Episode 95: Orenda Technologies - Eric Knight: Why You Should Start Using the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI)
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Google Podcasts, Youtube, or on your favorite Podcast platform.
We had the opportunity to sit down with Eric Knight of Orenda Technologies to discuss the Langelier Saturation Index also referred to as the LSI. This term may be brand new to you or you may have heard about it in a CPO class or even a start-up class, but it is definitely something that every pool professional should understand. We took one of Eric’s classes a while back and were very impressed with his knowledge of the subject. We knew we had to have him on to describe it the same way to you. We discuss how to calculate the LSI using the following six variables: ph, water temperature, calcium hardness, carbonate alkalinity, cyanuric acid, and total dissolved solids. Eric explains why each one is important and why you should be tracking the LSI on each visit.
Eric works for Orenda Technologies which you may know for their products such as PR-10,000 or CV-600, but they have been stepping up their education game over the last year or so. They have spent thousands of hours creating Orenda Academy and have enhanced their app so that it not only works as a dosing calculator but also functions as a Langelier Saturation Index calculator as well. We encourage you to go through the academy if you haven’t already and attend any webinars or classes that Eric and the Orenda team put on. Knowledge is power and the more you know, the better prepared you are for what is out there in the field.
Connect with Orenda Technologies
Resources Mentioned
Sponsors
Episode 95 Transcript
Episode 95 Transcription transcript powered by Sonix—easily convert your audio to text with Sonix.
Episode 95 Transcription was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Thank you for joining us today. Episode Ninety five of the Pool Chasers podcast. As always, our mission is to help educate and inspire in the form of a podcast. All right. So today's topic on the Langelier Saturation Index, also known as the LSI, maybe a new one for you or you may be familiar with the term from a CPO class or even a start up class for a long time. We felt the same way we had heard of the LSI, but never really understood it. We were taught range chemistry just like you probably were. And there's nothing wrong with that. But there are ways now to dig deeper into water chemistry, which is what we are talking about today, the LSI can be a tough subject to grasp for sure. That's why we asked Eric to come on the show and break it down in language we can all understand. We thought he did a great job explaining it and we took one of his classes and knew we had to have him on to discuss it here the same way. Over the past year or so, we have developed a real friendship with the Orenda team and a true respect for the education they are bringing to the industry. So please enjoy this episode with Eric Knight of Orenda Technologies.
Pool Chasers Intro:
Welcome to your go to podcast for the pool and spa industry. My name is Tyler Rasmussen and my name is Greg Villafana and this is the Pool Chasers Podcast.
Tyler Rasmussen:
All right. Well, thank you for joining us today. Eric, we appreciate you taking the time to join us on the podcast today.
Eric Knight:
Thanks for having me.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Absolutely. Can you please introduce yourself and what your role is with Orenda?
Eric Knight:
Well, I wish I had a title at Orenda. I'm just kidding.
Eric Knight:
I actually actively tell them I don't like titles.
Eric Knight:
I'm Eric Knight. I wear a lot of hats at Orenda. I guess I'm directly involved in sales, marketing, business planning. I run the app, do a lot with the Web site. Basically, most of what you see with the brand I'm involved with. I didn't come up with everything, of course, but we pretty much everything but the books and actual manufacturing I'm somewhat involved with. So I jump around where the company needs me. You are everywhere. Yeah. You see me all the time. I'm in the videos and I've actually. It's crazy. I never, ever would have thought being in our videos would have had me recognized and stopped in an airport because somebody had a pool in their backyard. This is a true story.
Greg Villafana:
Hey, can you sign my bottle of PR 10000. No liquids in the airports boys not in front? In front? No, no, no. I have in my car. I was a note. No joke.
Eric Knight:
I am walking through the airport. I'm wearing my Orenda shirt because prior to this pandemic were apocalypse we're living in right now. I travel a lot and I'm wearing my Orenda shirt. And this guy, just like this random guy's just like, hey, I recognize you.
Eric Knight:
Aren't you that pool chemistry teacher that I've seen on YouTube? Oh, it got real.
Eric Knight:
He's not even in the industry is just a homeowner, would you say? I like that. I see. Yeah. That's crazy.
Eric Knight:
No idea that that this moment would ever happen in my life. But it did. It was pretty crazy. I don't remember what airport that was enough to think about that. It wasn't Charlotte where I live. Might have been LAX. But anyway, that's not important. Just the fact that that happened was pretty nuts.
Greg Villafana:
Well, I think you do a really good job at it. Every time that we go to one of your classes or hear you speak like we're just like damn like we love how confident you are and just the way that you get the message out because we always get a lot from it and we think everybody else does, too.
Eric Knight:
Well, thanks, man. Confidence comes from, you know, you got to learn how to fail early. And in my earlier career, when I first got into the industry, I was really good at failing. And so I have no fear of that anymore. And, you know, you got to fake it till you make it. But with a Orenda, it's actually been such a comparatively easy role. And it's a comparatively easy. I won't say easy thing to sell. It's just an easier concept to grasp compared to what I was originally doing. And so I've had a lot of fun doing this and communicating and distilling complicated messages. I'm used to dealing with architects and engineers. Talking to the pool industry is fun. I love it and it's meaningful work. So I'm really glad to be doing it.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Yeah, for sure. So tell us a bit more about your your background in history and kind of how you got into the industry.
Eric Knight:
Well, I was never a pool guy. I was actually a competitive swimmer and I started swimming in college. And that decision to get into the sport of swimming shaped my life. From then on, if I look back, it is probably the biggest decision I've ever made. Swimming took me post-grad after swimming collegiately to have a chance to train for Olympic trials, which took me to Charlotte. And I trained for a team called Team Elite in Charlotte. At that time, you know, perf. right place, right time. The universe aligns. There was a piece of technology that had been invented called the Paddock Evacuator and that was invented by Paddock and a couple of local engineers. And they were in Charlotte or Rockhill, which is a suburb of Charlotte, happened to be coinciding with when I was there and I got really sick swimming indoors. Originally, it's kind of funny. The first two years of college, we had a bromine pool and we're talking like a 1.2 million gallon, 50 meter, beautiful nat yttrium venue, bromine pool. Hmm. And I'll never forget that smell because that smell, as soon as you'd open the door. Walking into the building, that bromine smell is so nostalgic. Anytime I smell it because it's so different from chlorine. I know. Exactly. That's a bromine pool. It's just it's ingrained in my brain.
Eric Knight:
And I never had a problem when it was a growing pool. And then my junior year they switched it to Cal Hypo. And I got asthma within like a month. And for some reason, no other people had issues with bromine. And then they said the air got better. Not me. My lungs burned. And it wasn't so bad just when we were training because it's a huge auditorium. But anytime there would be a swim meet or a big event. Oh, man. It was horrible. And I would go to other pools like in my county. I'm from the DC area. And so I would swim in some of those county pools. Could you just couldn't breathe. And it was it was burning. It was physically like hot. It felt horrible. And so I remember that. And having to get out in the middle of a workout or in the middle of a race, I actually had to get out in the middle of a race in 2009. Never forget it. And run outside to get fresh air. And so this was deeply personal to me. I had an inhaler. And I remember my doctor who didn't know anything about this. You know, listen to my lungs, it said, you know, I haven't seen this before, but it sounds to me like you're allergic to chlorine.
