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Ep 174.Managing LSI & Water Balance | The Deep End Pool Podcast (Video Edition)

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This episode: https://youtu.be/ZsggqNEoiAw?si=KZ28dn8p935RLX-n

In Episode 174 of The Deep End Pool Podcast, Frank and Jackie bring you their first-ever video podcast! They dive deep into the science of water chemistry, focusing on the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI) and how it affects your pool's water balance. Learn how to adjust your pool's pH, alkalinity, and other vital chemistry factors to maintain a perfectly balanced pool. Plus, Frank shares practical tips for managing water temperature and avoiding scaling or aggressive water conditions. Don’t miss out on the knowledge, and get a closer look at the Orenda app to help keep your pool in top shape!

🔹 Topics covered include:

  • Understanding the LSI and its impact
  • Tips for keeping pH and alkalinity balanced
  • The importance of adjusting your pool chemistry based on water temperature
  • Real-life examples of water balance adjustments

📅 Join us for this educational and fun video version of our podcast, and don’t forget to hit subscribe for more pool tips and tricks!

0:00 - Introduction: Welcome to the Deep End Podcast - Surprise Video Edition
1:26 - Personal Updates: Easter Weekend and Tax Day
2:47 - Parker Grace's Birthday: Granddaughter turns 10
5:31 - Green to Clean Story: Draining and Cleaning a Dirty Pool
7:05 - Copperhead Alert: Safety in North Texas
8:29 - Business Expansion: Partnering and New Territories
9:33 - Discussing Pool Critters: Duck-Off and Yeti Removal
13:48 - Water Balance & Chemistry: Introduction to the Orenda App
15:08 - Water Balance Basics: Understanding Saturation and pH
15:17 - Using the Orenda App: Demonstrating Water Balance Adjustments
17:11 - Adjusting Alkalinity & pH: The Importance of Proper Water Chemistry
21:41 - Impact of Water Temperature: How Temperature Affects Pool Balance
23:49 - Alkalinity Adjustments: Lowering Alkalinity for Warm Water
25:11 - Calcium and pH Management: Balancing Chemical Levels
30:11 - Adjusting for Seasonal Changes: Temperature and pH Swings
33:43 - Scaling vs. Aggressive Water: The Effects of pH on Pool Surfaces
38:24 - Using the Orenda App: A Deep Dive into App Features and Benefits
39:44 - Monitoring Alkalinity & Calcium: Tracking and Adjusting Pool Chemistry
42:37 - Sponsors Shout-Out: Thanking Pool Works, Jandy, Blu-ray XL, and others
43:35 - Business Updates: Flower Mound Location and Retirement Announcement
44:48 - Conclusion: Wrap-Up and Easter Greetings

🔗 Links & Discounts:

*Get Your Betta Solar Skimmer Discount!
Use code BTRFFD62 at BettaBot.com for 5% OFF your Betta Solar 

💙 BluRay XL Mineral Purifier - Reduce chlorine & maintain crystal-clear water: BluRayXL.com
💨 Cyclone Filter Tools - The easiest way to clean your filters: CycloneFilterTools.com (Use code DEEPEND for 10% off!)
🛠️ Culator Metal Remover - Eliminate pool stains & metals: Culator.com (Use code DeepEnd44 for a special discount!)

Discount code: Kona Labs https://konalabs.com?sca_ref=2885748.7RaoP0UgWu&utm_source=uppromote&utm_

Please give us a 5 star rating and a review, and contact us at deependfrank@gmail.com for questions and show ideas. Thank you 

Russel Ownens:

Welcome to the deep end pool podcast for pool owners and the swimming pool service professional. All of our sponsors are brands that we know, trust and use in our own business. We are brought to you by pool works for healthy pool people. That's pool works.com pool W, E, R x.com, if there isn't a pool works near you, become the pool works near you. Special thanks to blu ray XL, the best pool mineral purification. System in the industry, Blu ray all day. Fluidra and their many brands, including candy pool equipment and Polaris the most advanced automatic pool cleaners in the industry, Cyclone filter tools, save time, save water and save your back all save pool, fence nets and pool covers over 25 years of providing the best equipment to secure pool areas, saving the lives of children and pet clear comfort a patented hydroxyl based water treatment system, the future of water treatment and our friends in IPSA, independent Pool and Spa Service Association, improving the industry through community education and support. The Deep End pool podcast focuses on residential pool maintenance and may not cover commercial pool commercial pool requirements, please consult the CDC and your local authorities and code requirements for commercial pool maintenance. Now let's solve some pool problems with your host, Frank and Jackie Disher. You

Unknown:

pulls up my soap and the water is green. How much acid, how much glory. Hey,

Jacque:

friends, welcome to the deep end. Surprise video with and Jackie side kicking life and on the air, this was a shock to me, too, friends, that's why I look so fabulous. But, you know, hey, why not start out small so that later on, I could look a little better?

