and I can see why I didn't, and I'm now I'm being reminded of why I didn't. So I'm I'm I'm just gonna stick to my day job.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. I also did not go to medical school.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

No. And so I'm sure when my husband um listens to this because he's a medic, he's just gonna probably stare at me and just I'm gonna get that blank stare and I'm gonna be like, love you.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

I have found that it is much easier to ask doctors and experts to be on the podcast than to become a doctor or expert.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Amen to that. That's what I do. Yeah. Could not agree more. Well, let's keep moving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So talking about pH, you know, there's another myth going around, and it's that salt systems raise pH because of the chemistry. And I think this one gets repeated constantly, right? Because it's the cell itself. That's what drives pH up.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah, well, historically it came from manufacturers who were saying that, and because they had all the scale issues. They would have these salt cells caking up with a calcium carbon at scale. And a lot of this this should have been in this myth, but a lot of people, and I'm not gonna say who it came from, but there's one very particular company that said this for a very long time that it was calcium phosphate. Calcium phosphate's what's uh what's scaling up these salt cells and flaking in these pools. No, it's pure calcium carbonate. It never was calcium phosphate, at least I've never seen it. I've seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds through my customers of calcium carbonate. Calcium phosphate doesn't even look pure white. It looks like kind of like the color of khaki, and it's much harder. It's much harder to get rid of. But that's a little segue. So they they say, well, there is very high pH in that salt cell, and there's no doubt that it is, because you do have sodium hydroxide, which is over 13 out of 14, so super base. It's like a pure base. Uh that is created in the salt cell. But what is not discussed is chlorine gas is created at the anode side. So you have these blades, right? And so on the cathode side, you have sodium hydroxide produced, pure base. On the anode side, you have calcium, I'm sorry, you have chlorine gas, not liquid chlorine, chlorine gas. Chlorine gas is a pure acid when it dissolves in water because you get hypochlorous acid and you get hydrochloric acid. Another word for hydrochloric acid is muriatic acid. So every type of chlorine produces its own muriatic acid. Fun fact. So it's a pure acid. So in the cell, on the cathode side, you can start getting um you can start getting scale because it's super high pH right there. Now you can mitigate this by having good LSI balance in your water, by chelating your calcium and having a pH ceiling below 8.1. So like 8.09, 8.06, use the arenda calculator or any of the integrated apps like Pool Brain, Gimmer, Pay the Pool Man, Pool Service Software, they all have the Arenda calculator in them. So you can see the pH ceiling. Just keep it in the 8.0 something, and this is probably going to be a minimal issue if at a if at all. But the way you know that this is happening is the polarity or the direction of the electricity will change. Depending on the manufacturer, it could be every five to ten minutes or something. And so it changes electricity. And what that does is it now has acidic chlorine gas where there was sodium hydroxide, where the calcium was built up, and it dissolves it and starts fracturing it off like crushed eggshells, and they blow into your spa. That's what calcium flakes are. So if you have that happening, that is actually a little bit different than what's raising the pH of your pool. Because let's take this logical step next. You've got this salt cell and water's moving through it, say, I don't know, 40, 50 gallons per minute or whatever. That's pretty fast. It's not in there like that. About, I'm gonna guess five or six feet after the cell. I don't know where, but certainly between the cell and the pool, that chlorine gas and that sodium hydroxide neutralize each other. So believe it or not, the pH from running a salt cell is 7.0. Now everyone's gonna say, oh no, Eric, that's heresy because the pH obviously rises in a saltwater pool. And you're right, the pH does rise in a saltwater pool, but it's not because of chemistry, it's because of physics. Other thing that's not discussed in salt cells, and we again we cover this at length in my eight-hour chemistry class, is there's a lot of hydrogen gas produced, and hydrogen gas is H2. Hydrogen gas is not very soluble, meaning it bubbles. It doesn't dissolve very easily. Whereas chlorine gas dissolves like really easily. That turbulence releases carbon dioxide because it changes the surface area of water to air. And so you release CO2, and that CO2 off-gasses when it gets into the pool. The loss of CO2 raises the pH of your pool. So it's kind of like at a very small concentrated level, every time water passes through that salt cell, you got a lot going on. But one of the things is it's releasing CO2. So it's kind of like a little spa jet system and it's aerating your water. And so when it gets to the pool, it off-gasses. Well, what happens if you have an auto cover?

