Bob Lowry on Dialing in Free Chlorine the Right Way

WEBVTT
00:01:04.819 --> 00:01:07.780
Hey, welcome to the Best of the Pool Guy Podcast Show.
00:01:07.939 --> 00:01:13.780
In this episode, Bob Larry is gonna go over some mistakes you're gonna make with your free chlorine level.
00:01:13.939 --> 00:01:19.620
He'll talk about the 7.5% ratio cyaneric acid to free chlorine.
00:01:19.780 --> 00:01:23.060
Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level?
00:01:23.219 --> 00:01:24.819
Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program.
00:01:24.979 --> 00:01:30.099
Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me.
00:01:30.180 --> 00:01:32.419
I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry.
00:01:32.579 --> 00:01:36.340
Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed.
00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:39.060
Learn more at swimming poollearning.com.
00:01:39.299 --> 00:01:42.500
Let's let's talk about some problem pools here.
00:01:43.060 --> 00:01:56.659
You know, I get this all the time from I don't know the the I don't see the pools myself, but people will email me or or text and say they have this pool, they've they're just putting in tons of chlorine, you know, two gallons a day, three gallons a day.
00:01:56.819 --> 00:02:02.579
Maybe it's not that large of a pool, 10,000 gallons or 8,000 gallons, and it's just not holding chlorine.
00:02:02.659 --> 00:02:05.139
They've checked, you know, the nitrates.
00:02:05.219 --> 00:02:10.340
There's no nitrates reading on the test strip, which is probably the only way to test in most cases, right?
00:02:10.579 --> 00:02:12.979
And so what would you say?
00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:21.300
I mean, they say the filters have been cleaned, but the pool is just not turning around and it's not holding chlorine, and it's just becoming a problem pool.
00:02:21.539 --> 00:02:25.699
What would be the main issue they should look at when they get a pool like that?
00:02:26.259 --> 00:02:35.219
Well, you know, I think a pool that's using a lot of chlorine, you you need to to be a bit of a detective, if you will.
00:02:35.539 --> 00:02:39.620
A lot of times it can be the homeowner's fault.
00:02:39.939 --> 00:03:00.979
And it's something that either the homeowner's doing or one of the workmen around the house is doing, that they are cleaning something in the pool, they're blowing when they mow the grass, the grass clippings are getting into the pool, when the guy next door is fertilizing, you know, something is dropping into the pool.
00:03:01.219 --> 00:03:15.539
They can also have a pool that's surrounded by vegetation or landscaping, and that stuff is dropping into the pool, and everything that comes into the pool is organic and it needs to be, it needs to be oxidized.
00:03:15.780 --> 00:03:30.979
Pools that they look great, you know, people want a pool to look sometimes like a jungle and stuff, you know, and and while that looks cool, everything that's on that plant, as soon as it rains or gets some water on it, it drips into the pool.
00:03:31.219 --> 00:03:37.620
You know, and the wind blows and blows all the spores and everything else off of that, and it gets in the pool.
00:03:37.939 --> 00:03:42.340
You need to look at the environment and perhaps even what's going on.
00:03:42.500 --> 00:03:58.259
You know, we had a guy at a commercial pool, we found out that the guy that was washing the deck at night turned around, just took the hose and washed the deck, but he hosed it off so the the rinse water from the deck ran into the pool.
00:03:58.899 --> 00:04:04.899
You know, so everything that was on the deck hit the pool and the and it would use up all of the chlorine.
00:04:05.139 --> 00:04:08.419
You know, they'd start out in the morning with zero chlorine.
00:04:08.819 --> 00:04:11.699
I think, first of all, you need to be a detective.
00:04:12.019 --> 00:04:30.180
And and even bather loads, you know, you may find out that that all of a sudden, you know, this pool has become the neighborhood spot for kids, you know, and on Saturday afternoon or five o'clock, you know, two or three days a week, they get 10 or 20 kids in the pool.
00:04:30.420 --> 00:04:36.259
You know, so I think you need to be aware of all of those kinds of uses first.
00:04:36.980 --> 00:04:51.379
And you can start to then look at what's using up the chlorine, but and it could be just something that somebody either put in the pool or or thought they were doing good or something, and dump something into the pool.
00:04:51.699 --> 00:05:10.420
You know, we had a guy that was that was using the pool to clean his tools, and he would clean his tools with with some kind of a cleaner and then go dip them in the pool to rinse them off, you know, and you get whatever solvent he was using into the pool.
00:05:10.579 --> 00:05:16.339
And solvent uses up chlorine like crazy, you know, and it doesn't go very far away.
00:05:16.500 --> 00:05:17.939
So there's things like that.
00:05:18.099 --> 00:05:26.019
There's also the fact that you could have a biofilm that's growing someplace, you could have an algae bloom.
00:05:26.259 --> 00:05:33.459
You know, by the time you see algae, it's really colonized and already mature.
00:05:34.339 --> 00:05:38.420
Because many times algae gets started, you can't even see it.