Unknown:

Well, we need to go to video for sponsors and and just get our message out there a little bit better, because YouTube's gonna become our main platform, I think. And so we need, we need, we have to get everything on video. So here we are.

Jacque:

I'm in my Easter pink. I'm just like, totally, you know, hey, unprepared, and it is Easter weekend. It is, this is, this is Good Friday. Yeah, it's

Unknown:

good Friday and Sunday, he rises again, yeah, just as we do after tax day. Yes. So it's

Jacque:

true. Speaking of tax day, our oldest granddaughter, it what turned 10 to both hands on Tax Day. April 15 is her birthday, and she is a little taxing sometimes, because she is extra. She is, she is totally extra. Parker grace, yeah, I

Unknown:

want to throw some pictures of her, but, oh yeah, for sure. Parker grace, we love her to death, and she's a hoot. Y'all, oh,

Jacque:

I'm, I'm so excited about her because, you know, she loves theater, and she's in all the stuff, and, you know, all the things that we do

Unknown:

looks like AV K the three year old, maybe loving theater. Second

Jacque:

granddaughter took her to a little mermaid at Costa, minana, if you're in DFW, you know what that is. And so, yeah, so that was fun this week. And then we had some illness. Everybody's been sick in our family all week long. And you're, you're not.

Unknown:

I'm a little sick too. Stay away from me. Something, something going on.

Jacque:

Maybe it was that pond that you crawled into.

Unknown:

Oh my gosh, yeah. Check out our videos. I did a green to clean, draining clean, and it was nasty.

Jacque:

That was a sledge to

Unknown:

not see a half inch down into this

Jacque:

No, it was pretty bad, and he smelled so pretty when he got home. It was fabulous.

Unknown:

That was miserable. And I had to get up to my neck in this water, because when we do drain and cleans, and this may be include people out there that do some draining, cleans, man, and when you're going to pressure wash it, because it has slime and stuff growing on it, all surfaces. It's slippery, but if you let it dry, that stuff becomes much more difficult to get off. So what we do is, as it's draining, then we're pressure washing, going around, pressure washing and taking the stuff off as it goes down. So in the pump takes it down pretty good. I think we were hitting out of there in four and a half hours. And this is about a 22,000 gallon pool, but it's as it's draining, like we're making our laps around. And as steps are being exposed, we'll, we'll pressure wash those steps and all the way down to the final little bit. When we get the final little bit, we get all the chunkies out, and then we'll chlorinate that little bowl really, really hard, so it kills anything that may still be living. And then we fill the pool back up. There are nothing living in that pool. That's great. No, there's no there's blood work. It was nasty, but we fill it back up. And since we had that really strong chlorine in there, the organic material that's left is just looks like a little bit of sand and powder left in the bowl. So we'll come back, we'll vacuum that to a filter, our filter, and then we get the chemicals right. We get the pump up and going, and that pool looks pretty good today. Yeah? So, and that was just a few days ago. Took you a

Jacque:

couple showers to get that off of you, yeah? Well, yeah,

Unknown:

oh my gosh, I was smelling that on me for two days and

Jacque:

and you did a pool school right after he went straight from this draining clean to a pool school. Bless those people's heart, but I hope you said the reason why I smell this way. So don't ever let your pool get get my

Unknown:

No, I told him. I just said this how I look. Deal with me. Deal with me. I'm your smelly pool. Oh

Jacque:

my goodness, this is what happens. I smelled worse than

Unknown:

but we talk a little bit more about Parker. Now she's 10. She's going, she's finishing fourth finish in fourth grade. She's finished in fourth grade. She'll be in fifth grade and then foster her older brother, our oldest grandson,

Jacque:

our only grandson, forming a girl gang. Now

Unknown:

is he's going to this. He's in

Jacque:

sixth grade. He's finishing up sixth grade. He's 12, playing school ball next. Yeah, he's 12. He'll be 13. He'll be a teenager in September. So he's a smart kid. You're old, man, you're old. He's a teenage grandson. I