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

Where does it go? This is why you need some sort of trigger mechanism. And I know all the manufacturers make this now that says, oh, you don't run the salt cell, the cover's closed. Well, that's because you have to off-gas this stuff. So that's a that's a different topic for another day. But yes, it is physics that raises the pH. And uh, we have a whole article on that at Arenda, you can read it, and several podcast episodes as well.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Very cool. Well, you know, you you mentioned liquid chlorine. And so we we have you know about one or two more myths left. But another myth that I've I've heard before is that salt systems create liquid chlorine. And I mean, I I've heard that a couple times. I heard it from you the other day, too. So but what'd you say? That that liquid chlorine factory, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

You you heard it from me in the context of that's a myth. It is not, it's that's not what they produce. Now, the net effect after everything happens is basically the same as if you had added liquid chlorine, but it is not the same as liquid chlorine. So that's like after you add liquid chlorine and it oxidizes and it goes through all its processes, you get basically the same effect as what you did in a salt cell. But there's two differences. Liquid chlorine will increase your TDS by leaving behind chlorides and other components, but mostly chlorides and sodium. Whereas a salt system is the only type of chlorine that does not increase TDS because you simply recycle the same chlorides. You just recharge them with electricity. And so you don't increase your TDS. But how it chlorinates is actually chlorine gas. So chlorine gas is what's produced, and that you do get the sodium hydroxide, though. It's just on the other side. They will then blend later, but the chlorine actually separates. So it's not the exact same thing. It doesn't ever produce liquid chlorine. Uh, you get a similar effect much later, but it's not happening in the cell. It's it's two divergent reactions going on.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Yeah, no, no, that makes sense. That definitely makes sense. I guess you know, I'm sad. This is like our we're gonna jump into our last minute.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Well, I don't know how long we've been talking, but I've been enjoying this because like I get so many questions about the same thing. And to be honest with you, I hope this reaches a lot of people because I I can say it until I'm blue in the face, but people are just like, oh no. It it never is. And then sure enough, I'll get an unknown text, meaning a number that I don't recognize, and somebody referred them and gave them my number, and they're asking something that I've talked about for eight years. Like, just listen to the podcast or just read the articles. Like, you don't need you don't need to call me. So I'm I'm glad. Hopefully, this reaches a lot of people that have never heard what we teach. And by the way, we teach all this stuff because it continues to be a problem. And that's why we teach it. And by the way, if what you have been taught is not working, maybe you should look elsewhere. Now, I'm a big advocate that you get educated by every source that you can find. I'm certainly not just Water Shape. There's other options. You should go to trade shows, you should go go learn from all sorts of different people. And then you get to have the perspective of what makes the most sense and what applies well for you. Certainly don't just get in like the watershaped way of thinking and think that that that's the only way to do things. We teach it because we believe it is the best way. But there are circumstances where it helps to have context for what might be different in your case. So it's not the only way. Like you can manage pools several different ways. And I strongly suggest educating in a broad swath of sources.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