Eric Knight:
You should stop swimming if you want this to stop. Stop, stop. Swimming is not an option for me. Like I have to have something to continue. So he prescribed me an inhaler and some anti-inflammatory drug of some kind. And I basically subsisted on an inhaler for the next four years. Actually, if I did the math, three years, I guess, until I get to Charlotte and this pool that we were training in. Was. It was a dungeon, but it was our dungeon. You know, we had it was so freakin cool. We had ice steel I-beams above it and they were about 20 feet above the water and they had someone like long before I got there. Bring in like a jig, like a boom lift. And they installed pull up bars and then ropes that would hang down into the water. So you tie the ropes off to the wall and then you could climb the ropes and do pull ups and then you just drop 20 feet into the pool. There was just it was like a playground for a competitive swimmer, especially when you're training for trials. You're training pretty much every day at a very high level. So you have to have something to have fun with because it's pretty grueling otherwise.
Eric Knight:
But that dungeon man, that air quality was terrible. We had fans and indoors. We didn't know better. And it was just inhaler multiple times a practice. We go to the Olympic Training Center in January of 2012. We come back after several weeks and we don't even notice it. But there's this giant white bench and this giant white bench was called a Paddock Evacuator or fact. If you look at Paddock Evacuator on Facebook, I think it's still there. Like title image is a picture of that bench and we just put our bags on it. Nobody even noticed it was really different. And I don't know, a week or two later, a man named Don Baker and Jeff Gaskell walked through the door and they ask us, Hey, guys, how's the air quality in here? It's like, you know, now that you mention it, I haven't used my inhaler in a long time, not since I was in Colorado Springs. And I took deep breaths in like no coughing. That never used to happen. I think in men it is really good. The doors are close and everything. And they explained what you've been breathing. What's been making you sick? What's been burning your lungs and itching your eyes? All this stuff is a heavy gas called chloramine. And that bench is sucking them out.
Eric Knight:
And I was floored. I got out, I introduced myself. And right after Olympic trials, I mean, I had a bunch of job interviews lined up. I didn't know what I was gonna do. You know, I basically had a degree in swimming with even though I had a grad degree, I had masters degree. But I know I didn't want to use it. I didn't like what I got my degree in. So I had all these interviews lined up in Don Baker, the owner of Paddock called me up and said, hey, he painted this vision. He said, we're going to fix air or to fix air in these pools worldwide. We're going to stop this problem. And I need somebody who understands it like you do. And that was my first job in the pool industry. And we did a lot of meaningful work. But I will tell you, for a guy with zero engineering classes at twenty five years old, trying to persuade professional engineers and architects to listen to him. That is a nice way to start your your your career in the aquatics industry. So cut my teeth there for three years. And that's why I say comparatively Orenda has been a lot of fun. It's been a much easier learning curve. So that's how I got into the industry.
Greg Villafana:
Right. And did you have a huge disadvantage by having those breathing issues?
Eric Knight:
Well, yeah, I mean, it definitely impacted me. But disadvantage implies that nobody else had them. Almost everybody had those problems. I just had it worse than others. So it's not like nobody was coughing. Most of us were coughing there at any given time. You're gonna have five or six inhalers out minimum, and we only had 14 people on our team, so you could call it at least half the. The swimming population has breathing issues and then. You know, a smaller percentage would be severe enough that they have inhalers out, and I was one of those.
Greg Villafana:
Yeah, I guess that's probably pretty common that anybody that swims for fun or professionally or how you were doing it. Doesn't think about if you've grown up swimming. The smell is something you grew up with and nobody probably has any idea of what questions to ask or if it's bad for you or hey, can we talk to the maintenance team or the pool service company that's taking care of this? Like nobody would probably ever think to do that.
Greg Villafana:
And I'm assuming that you all were the same way until the gentleman from Paddock asked you how the air quality was.
Eric Knight:
I had no idea. And then I became keenly aware of it. Everywhere else I went. And yeah, it really is. I mean, but here's the thing. There's an abundance of health research out there. It's not like this is an unknown problem. It's just a misunderstood problem. And then when when you translate that to, OK, what systems need to be in place to stop this problem? You have to talk about HVAC. This is not just about pool chemistry like the mechanical system. The air system has to match the water system. Those parties in a design team, they often don't even know who each other are, let alone speak. They never communicate. So what happens is you get a left hand, right hand problem and we are the ones we meaning the swimmers and the coaches and the lifeguards were the ones who suffer because they didn't coordinate. And I kind of like it. It, too. OK. The city is going to build a new bridge over the creek or a river.
Eric Knight:
I never have any questions whether or not it's structurally secure because it's a highway. We're gonna drive over it. We are just relying on the experts, these engineers, these architects, these structural people, you know, contractors, professionals. Right. They're professionals. I have no doubt that it's going to support the weight of that truck in front of me and me as we're going over this bridge. But that's because they all coordinate and they've done it before. It's an established thing of how to build a bridge. This is still very unchartered territory that has not yet been so cohesive, I should say. So, yeah, they still have issues, but. It's kind of like my entire M.O. of being in the industry is to fix the air quality problem, because that's what's personal to me, right?
Greg Villafana:
What were you thinking when the the pool at the Olympics went green?
Eric Knight:
So of course I'm watching and the first guy call was Harold Evans because at the time I was actually starting to write blogs for them. I did not I was not employed by them. I just looked at their site and they didn't have any content. So I just started to write blogs. And I said, OK, why did this happen? And I don't want to get the sequence of events out. But as the days went on, the theories kept changing because the information that was being released by the Brazilians kept changing. At first it was Algae and then it was knows.. copper. And then it was it sounds like they put hydrogen peroxide in which neutralize the chlorine. So we're back to Algae. Oh, no. But then we oxidized copper. And so we still don't know why that turned green. But based on what they said, meaning the Brazilian authorities, somebody accidentally put a whole lot of hydrogen peroxide in the pool, which, of course, wiped out the chlorine and they had algae. So either way, whether it was copper, algae or both. Not a good look, but it sure made news.
Tyler Rasmussen:
That's pretty rough.
Greg Villafana:
I thought just looking at it right away because we had the pool service business that somebody had put food dye. Because, you know, it's the Olympics. You know that this is something that everybody's all.
Eric Knight:
Yeah. Of all stages. And they're just like, can you imagine being that guy? Imagine being the aquatics director.
Eric Knight:
Oh. Oh, I feel so. That's what I'm talking about. I like yours. You know that dude at.
Eric Knight:
He got fired. He got fired so fast. He got fired by the new world. Found out. Yeah, I'm guessing.
Eric Knight:
I mean, I don't I don't know anything but clear your asses out here. Oh yeah. World's biggest stage. You kidding me? And I actually have some some buddies who I trained with that were in that meet. And but they were a different aquatic center, so the place where that happens called the Marine Link Aquatic Center. That's where they had water polo and diving. The swimming was actually inside a stadium. So it was a different pool. And that pool, water quality wasn't the best. It was actually pretty cloudy by the end of the meat. It's the Olympics. Yeah. I think we should figure out by now how to keep water clean. But I guess we'll get into a little bit of water chemistry and balance. There's a lot of unknowns. Even by the best of the best that we've been learning. And I guess we'll get into that soon.
Greg Villafana:
Yeah, almost. I want to know who your favorite swimmer is and why.
Eric Knight:
Hall man, that's what you can't put this on. This is your last.
Greg Villafana:
Well, no, because I've been OK, because we do, you know, research and watch a lot of documentaries on swimming and even swimming in the sea.
Greg Villafana:
And, you know, all kinds of different things. Even the first person, I forgot what his name was. But back in the eighteen hundreds, he was the first person to start swimming out in the ocean somewhere in the U.K. But there's a lot of really cool history behind it because everybody they made a statue of this guy just because it was crazy for anybody to swim for that long.
Greg Villafana:
And it was such a people were proud of somebody with that kind of endurance even at that time.