Unknown:

started young. I started young. Oh my goodness, yeah, we're not even going to my first and we'd,

Jacque:

let's not even go in there. This is our first love show. We don't want people to never come

Unknown:

back. No, they probably would. They

Jacque:

probably would, because it's like the days of our drama with the drama The days of our lives. One other thing that I want to say today, of course, we're in North Texas, and so all of our guys are out and about doing the thing. And we got a picture today of

Unknown:

Copperhead, a big old

Jacque:

hunk. He was a big, he was a big in man. Yeah, copperheads

Unknown:

aren't big old snakes. Yeah, you'll never see like, a foot, six foot long.

Jacque:

This one's gotta flash the picture up and make sure they can see it. Yeah.

Unknown:

So there's the picture of the copper Oh, he, yeah, he was a Biggin. I mean, he's next to live oak leaves. On Live Oak Leaves are about an inch and a half, yeah? And he is wider than a Live Oak

Jacque:

leave, so, and Brandon was like a foot from it, and almost stepped on it, yeah? Copperheads are hard to see. Oh, they melt into the environment, yeah? So, if you're if you're

Unknown:

out in your backyard, front yard, or wherever, flower beds or whatever, and you're digging out those leaves and just bagging them up and everything, man, be careful, because they're out and you don't see them, they blend really well. And that's the most dangerous snake we got around here. There's some rattlesnakes near us, but none real for

Jacque:

the hill country going further south, yeah, but

Unknown:

Brandon was in. He was an argyle, yeah, which is Woody. Woody. Will get the occasional rattlesnake. But what he ran into today was a Copperhead, yeah? So what else we got? Oh, we're gonna go ahead announce it. Y'all. Drum roll. Drum roll. We're taking on another territory, a few more territories, actually bringing on a partner. We got a partner. He's coming in, and he's he's working to deal with the Flower Mound, the poor works Flower Mound location. And he got talking to me, and he approached me, and, you know, I think we're going to work really good together. Yes, he does. He's more into numbers, and as far as the books and stuff like that, and I'm just the pool guy. That's just, that's, that's how I that's how I roll. And so he's coming in, and he's, we're gonna be taking on the flower man location. So now we're gonna have four retail stores, and we're taking on Coppell. We're taking on Frisco, the colony, some little other town up there, the name of Chester, something, or something another what? But so we're going to start growing out in that direction. And so are it's, yeah,

Jacque:

he and his wife are darling. They are so sweet and so wonderful. I think it's a great mesh. They are good with Yeah,

Unknown:

they're really good people. And if, if they weren't, I wouldn't even be considering this. Sure, having a partner is not an easy thing. So for you, yeah, or anybody So, but, you know, but we're going to be coming on. His name is Robbie, Robbie Cox, and words boys, that's going to put us, yeah, it's going to pretty secure us pretty well, except for Minnesota. Will be the largest pork franchise Minnesota. But Minnesota guys are just. Is huge. But they got, like, all Minnesota and North Dakota. But, I mean, there's probably three pools in North Dakota, right? But they dropped down into Michigan and, oh, so they have all, they got all that, you know, up there where the Yeti swim. I we talk about critters, but we never really talk about how to get yetis out of the pool. So maybe one day we'll go up there and figure out what they do to keep we

Jacque:

should ask them so we can FYI, yeah, inquiry minds want to know. I mean, right now,

Unknown:

a lot of people dealing with ducks, yeah, we got a product called Duck off, which we can't find

Jacque:

anymore. Yeah, somebody asked about that on the script. I'm kind

Unknown:

of curious about what's going on with that. Yep, but there may be a yeti off, so maybe that's what they use, but get it off. So I wanted to go into today. I wanted to talk about water balance and water chemistry. I just did a video on the five basics and all that. So I wanted to talk about water balance and just chlorine, and I'm going to be going into the Orinda app, O, R, E, N, D, A using their app. There's a few good apps out there, so feel free to just search pool chemistry apps. There's several. But I'm going to be showing y'all on the Orinda app. I'll be doing a screen recording of my phone while I show you all the brand app. So let's go ahead and move into I tell you what. First we're going to go to break. If you're listening audio only, we're going to go to break, you'll hear our commercials. We got to get some video commercials going. I'll throw a couple things up, but so, but we'll be back in a minute. You and the water is green, they can be real jerks.