Yeah. Well, and I I feel too, you know, there's diff there's gonna be different situations based on location as well. So by getting further educated and looking elsewhere is is is really what you have to do to stay on top of uh, you know, projects or your with your company. So well, our last myth is that more CYA gives chlorine more sunlight protection. So it lasts longer through the week. And that's an expensive myth in the field.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Yeah, so you get diminishing returns. And what I mean by that is the more CYA you add, up to a certain point, you do get more sunlight protection, but that's up to a certain point. And the CDC research, or I should say the CMAC, which is the Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code, they did this ad hoc committee with a bunch of chemists and a bunch of very, very quiet. Qualified people. And they said that basically at about 70 parts per million, you're not really getting any more sunlight protection. And at just 30 parts per million, you're getting about 97% ish. It's not super precise, it's simplified to a chart, but basically almost all your chlorine is protected at 30 parts per million. At 50, it's 99%. At 70, it's 100%, or you know, close close enough. So anything over that number, you're not getting any more sunlight protection because there's only so many bonds that can be in that water. Again, the pH, it doesn't matter how much CYA you have. If the pH is high, the hydrogen leaves and it's no longer HOCL that's bound to be an isocyanuurate. So you lose the hydrogen. Well, that that bond snaps, and so you get chlorine loss to the sun. I mean, you could have 500 CYA.

unknown 45:38

Don't do it.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

But you could. And you could dump gallons and gallons and gallons of chlorine in there and you could put, you know, an 8.5 pH in there and you won't hold chlorine. Here's a good practical example of what that means. When you go to a pool, let's say you get a call from a homeowner that was on vacation or whatever, and their pool is a swamp, right? I always ask people, because water will always return to its natural state. If you were to unplug everything and just leave for a month from June 1 and you come back July 1, that pool's going to look, well, like natural water, and there's going to be frogs living in it and everything. Yeah, nature reclaimed that water. Water wants to be back in its natural state. Well, what's the pH of that pool? Well, believe it or not, it's pretty consistently 10.3 something. And a lot of people don't understand why that is. I certainly didn't, but I had this digital pH probe and I just kept hitting 10.36, 10.34, 10.39, 10.31, 10.33, 10.33, 10.37. All over the country. Every green pool was 10.3 something. I think I had one that was like 10.4, but who knows? Maybe that was calibration. I was like, this cannot be a coincidence. Like some of them are are green, some of them are like growing things, right? Like there's there's there's differences, but yet they were all the same pH. What is the constant? What is the common variable? Obviously, they have algae in them. Right. And then I realized algae is a plant. It consumes CO2. And if there's a finite amount of CO2, the constant is the air above the pool. That has a that's a constant amount of CO2, which means the pH ceiling applies anywhere in the world because we all share the same atmosphere. So now you have a finite amount of CO2 that can be in the water, which limits how high your pH can go in that water when it's completely the word is called eutrophication. So when it's eutrophied, meaning it's growing things, basically, there's all this nutrient in there, but it kind of tops out at a 10.3 something. Well, when you shock that, yes, you'll you'll kill a bunch of algae, which will release a bunch of CO2 temporarily. But when you come back, your chlorine, if you don't handle the green pool correctly, your chlorine, I'm gonna guess, is zero. Most pros find this if they don't hit it hard enough. And I mean, you could put algicides in there, you could throw everything at it. I mean, a huge amount of chlorine, and you could come back and the water's like gray and the chlorine's gone. Well, part of that is because you didn't correct the pH at all. And the pH is so high that it doesn't matter if you have CYA in there. The sun came up the next morning. And whether it's a cloudy day or not, the sun still got to the pool through the clouds, and you lost a lot of chlorine. So you want to use chlorine. You don't want to lose chlorine. So there's two kind of parts to this question of I think we get this false sense of comfort that if we have more CYA, we will be able to hold chlorine longer. Well, coincidence is not the same as causality. Coincidence says more CYA, I'm more likely to have chlorine at the end of the week. And that is true in most cases. You are. But it's not because you have more CYA that's protecting it from sunlight. What it's doing is it's slowing chlorine down from doing its job. So you're not using as much chlorine because it's slower. And so you come back and the growth rate of algae could have exceeded chlorine, but your chlorine just can't keep up. But you still have it. And so you test it. It's like, ah, yes, I still have some. Great. Yeah, but I would rather have zero. But the problem that I but I if it was zero that morning, like I've only had zero for a few hours. The problem with having zero chlorine for a pro is when did it become zero? Did it become zero 20 minutes ago? Or did it become zero the day after I left and I've been chlorine-free for a week? Well, that's not good. So I think the healthy balance here, at least in our experience, is 30 to 50 CYA on a residential pool, no more than 15 on a commercial pool. But then again, on a commercial pool, you have chemical automation. You can keep feeding chlorine and you can keep that pH down with uh an acid or CO2 feeder. But if you don't have that, 30 to 50 CYA is great. And just chlorinate and find what works for you. I think the vast majority of what chlorine is going to get used up on is going to be organic material because those are complex molecules. They take a lot more chlorine than a germ. You can kill germs very easily with chlorine, but getting rid of sunscreen is not so easy. So I think that's the biggest reason that people don't hold chlorine for a week is they have too much interference, they have too much non-living organics, too many oils, possibly nitrogen compounds. If they've added algicides, then they're going to be working through those nitrogen compounds for a long time. And so you have a lot of things that chlorine is attacking, and that's more likely to drain your chlorine in a week, but it's not because you're insufficient on your CYA. I mean, just 15 parts per million, I think, is 87% protection. So it's it's pretty good. But, anyways, yeah, I hope I answered your question.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