Eric Knight:
I guess I don't have a favorite swimmer per say. I think I respect people who have done things in certain workouts because I can appreciate what it physically takes and mentally takes to do those kind of workouts. And a lot of the people that I trained with, you know, you got to respect what they're really good at. And so someone like my favorite swimmers are the ones that are somehow able to disconnect the pain sensors in their brain and get through workouts that are just on paper humanly impossible. And there's only a handful of those kind of swimmers that I've ever had the privilege to train with. And I would say those are probably my favorite, just because they are the toughest people I've ever met. Just because I know how hard it would be to do that. And of course, I fall short. I it's a big part of our culture to put in the work. So in swimming culture, if you get out in the middle of a workout, if it's not what we call honest failure and I mean, like between you and God, you know, you physically cannot go on. Honest failures, one thing. That's OK. Quitting early is not OK, and so most of us would find the failure line. But you never knew who was actually just quitting early because they couldn't handle the work and got to be careful with that line.
Eric Knight:
So now that's a knock and answer that question because it's going to incriminate me. No one knows.
Greg Villafana:
That was a good answer because I think, you know, anybody that's good at anything can really.
Eric Knight:
They know how to say one thing.
Eric Knight:
I only met him one time, but one of the most legendary swimmers of my era is a guy named FRAND Crippen. I was not friends with him. I only met him one time, but he actually died in an open water swim, tragically. And it was a big international thing because I think it was over in the UAE like Dubai or something. And the water was just too hot. And you think it's a tragedy by all means. But that guy was legendary long before his death. He was known for doing these open water sets that were just. You couldn't comprehend how much that guy could handle. And he literally swam himself to death. And that's it. Like I said, tragic. But as a swimmer, I kind of look at that and think like, man, if there's a way to go out.
Eric Knight:
Doing what you love in on a world stage like that. I mean, I can't think of a more honorable way to go, but. I don't know. Yeah, he's he's an eternal legend for that.
Greg Villafana:
So he got people like Phelps out there on the Discovery Channel, whatever it is, race in the shark or they were trying to figure out how fast the shark was.
Greg Villafana:
I'm like, is he gonna get in there? Because that changes this whole thing.
Eric Knight:
I I heard about that. I think I saw a little clip of it on YouTube.
Greg Villafana:
But yeah, I didn't finish the rest of it. They were taking too damn long to figure out how shark.
Eric Knight:
Well, they got to keep you watching for minutes.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Thank you. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Yeah. That's an awesome intro into the industry for sure.
Pentair Ad:
Our passion is he point she knowledge and being able to share that knowledge with you is a reason we started pool chasers. Turns out Pentair several ways for you to gain knowledge as well. Take, for example, the Pentair Master Service Program. This is a program designed to recognize dealers, service technicians and other professionals for completing desired training modules. It gives you the tools you can use to troubleshoot Pentair installations in the field and become a master of Pentair product knowledge. Be rewarded for educational activities designed to enhance your Pentair knowledge as you move through the certification levels with three levels to work through. Becoming a certified Pentair professional has never been easier. It's training that rewards you and your business. But the real value comes from building your confidence in the field. To ensure the customer loyalty, you need to keep your business growing. We encourage you to check this out. So to become a certified Pentair professional today. Visit PentairPartners.com or click the link in the right below.
Tyler Rasmussen:
So let's talk about some minor chemistry here today when it comes to balancing pools water. Many of us are taught to use range chemistry. Can you explain what that is and why it may not always be the best way to balance a pool?
Eric Knight:
Sure. Before I talk about range chemistry, there's really two sides to water chemistry and a lot of people conflate the two. And until it was explained to me that there's really two different disciplines here, it didn't make as much sense to me either. So on the one side, you have sanitization, keeping the water chlorinated, clean, healthy, disease free algae free looking, good, safe. That's just sanitizing and disinfecting. There's a completely different discipline called balance. And most people say, oh, I have balanced water chemistry, meaning all of their chemistry is good. They're not really that related. There are a few factors that transition in both. For instance, Cyanuric Acid dramatically impacts both sides. P.H. dramatically impacts both sides when there's no sign. Erck Acid. But when there is sign URC acid, as we might discuss, it's a lot less impactful than you might think. So there are factors that influence both, but balance is essentially the saturation of calcium in your water and we'll get into that in a little bit. That's measured on the LSI. So to your question of range chemistry, range chemistry is what the textbooks say. These are the ideal parameters of water 7 4 to 7.6 ideal P-H depending on the book you read. And of course there are different opinions, there are different books, 80 to 120. Alkalinity is the most common. But I've also seen, you know, valid sources that say 100 to 150 alkalinity. Like what? But but yet, you know, it just depends on who you read 200 to 400 calcium hardness is what most say.
Eric Knight:
The problem with ranges is they don't take into the into account. The other factors that go into water balance like water temperature is a huge one. How about Cyanuric acid? How about TDS, including salt? Which brings us to what the LSI is about. So it is mathematically impossible to stay within the textbook ideal ranges. And keep a pool balanced during the winter. I'm from the Northeast. Every pool is guaranteed to freeze unless you're running the heater all winter. Those pools will freeze at some point mathematically impossible to stay textbook range compliant and not destroy that pool in the wintertime because it will etch. And that's the trap. And there's a lot of physics at play here that drive the chemistry to change. And we have to understand why. Rather than thinking, OK, I have to have this P.H. range. I have to have this alkalinity rage because the textbook tells me to pump the brakes. Why are we not trying to figure out what does the water want? Because the water is a physical being, it doesn't have an opinion, it's just physics. It's just going to be. It's going to do what it wants to do. So rather than try to force it to comply with what these textbooks are saying, is there a way that we can still have optimal sanitization? And make the water happy. And the answer is yes.
Greg Villafana:
It's using the LSI and can you explain to anybody that might not know what you know? LSI is exactly in how it was introduced to the pool industry.
Eric Knight:
Well, the LSI stands for the Langelier Saturation Index. Dr. Wilfred Langelier or came up with it, I believe, for cooling systems and boilers, but basically closed water systems. A pool is not technically a closed water system because it can have outside contamination that comes into it. What guarantee it will have outside contamination, but it is a looped water system as opposed to something like a drinking water system. That is a one pass treatment and it moves on. You never see that water again. A Loopt system means it's it's constantly retreating the same water. So Dr. Wilfred Langelier or I believe in the nineteen thirties came up with this formula, which is now the LSI, the Langleir or Saturation Index, because of a problem with corrosion in those systems and scale formation, calcium scale. It has since been adapted to account for scientific acid, which is not an issue in boiler systems. So it has been adapted by. I don't even know who. I don't know who introduced it to the pool industry. It was long before my time, but it's been talked about. People know about it. It's in the CPO book. It's in most of the textbooks you see. But it's to be honest, it's explained accurately. There's nothing wrong with the explanations where those books fall short is nobody had like a big giant stop sign on the page that said stop and pay attention to this. This is very important. Nobody's ever really emphasized just how critically important the LSI is. And to be honest with you, until we played with our own app and saw what it did to the chemistry like visualized it. We had no idea how important it was either. We built the LSI calculator because we thought it was cool.
Eric Knight:
That's the truth. We just thought it was a cool feature to have. Harold knew it was important to have, but we didn't realize it would fundamentally change the industry. And look, it has the saturation index is the objective measurement of water. Balance has nothing to do with sanitization. It's just how saturated is water with calcium carbonate? Is it too saturated or is it under saturated or is it balanced? And like if it's under saturated? Water's gonna find calcium wherever it can. And this is how etching occurs because there's calcium, the cement and the tile grout and that water will steel that calcium to get back to LSI balance. And if it is oversaturated, it's going to have to donate it. It has. I can't hold it any more. So it has to drop calcium out. And now, knowing how the LSI works, we've learned things like calcium will always, always, always drop out in the hottest places first. This is why salt cells scale before anything else. The next thing to scale a heater like a heat exchanger because the temperature is hottest there.