Jacque:

Hey, we're back on the deep end with Frank and Jackie. We're talking about balance in your pool, but specifically the Orinda app, or any app that you can get. Yeah, and

Unknown:

water balance is really critical, and I'm going to be showing y'all do a screen recording. I'll be popping around through it, and y'all just going to see that the screen on the Orinda app. But you know, water balance, I just want to cover a little bit about it before I start going into that. So water balance is basically your your water has a happy saturation point. So it wants so much stuff dissolved into it. And there's, there's a lot of stuff that determines what the happy saturation point is for water. And it's going to move itself to get to the get to where it's perfectly happy. So if you get too aggressive, that means, and there's, there's several factors that go into it. There's pH, there's alkalinity, there's water hardness, there's total dissolved solids, there's calcium, hardness, all this, Oh, and there's a water temperature. Water temperature is very, very important. But all this stuff goes into a formula and decides whether the water is happily saturated. And these, all these different things that go into this formula, when they move it changes the calculations of what the saturation is. So it's very important that your water is happily saturated. If your water is if it gets aggressive, if the numbers go down too far, say your calcium, hardness is lower, your pH drops, and where your alkalinity drops, and you start getting into the negative range your water wants to get back up to where it's happily saturated. And all it can do, it can't change its own Ph. It can't change its own alkalinity, but it can bring more materials into solution by dissolving them to try to get back up to that happy point if you go too far the other way. We call it scaling, and everybody knows what scale is. If you have a swimming pool, you've seen some scale on your tile or on your plaster, but your water has become too heavily saturated. It's had has too much stuff dissolved in it, with all the factors in the formula, it becomes overly saturated, and it will start dumping things that it has dissolved previously. So that stuff, like, you know, calcium, metals, anything that is brought in the solution, it wants to get back down to zero, where it's happy, so it start pushing that stuff out, and that's where you get staining, metal staining. That's where you get scaling on your tile line. But there's a lot of factors that go into this. And so now I'm going to go to my screen. We're recording my screen, so we're going to the Orinda app. And so if you hear like, right now, I'm showing like on the on the left side of this app, it gives you two on the left side, you're going to put what all your readings are and currently, and then on on the right side you can adjust your readings. There's it shows you if you'll adjust. Things where you can get back to where you're happy. So right now, it's showing. See the both sides are not equal, so let's get it to where they're both equal. It looks like I just had my my calcium hardness wasn't matching. Oh no, all right, I'm at a negative point 01, I'm typically fine down to a negative point one, and fine up to a positive point four, positive point five is pushing a little bit. But the more negative I go, the more aggressive my water is, the more it wants to bring in the solution. The more positive I go, it becomes scaling, and it will start pushing stuff out of solution. So right now, so I'm showing a 92 degree temperature. That's right here, 92 degree temperature. I'm showing a pH of 7.7 that's a little higher than I typically like it. I'm showing alkalinity of 65 that's but look at that little number underneath that, 65 says 65 right here. Underneath that, there's a number, I'll explain that to you. And up under the pH, there's a number, I'll explain that to you also. Then I got my CYA, which is a 60 that's right here. That's stabilizer. Then we have our total dissolved solids right there. And then we have borates. But if you're not using borates, you don't care about this, or you don't care about borates, all right, but you should, but All right, so right now, all right, let's say all right. That's pH is a little bit too high for me. I mean, 7.4 7.6 is perfect. 7.7 is fine, but in our water, but right where we sit on everything, it shows we're perfectly saturated. But my alkalinity is a little low, so I want to get my alkalinity up to a minimum of 50 and the green line, and I told you I was going to tell you what that little green number is underneath the alkalinity. Here, that is the calculation of the alkalinity after they subtract 1/3 of the cya. This app does this for you. That's called adjusted alkalinity. So when you test your alkalinity, if you're just testing total alkalinity, and you have Cy or stabilizer in your water, part of that alkalinity reading is stabilizer, and it's a false reading. So you have to subtract 1/3 of your Cy, our cya right here is 60. You subtract 1/3 of that 60, that's 20. So if we're reading 80 on our alkalinity, and we have a cya of 60, our actual alkalinity is 59.07, or 60. If you did the math yourself, it was a 60. It's not exactly 1/3 but