00:05:38.659 --> 00:05:47.300
You know, it only gets you only get to see it when it builds on top of itself and gets dense enough that you know it's no longer transparent.
00:05:47.699 --> 00:05:50.420
It's pretty mature by the time you see it.
00:05:50.740 --> 00:06:02.899
So you could have algae in the pool, you could have a high cyanuric acid level, and in which case you've got so much cyanuric acid in the pool the chlorine's not able to do everything.
00:06:03.219 --> 00:06:17.779
So there is this thing they call chlorine lock, which chlorine lock kind of means that it locks up the chlorine so it doesn't work, but what I'm saying is it locks up a lot of the chlorine, so not very much of it is working.
00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:19.620
So there is that.
00:06:19.699 --> 00:06:22.819
You can have a high cyanic acid level.
00:06:23.060 --> 00:06:28.420
And also, once something starts to grow, it does have then a chlorine demand.
00:06:28.980 --> 00:06:44.980
And so if you have an algae, if you have algae in the pool, you not only need algae to get chlorine to get rid of the algae, but you do need chlorine to get back to a good chlorine reading.
00:06:45.300 --> 00:06:55.620
It is possible, as you probably have noticed if you've been servicing pools, you probably noticed that sometimes you add a lot of chlorine and only get a little reading.
00:06:55.779 --> 00:07:00.579
And the reason is that you can actually have a negative chlorine demand.
00:07:00.980 --> 00:07:06.019
What that means is you could add an amount of chlorine just to get back to zero.
00:07:06.500 --> 00:07:20.259
And that happens a lot, you know, where you've got something growing in the pool that used up all the chlorine, and then there's a negative demand, and you may need 10 parts per million of chlorine just to get back to zero.
00:07:20.579 --> 00:07:25.060
You're gonna need 10 to get it, to get it, you know, to get another reading.
00:07:25.139 --> 00:07:28.019
So, you know, it could take a lot of chlorine to do that.
00:07:28.259 --> 00:07:35.139
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because right now I'm doing some painting around the house, and I noticed that when I'm painting over a darker color, you can still kind of see it.
00:07:35.219 --> 00:07:47.379
So you're gonna need more than one coat to cover it, and probably the same concept with the pool that has a negative chlorine demand, you can need more of it to cover it, and then finally you'll get it to where all the dark color of the paint is gone.
00:07:47.620 --> 00:07:57.939
And that's something that you don't think about often, but I have seen pools where you pour in a ton of chlorine and then you read do the reading and you're only getting like one or two parts per million, when it should be 20.
00:07:58.099 --> 00:07:59.539
Um, so that does happen.
00:07:59.779 --> 00:08:16.099
If if they suspect that, one of the one of the remedies is to get a very high chlorine level, but keep it that way for 24 to 48 hours, and then let the chlorine level go back down.
00:08:16.180 --> 00:08:26.500
So you run the chlorine level up to maybe 25 parts per million or 40% of CYA, whichever is a higher number, and put that in the pool.
00:08:26.740 --> 00:08:34.100
But after you put in the 25 ppm, two hours later, check it and make sure you still have 25 ppm.
00:08:34.259 --> 00:08:43.940
And if you don't, add more chlorine to get back up to 25 and keep doing that until you get a chlorine level that doesn't drop.
00:08:44.100 --> 00:08:52.420
And that usually takes 24 to 48 hours, and when you do that, then you've killed everything in the pool or oxidized it.
00:08:53.060 --> 00:08:56.100
So that is something that you may want to consider.
00:08:56.500 --> 00:09:40.120
Also, one of the really big things that they did a study on in England was that if they got bathers to just rinse off, not take a shower with soap and water, but just rinse off before they get in the pool, they actually saved almost 60% of the chlorine bill by getting the bather just to rinse off.
00:09:40.440 --> 00:09:49.399
Because you've got all that sunblock and sweat and all that stuff on your body, and if you rinse that off before you get in, then chlorine doesn't have to work on it.
00:09:49.960 --> 00:09:55.560
That'd be a good invention for commercial pools, having like a shower right by the step area that everyone's gonna be.
00:09:57.240 --> 00:10:14.360
You could even have what they call a sun shower there, where you could have perhaps a a reservoir or a bag of water that the the sun warmed up so that you're not taking a cold shower, you're kind of getting a maybe a lukewarm shower before you get in.
00:10:18.920 --> 00:10:28.040
Another question I get often is I've got a pool, I test the chlorine, it's showing three, four, five parts a million, but I'm still getting algae on the steps, the deep end.
00:10:28.120 --> 00:10:29.800
I can't get rid of the algae in the pool.
00:10:30.040 --> 00:10:31.879
What can I do to get rid of that?
00:10:31.960 --> 00:10:34.920
It's just it seems like a permanent fixture in the pool.
00:10:35.639 --> 00:10:37.000
Well, and this is true.
00:10:37.160 --> 00:10:46.120
What happens is we get so much cyanuric acid in the pool that that we don't have enough chlorine to prevent algae.