Eric Knight:
So if you don't have scale like on that sunny tile line, that's getting really hot all day, but you have it on the bottom of the pool, either that's not scale or it was forced there by a local LSI violation, usually acid that went down to the bottom and etched in. That's another conversation for another time. But we can forensically now at a Orenda and beyond, we can forensically go to a problem pool. Look at what happened and figure out through an LSI. I want to say investigation, but I mean, we can look at it and figure out what happened here within a reasonable degree of certitude. So that's why we've been called so many bad pools. No one ever invites surrender to the good pools. They come out when there's a mystery. I've never seen this type of mark before. Why is this happening? I have my chemistry balanced. Of course, they're thinking about chlorination and P.H. 7.4 - 7.6 They're not thinking about the LSI. So when we see surface damage or a fading liner, that's those are LSI violations.
Greg Villafana:
Right. And what are the factors that, you know, when measuring and calculating LSI?
Eric Knight:
All right. So the ones that we all know, P.H., calcium hardness and alkalinity. Now, most people will test on a visit. And we'll talk about pool pros here. They will always test P-H. They'll always test chlorine, which is not an LSI factor, by the way. P.H., chlorine and hopefully alkalinity, rarely calcium hardness. But how many pool pros test for TDS? That's one of the six factors, so there's six factors to the LSI. We only named three of them. So P-H alkalinity now carbon and alkalinity. I'll explain in a second. Calcium hardness and then the three factors that get severely, severely neglected. Water temperature sine Eric acid and TDS, including salt. If you only test three of those factors, you're only getting half the story. So you're kind of shooting blind.
Greg Villafana:
So for a pool service company that has never used the LSI calculator or any application or anything like that. And this is their first time hearing this. When do they need to use this calculating method? What issues are they going to run into where they can hear it right here and now? And they're like, OK, this is what he was talking about. And this is the steps that I'm going to take.
Eric Knight:
Well, the the proper answer is you should be using it every single visit. Every single time. All year. You should be on an LSI based strategy year round. That's that's the correct answer. Now, the times where you're going to see it, if you're way out of balance, are when you have scale formation or etching damage like discolorations of a plaster type finish, any cement based finish. People say, oh, no, I don't have plaster. I have a pebble finish. Yeah. You have the same cement binding that aggregate. So that's chemically no different than a plaster or quartz finish. It's still cement. So anytime you have surface damage or a fading vinyl liner or a corroded piece of equipment, I should clarify on the corroded piece of equipment, that's not always 100 percent LSI. It could be part of the risin or index, which is really, really similar. So that has to do with a P-H differential that causes metal corrosion faster. But if you're out of balance on the LSI, you're out of balance on that too. So it doesn't really matter.
Eric Knight:
But when there is let's say you guys had a pool service company, did you ever have the snowflake problem where calcium flakes would blow in from the return and lets on a salt, cool, hip boom LSI violation? Did you ever have scale on a heater? Yeah, I'm sure everybody has that. And by the way, it's not an indictment on you or anybody else. Everybody has these problems.
Eric Knight:
If you're not on an LSI based strategy, you're going to have these problems. Now, you're according to the textbook, you could have been perfect year round on all of your pools. But if you're not paying attention to the LSI, that's an unknown factor. For instance, if you take the Orinda app and you put in I mean, perfect range chemistry it at 80 degrees, 80 degrees, 7.5 P-H. You know, the range of seven, four to seven, six, seven point five. 80 to 120 alkalinity. Go to one hundred right in the middle of the range, 2 to 4 under calcium. Go to three hundred right in the middle of the range. That water's gonna be pretty balanced.
Eric Knight:
But if you make that same water a salt pool, where would you run a salt cell like thirty two hundred thirty three hundred. Yeah, something like that. OK, so take that salt number. And since it's actually measuring TDS, you have to add the calcium hardness to it which will get you closer. There's probably a little bit more, but let's say at a minimum you're at thirty six hundred right now. You do that on the LSI calculus. That's a big difference. And then you add stabilizer on top of that. What are the manufacturers of salt cells say to keep your CYF at 50 60 depending on the manufacturer? It puts 60 stabiliser in there. You're suddenly etching. Now, that was perfect range chemistry, water, and you cannot treat a salt pool the same way. That's the trap. It was perfect. But now you just brought that pool into reality. So if you weren't thinking about that, you have to treat that salt pool very differently. And people say, oh, I have scale in my salt pool. OK. But yet you're also etching.
Greg Villafana:
And how does the Orinda app help with that? Because we've used it quite a bit and it it's pretty phenomenal. And it's funny to hear you say that guys did it because it was just a cool thing to do that was a part of the brand. And but is it cool for you ended up, you know, figuring out a lot in the process. So how does somebody that's hearing what you're saying and they're like, yes, my haters have that. I don't understand this. How did they download the app and how are they going to use that calculator? You know, Greg, I've got to turn it on you there.
Eric Knight:
I mean, you could download the app in the App Store or Google Play. It's just called Orenda. It's totally free and it always will be. But I'm going to ask you that question. How did you use it?
Greg Villafana:
It's been a long time, but I actually used it when we had algae in a pool or anything like that or just doing a new pool service bid. And we are testing the water and putting the numbers into it. And that way we are knowing how much to dose because we did use classifiers in some of the PR, 10000, things like that. So we were always charging our customers for the things that their pool needed. But whatever was done on the pool service bit, we were plugging those numbers into the app and we did trust that the numbers that we kicked back to us, that's what you would be dosing the pool and towards the end we would charge them for the bottle. We'd actually leave the bottle there because we knew how to use it and we would just dose it accordingly. But that's how we use them.
Eric Knight:
Ok. So. So you're primarily using it as a dosing calculator. And that's what is made to be. You know, it tells you specifically how to get from the chemistry of where you are on the left side, the calculator to wherever you want to have it be. And what's cool about it is as you adjust the dials on either side, it's giving you a real time update of the LSI at the bottom.
Eric Knight:
It's just an aggregate of that column. So as you adjust like the P-H, the LSI changes in real time as you change any given factor. So the objective, the action step is very simple. Take your true chemistry like measure it, put it on the left side. And even if it's an ugly truth, you've got to know the truth. You have to know where you are. And then the objective is to get the number on the right side. Balanced on the LSI within parameters that are responsible. You don't want to have. Two hundred and twenty alkalinity. OK. That's not responce us too much alkalinity, right? But you still have to get the LSI balanced. And so there's a lot of different ways you can do that.
Eric Knight:
We're talking about six factors here. They can't really change temperature unless you're going to crank up the heater. And you can't lower CYA or TDS unless you drain or do a big procedure like R.O. reverse osmosis. So realistically, you're dealing with three factors here. You're dealing with P-H alkalinity and calcium. How do you adjust those factors to have an Ellis side that remains balanced year round? And so the climate, like, for example, you guys are in Phoenix. The strategy that is required in Phoenix is actually a lot different than the strategy in Michigan because their temperature swings are so much different than yours. Your water can get 95 degrees. There's not it's not going to get 95 degrees in Michigan less. It's a spa. Right. But their pools are going to freeze. Two years won't. So you have to have a different strategy based on the baseline of temperature so that the calculator app does really two main functions. It's like a speedometer. It actually tells you how healthy your water is right now, according to VLSI and gives you all the options that you can play around with on your own terms to get it balanced in your own way. And then I'll tell you very accurately to fractions of a dose. I'm sorry, to fractions of an ounce exactly how to correct that pool.