so that that's that, that that's a huge factor, especially if you got higher Cys, and a lot of people think their water is balanced, and let's be honest, there's a lot of pros that don't even do this calculation, that don't even subtract 1/3 of their stabilizer from their alkalinity. So they may not be balanced, or they think they're perfectly good, but they're actually not, because look what happens, like, say, those numbers, okay, they're not too far out of whack. But let's say I had a Cy I'm one of these guys that just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, and I run my cloak, my cya up through the roof, and I'm not watching it, and I run, let's say 110 CYA, because there's some people out there. Don't think you you can have too much Seaway. Look at your alkalinity. Now we're testing 80, but we're actually 41 that is too low, because we never want to go below 50, and I only want to go down to 50 if it's really necessary to keep this water balance so you have, don't forget to take into consideration what your cya is when you're measuring alkalinity and calculating for that. All right, but this app makes it very simple. It does the calculation for you. Now, I told you I was going to talk about the little number underneath the pH, all right, so that that's it says 8.17 All right, that is the pH ceiling according to alkalinity. If you watch that little number, I'm going to run my alkalinity up a little bit, and you can see that number underneath the pH, the 7.7 there. I run my alkalinity up, that number goes up. All right, that because we've talked about this before, where pH is actually the concentration of carbon dioxide in the water, and well dissolved carbon dioxide in the water, and carbon dioxide wants to release to the water until it finds an equilibrium point in the atmosphere above the water, so it will release and it where it wants to go to is that that that pH ceiling, which is a point one seven. So notice, if I have a really high alkalinity, that ceiling gets pretty high and like, say, if I'm running alkalinity of 120 which take the CY. Out of it, that's actually only a 99 so it's an alkalinity, or an adjusted alkalinity, of almost 100 but my PH ceiling now is 8.38 that means my PH wants to go all the way up to 8.38 This is why I do not like higher alkalinities, and if I can keep my water balanced with lower alkalinities, that is my preferred alkalinity, I want to run a lower alkalinity so my phc ceiling is lower, so I don't mind running my adjusted alkalinity down to 50 when the water gets real warm, because right now I'm just showing that my temperature is 92 and so I don't mind running the the lower alkalinities to keep the water balanced. And like I said, I don't ever want to go below 50, because once you get below 50, you really have no control on your alkalinity. So I don't want to go below 50. So we'll get it to where it tests at 75 but after we do the or, you know, we'll test at 75 but after you do the adjustment for CYA, we're sitting about 55 but, and I'm sitting at point 08 alright, I'm perfectly happy at point 08 alright, but, let's say, but my pH is still a little high. So if I take my pH up to down to seven five, which a lot of people say is perfect, all right, I probably need to bring my alkalinity up a little bit. So if I bring my alkaline lenity up to testing at 90, which is actually a 70, after we do the subtraction for the adjustment for CYA, I'm sitting at a perfect 000, down here, so that that's perfectly balanced water. This water doesn't want to bring in anything. It doesn't want to get rid of anything, all right, so let's say I could keep these numbers all the time. I could always keep a 7.5 I can always keep a 90. I can always keep 340 on my calcium and 60 on my seaway and 8800 on my total dissolved solids, but in its middle of the summer, and this is where you know a big reason why you can't always run the same numbers and expect your water to be perfectly good, because I'm going to move this water temperature up here. Look what happens when I drop my water temperature. Because here in Texas, we'll, you know, we'll get up to 9293 degrees water temperature, and then we'll, we'll get down all the way to 40. This year, we actually got below 40 in water temperature in most of the pools, but look at my water balance. Now my water was a perfect zero at 92 degrees. When the water was 92 degrees, I don't care about air temperature. Y'all only care about water temperature. I'm treating the water, not the air. So if my water temperature gets down to 40 degrees, look how aggressive my water is. Now it's at a negative point, four, two, that's way too aggressive. So this will start stripping copper out of my heater. Will start eating calcium and other materials out of my plaster. It will be eating materials out of my tile grout. So my water is getting, really aggressive, and I think I'm doing just fine, but I'm not be, you know, because I'm look. Man, my pH is perfect. Man, my alkalinity is really good. My calcium, same thing, it was my Cys at 60. That's doable. TDS is 800 man, I'm a rock star. No, I'm not. I'm destroying my pool. This is why I say most, the most of the damage I see done the swimming pools is done during the winter because we