00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:52.759
Well, I actually have formulas and stuff to show how much chlorine you need in your pool.
00:10:53.080 --> 00:11:07.160
But and the math is a little hard to do without without seeing it, but you know that that 3% of the chlorine that's in the pool is the part that's free to kill anything.
00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:19.399
And you might remember that at a pH of 7.5 that only 50% of your chlorine was in the killing form of chlorine called HOCL, right?
00:11:19.639 --> 00:11:22.680
HOCL, hypochlorous acid.
00:11:22.920 --> 00:11:28.680
And so that means that only 1.5% of your chlorine is in the killing form.
00:11:29.080 --> 00:11:43.720
And that means that if you had two parts per million of chlorine in the pool times 1.5% is only 0.03 parts per million of HOCL.
00:11:44.440 --> 00:12:02.360
And what we found, and I've researched this till I'm tired of researching it, is you need about 0.05 parts per million of HOCL to kill algae.
00:12:03.160 --> 00:12:10.680
If you're only keeping two parts per million of chlorine in your pool, you haven't got enough chlorine to kill the algae.
00:12:10.920 --> 00:12:19.320
The industry standard, and Leslie's and everybody else, says that you need two to four parts per million of chlorine in your pool.
00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:22.440
And what I say is that doesn't always work.
00:12:22.680 --> 00:12:27.560
And the reason it doesn't always work is because of that math I just gave you.
00:12:27.800 --> 00:12:41.639
And so one of the things that I tell people is if you want to know how much chlorine you need in your pool, the answer is you need 7.5% of your cyanuric acid level.
00:12:42.120 --> 00:12:49.399
And so whatever your cyanuric acid level is, you need 7.5% of it to prevent algae.
00:12:49.800 --> 00:12:59.320
If you've got 50 parts per million of cyanuric acid, you're gonna need almost four parts per million of chlorine in your pool, not two.
00:13:00.440 --> 00:13:02.920
So two won't do it, but four will.
00:13:03.399 --> 00:13:06.440
So you need to be aware of that.
00:13:06.680 --> 00:13:14.759
But once you get algae, you can use an algae and brush and you can buy all these kinds of algae side and stuff like that.
00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:23.960
But a minute ago I mentioned to you about running the chlorine level up to either 25 parts per million or 40% of cyanuric acid.
00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:27.879
And what I'm saying is that works great for killing algae.
00:13:28.040 --> 00:13:32.759
And so if you get the level up, you have to maintain that level.
00:13:32.920 --> 00:13:39.240
So you can't just run it up and then a day later, you know, go back to using the pool.
00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:59.960
You have to check it and make sure that whenever the chlorine level drops down by more than one or two ppm, that you bring it back up so that you maintain 25 parts per million of chlorine for at least 24 or maybe 48 hours if the chlorine if the algae had been there for a long time.
00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:07.879
But once you kill the algae and it's gone, now you've got a pool that's completely disinfected with no algae in it.
00:14:08.040 --> 00:14:17.720
And if you keep 7.5% of CYA as the free chlorine level in your pool, you'll never have algae growing in it again.
00:14:18.120 --> 00:14:28.120
And I think one of the points of that, and I yeah, I think we've talked about that many a times, and I I would like to nail that into people's heads that this is really crucial in pool maintenance.
00:14:28.680 --> 00:14:47.879
If you do pool service, and let's say you're there on a Wednesday, and someone has a party on a Saturday or Sunday, and then the pool zeros out, or maybe it's at one point per million on Monday and Tuesday, those two days are enough with the coin level below the level necessary for algae to grow in there for the water to turn pretty quickly.
00:14:48.120 --> 00:14:53.080
And so it's a consistent level every day, every time you're testing the pool, right?
00:14:53.480 --> 00:14:54.680
Yes, that's right.
00:14:54.920 --> 00:15:02.440
It especially in the summer, if you get a little wind blowing and stuff like that, you're gonna get algae spores in the pool.
00:15:02.519 --> 00:15:10.680
And they pop open and start growing because there's plenty of sunlight, there's plenty of food in the pool for them, and there's there's no chlorine.
00:15:10.920 --> 00:15:15.879
So you can get chlorine, you can get algae growing in a day or two.
00:15:15.960 --> 00:15:22.600
And that's even one of the reasons with a startup, you know, on day three, we want to start getting some chlorine in there.
00:15:22.840 --> 00:15:26.440
If you're looking for other podcasts, just go to my website, swimming for learning.com.
00:15:26.519 --> 00:15:28.120
On the banner's a podcast icon.
00:15:28.200 --> 00:15:32.440
There'll be a drop down menu with over 1900 podcasts for you there to listen to at your leisure.
00:15:32.680 --> 00:15:36.680
If you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at pullguycoaching.com.
00:15:36.840 --> 00:15:38.200
Thanks for listening to this podcast.
00:15:38.279 --> 00:15:39.320
Have a rest of your week.
00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:40.040
God bless.