Greg Villafana:
Right. So you're taking all the calculations out by the pool and you're plugging those numbers into the left side column.
Greg Villafana:
I have the app open or now, but you're plugging all the numbers into the left hand side, and that is what's determining what that LSI number is, correct?
Eric Knight:
Yes. That's correct. So every time you touch a dial, it reconfigures whatever that column is and it spits out the LSI at the bottom.
Greg Villafana:
Right. With all this, all the different things going on. Is there any tools that you recommend testing that even just the temperature? Is there a test kit that you like to use?
Eric Knight:
Well, I don't have a favorite test kit. I I will say this.
Eric Knight:
That the tools that are ignored, that pro-Paul professionals and DIY homeowners really should have is some sort of TDS measuring device. I just bought a P.H. and TDS meter on Amazon for twenty three bucks total for both of them. And the reviews are really good from pool guys. So. I've been very impressed with the P.H. one, I haven't used the TDS one yet, but having a TDS meter because most people don't even haven?t concept of how to measure TDS let's it's a very affordable little probe that you just dip in the water. It tells you the TDS. And they also don't have a thermometer, thermometers are not that expensive. It's very proven technology and we kind of laugh at Orenda about it because we don't sell any of these things. We're a chemical company, right? But yeah, we sell more thermometers, measuring cups, calcium chloride and all these things because they're the right thing to do. These are the tools that you really need if you're going to be managing pools for a living that we don't even make the things, but they're not that expensive. So get a thermometer. The one I have is on a string. It's just one of those white plastic thermometers that's on a, you know, two foot string. And I tie it to the handle of my test kit. I just Plunket into a pool while I'm testing everything else and I'll pull it out and boom, I've got the temperature. So that's how I do it. But. Then again, I fly a lot. Not right now, of course, but normally I'm flying so I can't fly with test kits and all that other stuff. I'm always using a customer's test kit and they almost never have a thermometer or TADS meter. So I would encourage any of your listeners. Like I said, the TADS Meter and P.H. together was, I think, twenty three dollars on Amazon. It was not expensive. Go to distribution, see if they have these tools. They'll probably be less money than that. You're not paying retail there.
Greg Villafana:
So I would say that problem that we did have. And you'd be a good person. A-S-S question is that we were testing different TADS meters and the number would fluctuate quite a bit.
Greg Villafana:
We're very confident in the numbers that we're getting kicked out. So how important is the almost exact TDS number?
Eric Knight:
Good question. In terms of its impact on the LSI, you want to be as close as you can, but. You know what? If you're within five hundred or so, it's gonna be a very similar LSI result. So the difference between three thousand and thirty five hundred, yeah, it exists, but it's not it's not huge. Right. But the difference between zero and thirty five hundred is massive. And then the higher you go on TDS, the less and less significant that number actually gets. I know it keeps going up, but it goes up a little bit incrementally less. Sinar Agassiz the exact opposite. You start the you know the difference between zero and 30. Not not so much 0 and 50 a little more. But if you go up in increments of, let's say, 30 parts per million time, difference between 50 and 80 is way more than zero to 30. And from eighty to a hundred and ten is way more than 50 to 80. And it's almost like a hawk. It's a parabolic, I think is the word big high altitude word.
Greg Villafana:
But so having a more accurate sign ehrich acid level reading is probably a little bit more important for sure.
Eric Knight:
It's over. Stabilization is a huge problem and. It's a huge problem on both sanitization and balance. So in fact, our calculator, we updated it last fall because when you're calculating the LSI, you have to you have to get the carbon at alkalinity. And no test kits measure that. So you have to measure your total alkalinity and then you have to deduct a factor based on sign Eric acid, because what you're doing is you're taking the total alkalinity and you're subtracting the scientific alkalinity. Think it's called the sine narrate alkalinity. There's a factor and it's roughly a third depending on the P.H., roughly a third of your CYF has to be subtracted from the total alkalinity. So if you have 90 stabiliser, take a third of that. That's 30 parts per million. Well, if you had one hundred total alkalinity, you now have to subtract 30 from that and you really have 70 carbon and alkalinity or adjusted alkalinity. That's what the Alcides using. Don't worry about the math. The calculator does it for you. The Arend app builds all that in for you. So you will input your total alkalinity in that calculator. And then as you adjust to the CIA, it will make that correction to the total number and it will use the corrected alkalinity for you.
Eric Knight:
And if we had to update it because we didn't have an error built in. Well, what happens if you have say. Two hundred CIA or for easy math to 10. 210 CYF, if you take a third of that, that's 70 parts per million. What happens if you only have 70 parts per million total alkalinity and you have to subtract 70 parts per million? You have zero you. And that's an error. It doesn't register or furthermore, if you go over that unit, you're now trying to divide by zero. So it's an error. And so some I think the Androids say n n, which is not a number. We we have updated that. So it says error because that even I didn't know what N A N meant, but that's kind of how the formula spit out. And what what people don't see behind the scenes of that nice looking calculator is there's like eighty thousand lines of code behind it. It's a very complex piece of technology that took us a long time to build. So when something goes wrong, it takes developers a while to figure out what it is. And usually it's something pretty simple.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Yeah, that's there's a lot behind it and a lot of math. And that's it's cool about it. It takes out the hand math for everybody that knows how to do the LSI by hand, which probably isn't very many people CPO looking at it.
Eric Knight:
I took this. I took the startup class and they teach you how to do it by hand in there. I took the CPO class. They teach how to do it by hand in there, too. Let's be real. You guys had a service business doing that. The economics of the industry do not allow for long division in a backyard. No, you don't have time. So people abandon it and they go up and they go. They revert back to habits. This is way faster. This is way, way faster. So if you have the right tools, a simple TADS, want a PDA, a P.H. probe, a good test kit and a thermometer, you can measure the entire LSI, every single visit in about the same exact time it would have taken you to do the normal visit. It doesn't take that much more time. So go that extra step. I don't like the phrase go the extra mile. It's really not a mile. It's an extra step. Go the extra step. Measure the LSI act accordingly. It will go well for you. Yeah.
Greg Villafana:
You know, back to the calculator once you input everything. Is there some kind of, you know, report or something that can be sent to management or the homeowner or something like that?
Eric Knight:
Yeah, there is. So once you get dosage, it'll tell you all the chemical and volumes of the chemicals based on whatever volume you put in. So it's garbage in, garbage out. Guys, if if you don't know the volume of your pool and you just put in twenty thousand, but it's actually a lot less that like sixteen thousand. You're still going to get results for twenty thousand. So be cautious on that. But there's an envelope at the top right. That allows you to email those results. We've had a lot of questions about being able to save them and store them and create profiles. We have been looking into this for a while. Screenshot. Screenshot. Yeah, but we've been looking into this for a while. We'll see what happens, but we're figuring out some ways that you can better utilize that storage in and hopefully be able to have sort of a chronological like record of chemistries. But yes, so so right now it's just an email feature.
Greg Villafana:
Yeah. And that's really cool because you can always send that to your email or to the owner, the manager, whoever it needs to see that report. And that can be that report can be tied into your CRM. So if we're taking care of your pool. Eric, you know, we would just download it, send it to management and then it would go under your profile because I'm assuming it has a timestamp on on the date that that information was collected.
Eric Knight:
Yep. Date and time stamp in the email and you just change the subject line to name it. However, it helps you find it in your inbox because I think the default subject line is dosage calculation results that you would type in. Eric nights. pool. Right? Or what? Whatever you would want to call it. You you have some sort of format to do it. But there are companies, customers of ours, that all their service people use the app and they actually created a separate email account like just a just a admen email address that everybody emails their results to. And then the lady in the office puts it all in a spreadsheet. And it's a little tedious work, but it has helped them tremendously because they never had anything like that before. And now the software is getting updated so that there there are storage softwares out there. We don't really want to be in that game, but we want to do is provide a free tool that helps you manage chemistry, storing data and root logging, all the stuff. That's not really our business. So we're.