stopped testing, we stopped swimming, we stopped looking. And we think our pool is just fine, but our water gets getting cold, so that makes it much more aggressive, and it starts eating our materials, and then water temperature comes up. It comes all the way up to, you know, right now we're about 70, all right, I'm still not too bad at 70. I'm at a negative point, one seven, that's, that's, that's more negative than I want to be. But work, temperature is going to keep coming up, and then we're going to get all the way up to 92 which is 9293 is about the house we see, and I'm back to perfect zero. But let's say I get back up to 92 and something happens. My Ph jumps up a little bit because I got a salt pool or whatever, or got a lot of wind, or been running waterfalls. Now, since the water is warm, so my pH is jumping up, my alkalinity jumps up a little bit, because that's always moving on us a little bit, and just a couple little changes. Now my water is very scaling, so all that extra crap that I dissolved in the solution, so my calcium levels probably actually. Went up because I dissolved a lot of stuff out of my plaster and tile grout and everything else. So now that's extra stuff into solution. I got more dissolved solids into my water, so my calcium levels probably went up. My TDs maybe went up a little bit, let's say, went up to 900 but now I get this little bit of spike in pH, and that's 8.0 that's not even a hard spike. And my water temperature got hot, and now I'm scaling my pool, all that stuff. I pulled out of my plaster, I pulled out of my ground, I pull up, pulled out of my pool equipment, from a heat exchanger and everything else. Now that all that is coming out of solution and staining and scaling my pool. So I just want to make sure people understand that there's you can't run the same numbers all the time, and unless you have an indoor heated pool that you keep the same temperature all the time, you have to adjust. You have to test and adjust. So let's get this water back down to right. Let's see I had it at 330 on the calcium. Let's get alkalinity back up where we wanted, or get our pH down to 7.5 get our alkalinity down a little bit, and there you go. So we're sitting back at zero, all right, so we're at 91 degrees right here, and we're at zero. All right, let's say I drop 10 degrees in water temperature. We go down to 81 all right, that's about that's a negative point 07, so for about every 10 degrees, we're losing about or adding, depending on which direction the temperature is going, point zero, 6.07. In our LSI. So let's take that back up to 92 and let's and all this does change a little bit according to what the other readings are. It's not always point 06, it can be a little bit off, all right. So let's look at our alkalinity next. Our alkalinity right here. So let's say our alkalinity right there's 90 we're at positive point 04, and I drop down to 80. All right, now I'm at a negative point 03, all right, so negative point 03, at 80, I go down to 70. I'm now at a negative point one. So that's about a point 07, move in alkalinity for every 10 parts of alkalinity that your alkalinity changes. So keep that in mind. So all this is different factors our calcium harness. Calcium harness is something that's going to change slowly over time. I don't like adding calcium to our pools here in North Texas, because we have this you know, we get extreme hot, extreme cold some parts of the country and, oh, and most of our pools are plaster, right, right? We don't have that many vinyl and that many fiberglass, fiberglass pools. So, so I don't really want to add calcium, because I can't remove calcium. The only way I can remove calcium is to drain the water. So I don't like adding things that I can't adjust. Now I'm going to watch it every time we add tap water, our calcium levels going up a little bit. So we want to make sure we still test calcium and track it, but we're not adjusting it. We're moving these other things, pH and alkalinity to adjust for it. So but let's say our calcium. All right, that's at 300 we're at an Well, let's go ahead and get everything right. Let's all right. So we're at net. We're at positive point 02, right there, and our calcium climbs up, let's say 30 parts per million. All right, so now we're to pop point 06 and then we claim climb another 30 parts per million. Now we're at a point 09 so a lot of calcium movement is just a little bit of movement on our LSI. It doesn't affect it that much. All right, so in total dissolved solids, which is kind of weird, let's say all right, so we're right there at 1000 if I go up on total dissolved solids, my LSI actually drops a little bit for every 100 I move on LSI, I move about point 01, in the other direction on my LSI. So if my my TDs moves 100 my LSI is actually going to move about point 01, in the opposite direction. So the higher your your total dissolved solids, the lower your LSI drops. Okay, but All right, I'm going to go up here to pH. PH. This is one of the reasons pH is so critical in our water chemistry. If pH moves point one, like right there, we're sitting at a point 08, if pH moves a point one, man, I went up point 09, right there I go up another. I went up point one. It the pH mirrors. It's