No, you did. I I think a lot of the things that we've talked about today, um, you know, with chemistry, I I think these are real live myths. And I think, you know, if you're a service pro out there, if you're not understanding what's going on, you're gonna have a very costly bill each month to try and figure it out. So again, it comes back to, you know, you need to educate, get out there, you know, research and challenge. I think I think challenging, you know, the research and your the education is is also extremely healthy. And so is competition. I mean, there's always gonna be competition. It's a small industry, and so you know, it it's healthy.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

I think a lot of this is gonna come down to automation and not just at the pool. It's gonna be automation because software is out. If you're not using it now, I'm shocked because it's it helps business with so much. I mean, there's so many options. And you're gonna be able to standardize your company's product, so to speak. And the product is your way of doing business. And so I think automating a chemistry routine is very important. You have to have contingencies, like you have to be able to have a reaction plan if something goes awry. But if you are proactive, and I can say this very, very comfortably because of all the experience we had dealing with customers at Arenda, if you are proactive, easily 90% of these problems, they don't even start. Ask my customers. They just don't start. Like you'll have the one-off because something happened, they had a birthday party and someone poured a bunch of wine in the pool or something like that. But like barring some big thunderstorm, putting a whole bunch of stuff in or a mudslide, or the landscaper puts stuff in. Realistically, so many chemistry problems are avoidable by just simply understanding what water was trying to do in the first place. And then you get complexity out. Just take complexity out, stop adding complexity in, get things out, simplify your life, simplify your route, and you'll be a lot better off.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Yeah, no, I could not agree more. Well, again, I can't thank you. This has been such an eye-opening conversation. And again, it's it's incredible, you know, how many assumptions, shortcuts, if you will, and longstanding myths really shape what people think about both education and water chemistry. So, Eric, again, a huge thank you to to you, again, executive director of Water Shape University, for breaking down these misconceptions, clarifying science, and really giving us a clearer picture of what true manufactured neutral evidence-based education can do for the field and for you, right? And so, again, if you want to learn more about Water Shape University, how would someone do that?

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Uh you can follow us on Facebook, just search Water Shape. I mean, there I don't think there's many out there. Uh shape.org. And the name it comes from what is the shape of water? It's whatever's holding it, right? So the art of shaping water is building a vessel or designing a vessel that holds water. And so it could be fountains, it could be a spa, it could be a pool spa combo, it could be you know any number of things. Water shaping is what we teach uh primarily, but now we're getting into service. So how do you maintain a water shape? So instead of calling it a pool or a spa, we just call it a water shape. And they all have very similar structural principles to them, but certainly chemistry principles to them. And uh, yeah, so if you're looking up your game, watershape.org is the website. You could check out a bunch of online classes. There will be a lot more coming. And I greatly appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Thank you again. And for those tuning into Talking Pools Podcast, thank you for listening. We know this has been a long one, but we always like to be wet and wild, and of course, honestly true. So again, guys, until next time, thanks for tuning in. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

Thanks, everyone.