Greg Villafana:
We're not really interested in doing all that right by all the education, too, as in the AP as well. Like if you guys his videos and all that stuff is in there.
Eric Knight:
Yeah. So it is in many ways it's considered a marketing tool, but we don't consider it a marketing piece anymore. We used to until we realized that this is way more than that. This is something that if you're a pool professional and you're trying to explain a concept to your homeowner customer that you don't really. You don't want to paraphrase it or maybe you don't understand it fully yourself. And that's OK. No shame in that. The reason the videos and the articles are in there with a big share button is so that you don't have to explain it all. Let Orinda explain it for you. So imagine going to a homeowner and explaining how. Here's why I think we need to remove phosphates. Here's the article Boom's Share. You just texted to him, right? There were airdrop it or email it however you want to share it. And that way, let it run to do the talking for you and let the homeowner make an informed decision. All right. Thank you.
Eric Knight:
Yeah. We had five of the factors pretty well. Can you just talk about calcium a little bit? And I think there's a myth out there that people are scared of putting calcium in the water because they think it's going to just scale automatically. Can you talk about the calcium factor just a little bit?
Eric Knight:
Yes, certainly. Especially in Phoenix. I totally understand that myth. I understand why it's a belief. Because, well, let's think about it. What does scale look like? What does it feel like? Calcium. Calcium. Right. So naturally, I don't blame anybody for this. I thought it, too. I didn't know you would think the calcium hardness is the primary driver of scale. If you have too much, you'll get scale. In reality, if you play with a calculator, you'll learn this. In reality, it's the third most important factor. It's not number one or two. Number one is P-H. Number two is water temperature. Those two drive scale. So the P.H. drives the precipitation of calcium into calcium carbonate and the temperature drives where it happens. So if the whole pool raises in temperature, that's just gonna raise the LSI and you're going to be closer to starting to precipitate. But where does water start to precipitate first? Always the hottest places first. It's not calcium hardness. We've got commercial customers that feed Cal Hypo chlorine. They have eight hundred plus chlorine year round. They don't have scale problems. Sure. I'm sure some do. But on we've got a great commercial customer with hundreds of commercial properties that they manage. Their target is seven hundred and fifty calcium, 750. They don't have scale problems. So you can have higher levels of calcium hardness if you're managing the saturation index.
Eric Knight:
So they they have used calcium brilliantly, as I call it, the floor. So I don't know if your viewers I mean, if they're listening, they can't see this. But hey, viewers, listening to this podcast on the screen, Eric is now putting his hand at the bottom of the screen at the floor of your strategy. You have calcium hardness. That's the foundation that you can build your LSI strategy upon because it doesn't move much if you put acid into a pool. Tyler, does the calcium hardness go down? No, no. It might go up if you put too much acid in because of etching, but it doesn't go down. But if you put us in a pool, P-H and alkalinity will go down. Calcium doesn't move. It's a rock. So think of that as the foundation. If you have enough calcium harness in there. I say enough, not too much, just enough that you are able to make micro adjustments to the other factors to stay with an LSI range year round for you guys in Phoenix because your temperature doesn't get nearly as cold as it will in Michigan and Minnesota and Connecticut. You don't need as much calcium as they do because your temperature it doesn't justify and especially in the summertime, you don't want five hundred calcium necessarily in the summertime because your temperature is so high.
Eric Knight:
You're more likely to scale their temperatures never to get 95 degrees in the water like yours is. So they need more calcium because they have to get through the winter. So we highly encourage any pool that's going to freeze a minimum men like the floor, 400 parts. You really want closer to five or even six hundred during the winter. And don't fret about that because it will get diluted with rain, which has zero calcium in it. Rain and snow minerals don't evaporates or rain and snow have zero. Very, very aggressive on the LSI that will dilute your water chemistry over the winter in a mesh cover or uncovered pool. And then the temperature swing. Right. So the floor is based on calcium hardness. And then the moving factor that sets the rest of the parameters is adjusting to where the temperature is. And then we could go on about the physics of P-H. But I think that's kind of what it is. So calcium is not your enemy. It's actually your friend. It's the most misunderstood and I think misrepresented thing. People know what it is. They just they've been trained to dislike it because they they're afraid of scale. And a perfect example of this is the calcium cristol problem that was discovered in the Northeast. The pool service companies that first introduced this to me, too, in particular.
Eric Knight:
They're good companies like they're really well-trained, very well educated. They attend classes at the trade shows, like they read their books, they they know their stuff, but they all thought that the crystals were scale. And because they thought they were scale. By the way, they're not scale because they thought they were scale. They were trying to create the habit of I can't have scale in the spring. So let's lower our calcium hardness in the fall to get through the winter so we don't have scale, of course. It just came back worse here because it's the opposite problem. They didn't have nearly enough calcium hardness to get through the winter. You got to feed that bear before it hibernates. So back to. What I'm saying about the LSI, you really need to understand what is going to happen when the temperature drops and when it is going to rise, and if you predict that movement and you have a good floor of calcium hardest that you have a strategy on, you can handle the swings. You just make micro adjustments to do so. It's a much better proactive strategy and trying to keep 7/4 to 7:06 P.H. throughout the year. Spoiler alert. Nobody can do that, right? Even chemical controllers will burn through drums of acid trying to stay in that range because, well, you're fighting physics, so.
Tyler Rasmussen:
All right. Yeah. Thanks for explanation. I think you know a bit more.
Eric Knight:
Sorry, I get passionate about it. Just learning it. Yeah.
Tyler Rasmussen:
No, I mean, I've learned it over the last probably 6, 7 months. I mean, being around you and Harold a lot more and and having conversations about it, it's definitely something that is misunderstood, you know, has a lot to do with your guys startup process, which we'll talk about different time. You know, there is a lot that it does to protect surfaces that people don't understand. And they usually just are told not to put too much calcium in the water because it will scale. And I think that's a good explanation and clarification. So thank you.
Eric Knight:
Yes, thank you.
Anderson Manufacturing Ad:
So we talked a lot about leak detection with the experts, the Anderson manufacturing for Episode 87. But did you know that they also carry a full line and professional league repair supplies? LeMaster products by Anderson provides a versatile permanent repair solutions for all types of pools. The line is everything you need, including epoxy putty, flexible sealer, butel tape and even urethane injection system for concrete cracks. A current favorite, a pool pros is leak master pool glue. It's a super adhesive glue that permanently bonds to fiberglass, p.p.s., vinyl, stainless steel and more. It's a great solution for cracks, gamers or fiberglass steps and even works to seal holes on pressure side plumbing. As you stack up your truck this spring. Don't forget to look for leak master supplies at your local distributor or purchase online Atley tools dot com as a special thank you to our listeners. They'll add a free bonus leak master product to your next online order when you enter the code pool chasers during checkout.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Part of LSI in the app. You got the positive side and the negative side. Can you explain what that is?
Eric Knight:
Yeah. So it's color coded on the app. But think of it this way. Zero point zero zero is perfect water. That is the perfect saturation level of calcium carbonate. If your water is zero point zero, it can't get any more balanced than that. But there's a comfort zone. There's a there's a cushion in there, minus 0.3. Up to positive 0.3 anywhere in there is fine. You're balanced. You're close enough to balance that. The water's happy. And I like to think about like if you had a line at zero point zero and you had a rubber band on it, if you like, hang a rubber band off of your finger, it's going to be loose down to a certain point. And then if you lift it up, it can be loose up to a certain point. Let's just say that the extent of where it's loose is minus point 3 and at the top it's plus point 3. Anything within the loose slack of the rubber band is totally fine. But the further you get away from zero point zero, you start putting tension on that rubber band and it's going to the water is going to pull back proportionally based on how far you go from zero. It's always trying to get back into that comfortable range.