the biggest swinger in the LSI, if pH moves point one, you pretty much move your LSI, your saturation index, point one. So. When LS, when pH moves, it has the biggest effect on our LSI. So that's one of the reasons pH is so important. Because we got a big range of pH, pH of 7.4 is fine. So let's say we get perfect at let's say we get our LSI perfect at a pH of 7.4 Let's see how. Let's see how we can get there. So here we are at a perfect LSI of point or 0.00, and my P in, my pH is 7.4 which is fine. And I mean perfect. I move up point one. I go up point 09. I move up point two. And let's say I got a pull that I'm running waterfall. So my pH goes up a lot. He goes it has a big swing of point five every week. I went to from a pH of 7.4 to a pH of 8.0 I went from perfect LSI. The only thing that changed was pH, and now my water is pretty scaling. It went all the way up to point five seven. So just that, pH affects your LSI a lot, and pH also affects how active your chlorine is. So pH is the main thing we're controlling. We're what we typically do is, when the water gets warmer, we'll run the lower alkalinities. And so we can, because the water temperature goes up, which makes the LSI higher. So we'll run a lower alkalinity, and that helps us keep our pH down, because that pH ceiling, which is that, that pH ceiling right here, the little number underneath the 7.6 so we'll run lower alkalinities To make that pH sealing lower, so the pH does not want to go up so high, and it makes our water easier to manage. But, but there's certain things we don't add a lot, like our calcium, our stabilizer, those are going to change on their own. We're just going to monitor those because we can't there. It's not easy to remove and then total dissolved solids. We're just going to monitor that. We're not really going to be changing purposely changing our total dissolved solids, again, because we can't remove it. We're just measuring and we're controlling everything with our pH and alkalinity. And we're, if you're you need lower PHS, then run lower alkalinities, and that will help you, man, keep that pH in a range that keeps your water balanced. And as water cools down, okay, we can run a little bit higher alkalinity and and our pH can go up a little bit, and we stick still, stay good, and water temperature continues to drop, okay, we can run even a little bit higher alkalinity. I'm not, I'm not changing my calcium if I wanted to, like, let's say, All right, I want to be happy right here at alkalinity of 71 adjusted alkalinity of 71 and a pH of 7.5 but my water is a little negative. If I wanted to, I could add some calcium to get balanced again, but when the water warms up, what? What am I going to do now? Because I can't remove that calcium I can by removing water. So we're going to monitor calcium, monitor CYA, monitor total dissolved solids and and watch the water temperature, and then we adjust pH and alkalinity to get the water balanced, while working with those other numbers about the other factors in the LSI. So pH and alkalinity is the main thing we're going after we're testing and and monitoring everything else, and then we adjust alkalinity and pH to make it work for us. And again, if you're having trouble keeping your LSI down because the water temperature is getting warm, run lower alkalinities, and that will help. But you don't want to go to an adjusted alkalinity below 50. That's as low as you want to go. But you can run a little bit lower PHS. You can run alkalinity, adjusted alkalinity, all the way down to 50 if you need to, but you don't want to go any lower than that. You don't. I don't like my PH getting above 7.7 because one, my chlorine is a little less effective. It's it's with Cy in the water. It's not near as that's not as big of a factor as it would be without Seaway, but my my chlorine does get a little less effective. But what I found out, and I didn't realize this, and I feel like an idiot because I never realized this, the higher your pH, the less effective your Cy is at protecting your chlorine. Chlorine from UV rays, so your cya becomes less effective the higher your pH for your chlorine. So I don't like running the higher pH is because one it's less effective, so it takes a little more chlorine to do what you need it to do, but you're losing your chlorine faster to UV degradation. I like keeping the lower PHS and and if you're taking care of your own pool or you got to pull that you service often, instead of adjusting your pH once a week. If you're having big swings in your pH every week, start testing and dosing pH twice a week. That way you're not getting huge spikes in your pH, like if your pH keeps going up to 8.1 so you got a salt pull your pH keeps going all the way up to 8.1 and throwing your water balance off. And then you adjust it all the way down to 7.5 7.4 to make it right. And then it goes all the way back to 8.1 and you keep having to add a quart or a half gallon of acid once a week. Start testing twice a week, and in dosing your acid twice a week. And don't let that pH make such big swings with which pushes you out of balance, in the balance, out of balance, into balance. So just run it closer. But alright, guys, I appreciate that's all I got. So I appreciate