Eric Knight:
Now, if you go too far, for example, slugging acid or also called Colomb pouring acid, you drop the P-H. And of course, acid's heavier than water. So it goes to the bottom. It gets pulled into the main drain at etches the surface. It does all these things. The P.H., what way down? That's a dramatic overcorrection. As a side note, you should never pour acid straight into a pool. Always pre dilute it and dispense. To avoid this problem. But when you do that, you've made a severe overcorrection on the LSI so severe that you can almost you can't break this rubber band. But imagine pulling it so hard that you almost break the rubber band to the bottom. Of course, it's going to slam up. It's going to go up really fast. The thing about the LSI, that's crazy. But it's also to our advantage is the LSI. Tells us that water can not oversaturate itself. So if that rubber band is coming back up, it's dangling here. You pull it down. It smacks up. It's going to hit zero point zero and stop like a brick wall. Hard stop. So an a traditional start up after the pools filled up and it's you didn't do anything to you just they plastered and they put a hose in when you get there the next day.
Eric Knight:
I can pretty much guarantee that P.H. is gonna be very high. Oftentimes it's so high you can't measure it. But I know exactly where the LSI is and everyone thinks, oh, man, it's got to be aggressive. No, no, man. It's gonna be scale forming. Nobody ever actually gets the answer, right. The LSI is zero point zero. It's perfect because it was such an overcorrection. It bled out calcium hydroxide. It spiked the P.H., you know, tap water being raw. It's going to etch. So it gets up. And you know that P.H. got high and it stopped eating and it's perfect. Now, to be fair, we don't like how the water got to zero point zero. It etched and now you have plaster dust everywhere, but it got to zero point zero. It stopped eating. But of course, we not thinking about the LSI in this industry. Think about the range chemistry. Oh I have to be at seven forty seven six. So you bring acid to the pool, but in reality that water's like really happy. It's perfectly balanced. So we have to think differently. We have to put LSI first range chemistry second.
Greg Villafana:
And that negative and positive number that you guys are talking about, like if we're talking about the Orenda LSI calculator, it's at the very bottom. There's two different button looking deals that show that that's talking about, right?
Eric Knight:
Yeah, the L-It's sign, they're color coded. So if that number at the bottom, if it's green, that's the ideal range. That's zero point zero up to positive zero point three. So that's that's the sweet spot. If you could keep your pool green year round, you are really good. And if you're if you're so good that when you come back after a week, it's green. You are really, really good. Yellow is also OK. That's actually on the lower end of zero, so that's minus point zero, one down to minus point 3 0. Yellow is kind of a warning. It's safe, but you don't really want to be there because you're you're still under saturated. And if things go wild, you could etch. If you go below zero point three, it turns red. Now you're aggressive. Now you're going to be etching. This is permanent damage. You cannot put calcium back into cement. You cannot put pigment back into a vinyl liner. So that's permanent damage. We want to avoid red at all costs. And then on the high side above, green is purple. That's a scale, form and condition. So the further away from zero, the higher that number gets, the more scale you're going to see. And again, you will always see it in the hottest places first, which normally is not something you can see because it's inside your equipment like a heater and assault. So until, of course, the salt cells start blowing flakes into the pool and you know, it's happening.
Eric Knight:
All right. Yeah, it's really good explanation. Thank you. Thanks.
Eric Knight:
Well, I try. I'm on the phone a lot of time, multiple times a day. And I built the thing.
Eric Knight:
So I'm pretty I don't have to look at it to remember what it does now.
Greg Villafana:
But it's crazy just talking about it. How many variables there are. I'm thinking about being in a pool and doing all this and, you know, over time, you know, trying to get to that sweet spot, a zero and having a family party and there's a million people in it. And then they decide to back off the runtimes and the speeds and all the things that set you up for failure. All the things that, you know, happen. I think, you know, in listening to this, it just makes it so much more critical that you talk to the homeowners about, you know, what these things are and why it's important that the pump runs as long and why we have to stay on top of the water chemistry. And when I say that we need to dose it with these types of chemicals or treatments, then that is what it is, because we're trying to make sure that the water stays safe clear so that you can actually enjoy it. So I don't think a lot of when I think of homeowners in our time in the beginning that used to mess with the equipment, I don't think we ever did a good job of explaining to them of what the repercussions were of them messing with it. It's now not a safe pool. It's not going to be enjoyable to swim in. You're trying to you're gonna have your family over to swim in the pool and it's gonna look like crap and you're gonna call us on the weekend. Then you want us to come in, put the magic pill in, and it doesn't work that fast.
Eric Knight:
I don't remember where I heard it from, but you bring up a really good point and try to remember who told me this. But what separates the really, really good professionals from the ones who just call themselves professionals are really, really good professionals, are not afraid to tell their clients the truth when it's bad. They don't sugarcoat it. They they're very open about it. They're transparent. They'll show them whatever they need. But as a homeowner, I don't have a pool as a homeowner. I hate surprises. If somebody tells me that, like for me, I had my my air conditioner replaced last summer when it was supposed to last another two years. It didn't last five weeks. And I paid hundreds of dollars for a tune up. And they're like, oh, yeah, you get another year to this if you maintain it. And I'm like, okay, perfect. I'll put it in my budget for next year to replace this thing. It didn't last five weeks. That made me furious because had he said, look, you might have two more months out of this. Look at this damage, all this stuff. He didn't tell me that. Had he done that, I could have made a plan.
Eric Knight:
I could have prepared, but instead I threw a whole bunch of my money into the stock market. Instead of keeping it aside, you see what I'm saying? I hate surprises and most anyway, most people forget pool owners like let's be real. We don't like being blindsided by things. So. You just nailed it. Man, I'll tell you, Greg, you just nailed something that you should really drive home to your listeners. Communicate with your homeowners, even if it's bad news. That is so important, it will separate you. They will remember it. They will appreciate. They might not like what you're saying, but they'll appreciate you for telling them the truth and bracing them for impact. And the other one I look at is somebody called it grandmas law. If that homeowner, that customer of yours was your grandmother. You would never take advantage of your grandmother. Hopefully. So don't sell them something they don't really need, but inform them and explain it to them like they're your grandmother. That if you have that psyche and mindset, you will go very far in this industry. You will you will succeed because that's how we should be treating our customers. So I'm glad you said that.
Eric Knight:
Yeah, should it? You should be informing them of the dangers of changing the equipment, fiddling with it, you know, cutting the circulation time in half. All of those things they may not know.
Greg Villafana:
Right. And I assume they know. I think some of us to think of the homeowner as competition almost where you don't want to tell them too much because you're afraid that they're like, well, I could probably figure that out. But the funny thing is, when we realize that if they think that they were gonna they were gonna let you go in the first place, it wasn't going to last long anyway, regardless of what you said. But why not be totally transparent? And they appreciate that. And they let you do your job, even if they could understand it. They understand that. I don't even if I could understand this. And I do. I'm not going to go out there. I don't have the time to go out there and fiddle with the water chemistry, just like, you know, if the homeowner we always talked about if the homeowner. Well, Lanna worker, you and I wouldn't step into your I wouldn't step into your job. You know, if you're a mechanic, I'm not just gonna do everything myself. I don't know anything about that, even if I grasp the idea. It's so much better to just be put it all out there. So they're like, yeah, you know what? It's totally above me. Yeah.