Jacque:

that. Seems like it's very user friendly, and hopefully all of them are that you can input and then it slides it up in it. Yeah,

Unknown:

and a lot of the other apps do not use Orenda has really went far with this. Lot of apps aren't giving you your pH ceiling. A lot of apps aren't giving you your adjusted alkalinity. I see us, I see there's one major retail store out there that never gives an adjusted alkalinity, right, right? And that kind of bothers me. A lot of times people are, people are taking their water and somewhere like, I know, like pool works all of our tests, we got to have water temperature or so we can calculate LSI. A lot of places, they don't even calculate all that. All they do is, okay, your pH is rain, your your pH is within range, your alkalinity is within range, your calcium is within range. Hey, your water is perfect. But they don't even look at what the water temperature is and the effect that has on LSI. They're not looking at a lot of times. They're not looking at all at what to see why, how it affects your alkalinity. So your alkalinity is actually lower. So they're not even calculating that correctly. So you want to make sure you get all the factors in there, and you want to watch LSI range, chemistry is okay for many pools because everything just accidentally happens to be with within the range on the other things, yeah. But if you're really going to calculate and protect your pool surfaces and you really want your chlorine to be doing well, you really need to be doing a full calculation for your LSI, including water temperature, including adjusted alkalinity for seaway and and then using this app, this Orinda app, and Orinda is not a sponsor of mine or anything like that. It's just what we use. It's because it's very accurate. It gives me a lot more information than some of the other apps. But you'll start learning your water and you'll start learning water chemistry much, much better for your pool by using this app, because you'll start seeing how different things affect it. And that gives you a better

Jacque:

storms and rain that's going to affect over the weekend. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown:

Everybody's alkalinity is all rains here in North Texas, it drops out. It drops out. Our alkalinity, some people's alkalinities are going to be real low. Your pH, if it gets down, if their alkalinity gets down to 2030 which sometimes that happens, your pH is pretty much uncontrollable. So you need to get that alkalinity up a little bit, and then watch your PHS. Don't let them get too far out of whack, and get that water balance best you can, as quick as you can, and make and again, everything you can do to make it little swings and not big swings, because big swings can take you from aggressive water to scaling water in just one swing. And so you want to monitor that, or you want to keep those swings smaller so it's less harmful to your pool. Because I see it. I see a lot of pools, they'll go from aggressive water, scaling water, aggressive water to scaling water. And they're eating materials out of their pool, and then they're dumping those materials right back on their pool and leaving stains and scaling, sure. So guys, hey, I appreciate all of you joining us, and hopefully enjoyed the video. In the video, I can you know, since I can put all these other things on there and and show what we're talking about. I think it's going to be more helpful. But thank you to all our sponsors. We got blu ray, Excel. Chris Galvin, love you sir. We got cyclone filter tools. We got pull works. If there's not a pork near you, become the porks near you. Or I'm going to become the pork you may take over the world. Take over the pool works world, but we got a Jandy fluid drive. So cleaners love our Jandy reps, I love their products, yes, their pumps, their filters, everything about them. Really do enjoy them, but we'll see how you guys know, come see us at one of our stores. Yeah. Well, we, after first of May, we'll be moving into the Roanoke store. I'm sorry, the flower mountain store. Roanoke store is already up and running. Flower mount store, we're just taking that over, and this isn't a hostile takeover.

Jacque:

Rick want to retire. They want to step away. Yeah,

Unknown:

Rick's hurt his back. Yeah, he's been down in his back a lot. So Rick's, they're just kind of stepping away. They're gonna still help us for quite a while. Yeah, and we're

Jacque:

so thankful for that. Yeah, and they're good for sure. Yeah, we love Rick and Kim. We're

Unknown:

gonna miss them, yeah, but, but y'all come see us. I said, go see your local porks. If there is a pork near you, if there's not a local porch, tell them

Jacque:

Frank and Jackie. Yes, please

Unknown:

do Yeah, please, please tell them Frank sent me because I want them to tell me that next time I see them. So all right, but y'all, take care. Great week. Have

Jacque:

a Happy Easter. Take care.

Unknown:

And you only one to know what works. But some of the other guys, they can be real jerks. So take,

Russel Ownens:

be sure to give us a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast platform and send us questions and topic suggestions to deepend frank@gmail.com that's deep end frank@gmail.com and also check out our home page at the deep endpool podcast.com for all of our podcasts and video content and links to our blogs and our sponsors And the products we know and trust. Also find us on Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube by searching at deep and Frank. You.