Eric Knight:
Yeah. You make a good point there, Greg. Because the car mechanic is a great analogy. I can watch YouTube videos and figure out how to change my oil, but you better believe I am never going to change my own brakes. No way am I had changed my own breaks. No one. I don't have the right to win, but I don't trust myself. I'm going to let a professional who is trained to do something so critical to my vehicle. That vehicle is my livelihood. I have to get places, especially if you're the pool service business. If you were not a mechanic, you're going to get it professionally done, right? Homeowners, they value people who add value to them. If they were gonna be a DIY homeowner, OK, they were gonna hire you anyway, right? You can't lose something you never had. It wasn't your fault. You got fired. They wanted a DIY, but if you were constantly adding value to them every month, then why would they let you go? All right. That would be absurd. You're making their lives easier. It's worth the money. It takes away a major headache and you're helping them get better. You're informing them. In fact, I would go to the polar opposite as an I have evidence to support this. When we made Orinda Academy. That was an oh, that was more than a year of production for that, but for the first one and we really learned a lot in that process, but a lot of the feedback that we got when we were kind of teasing about it, saying, hey, we're creating this online video training academy, a lot of the feedback that the service trade gave back was, oh, we don't want to educate the homeowners too much because because then they'll be able to do the job without us.
Eric Knight:
The exact opposite has happened. Homeowners look at this and say, number one, I did not appreciate how diligent your work is, how hard this job is. I had no idea how significant pool service actually is. This is not an easy job. I don't want to do it. So it had the exact opposite effect, but offering something like that to a homeowner saying, look, I'm so confident in the service that I provide, I will educate you. You make the decision if you need me or not. And I would say probably more than nine times out of ten, nine and a half times out of ten. They're going to appreciate you for that. I remember that. So keep that in mind. Don't be afraid to educate your homeowner as long as you're honest and you're adding value. You have nothing to be afraid of.
Greg Villafana:
Well said.
Primate Pool Tools Ad:
Hey, pool chasers. By now, you probably met the awesome guys at primate pool tools either at a trade show author Instagram. I'll tell you what we love what these guys are doing and the quality pride they bring to the market. They're the makers of the first carbon fiber pool polls in the industry. Their polls use high quality motus three grade carbon fiber and are five times stronger than premium aluminum poles, which allows them to be half the weight and makes it easier to navigate through the water. Primary offers three models of poles in various sizes as well as single link extensions that are compatible with any pole model. This will allow you to extend your pole up to 40 feet plus if you ever need to replace any parts. They're poles are modular, so you can do so individually. And best of all, they're handmade here in the good ole U.S. of a. If you aren't convinced already the primate team backs their product up with 1 year warranty that covers any and all manufacturing or workmanship defects. These poles are truly the real deal. So try them out by going to primate pull tools dot net. And don't forget to enter pole chasers tenant checkout for $10 off. Click the link below to find out more.
Tyler Rasmussen:
I think one of the main reasons I wanted to talk about the LSI has to do with that, too. And I believe most homeowners can understand the concept of arranged chemistry. If you watch YouTube videos and you get that, you can say, I need to keep my water between, you know, three equal three to five chlorine useven 270 P.H.. Right. You can grasp. As a homeowner, I think when you understand VLSI as a pool professional and you understand the chemistry behind it and you can explain it in a way that a customer is in a way like unmatched, that they can't grasp, that you're showing how much of a professional you are. And when you start talking TADS, you start talking calcium, start talking to see why, a, they don't understand any of that. They have a little red and yellow test kit that they may have, maybe the it.s alkalinity, you know, if they're more advanced homeowner. But when you understand and grasp the LSI system, which I wish we would have when we are running the company and been able to explain this because I believe and especially this time of Cauvin 19 and people may be considering getting rid of a pool professional like this is another advantage to you. And if you understand the design, you can explain why you are more important and why you are important to keep you much more likely to keep the job and show yourself as a professional, yet constantly adding value.
Eric Knight:
And another thing I would just like to add to that. Don't be afraid to educate your homeowner conversation. Don't be afraid to do things that are not in your job description. If they make your job better, don't you don't have to charge the homeowner to blow leaves off the deck. If they're driving you nuts and they're causing you problems. Let them see you do it. Hint, hint. Don't do it all the time, but make them clean up the place a little bit better. Bring a spray bottle in every once in a while. Clean off the control panel and just make it nicer. And I know that homeowners and I spend a lot of time in the commercial pool business to operators. Right. Facility owners and executives. They don't remember all the technical stuff that you're supposed to be there to do. They remember the stuff that you were not there to do. When I go into a commercial pump room, I need to be better at it. When I travel. But look, when I'm when I'm driving my own vehicle, I've got cleaning spray and rags in my truck. I always go into a pump room with cleaning spray and rags because I'm going to leave that pump room a little bit cleaner than the way I found it. And that that's what they remember. They don't remember all the cool stuff we did with the chemistry and stuff. The operators, like, you know, I like that guy. He takes care of my pump, really. You know, and it helps them step up their game. So share those little steps. Go that extra step, not the extra mile, the extra step and add value to your homeowner.
Eric Knight:
Right. And like I said earlier, the more I've been around you and Harold and having this conversation about LSI, the more I really believe in it. So how come the industry is pushed back a little bit on this or I think you guys are breaking that barrier more and more each day. But what has been that barrier that people don't seem to be able to cross with it?
Eric Knight:
Well, Ed, you asked me this a year ago. I would have agreed. Yeah, there's a barrier. But this year, even end of last year, pretty Koven 19. I think we have crossed that barrier. I think the LSI is undeniable at this point. I don't know many people at all that challenge it. No water treatment industry that we are aware of, drinking water, wastewater, cooling towers, irrigation. They're all aware of the LSI and they use it. Why are we not at this point? You have the tools available. We were not the first LSI calculator, but I believe we were the first LSI and dosing calculator available on the market. And now there's like five. So that tells you something. People are invested. And believe me, building an app is not cheap. Right. So people are investing money to create these tools for you. Please use them. It's you know, it's a free tool for you, but it's there to help. And the LSI is not something we invented. It's just the pushback that you describe, Tyler, is. People always resist change when it's unproven to them. I'm going to be the first to admit when this whole Corona virus came out, I was like, OK, here we go again, just like SaaS and the bird flu and H because we've been so insulated. And so I hesitate to say the word lucky, but we've been so fortunate to live in the United States that we can absorb a pandemic like those all those 10, 10 or 11 ones in the past five years. We got through them and it never really affected anyone we know. This was different. We weren't prepared for it, and I I'll be the first to tell you I did not take it seriously because change did not. It wasn't real to me yet. It wasn't proven to me. As of now, I know two people who have died from it.
Eric Knight:
So I wasn't very close with them, fortunately, but. Now, I realize it's serious and the paralysis from this. It is real. So you don't really take LSI seriously until you have to until you're the one that's potentially getting sued for screwing up the surface of that pool or you're the one that's fighting scale and doing everything you thought was right. And meanwhile, Arend has been saying for the past two and a half, three years, LSI, LSI, LSI, LSI, LSI, LSI. And you weren't listening. And then you figure out the ellis'. I could fix that problem. Now, if it was an etching problem, you can't fix what's been damaged very easily. You certainly can't put some Campa concrete back into cement. But you can prevent it from happening further. And if it's scale, you can correct scale. And once pool people adopt it and they see it work. And for a lot of people, their first exposure to the elsewise, our startup, actually. But once that happens. Everything changes, and I know that for a fact, because these are the people that take webinars when I'm sitting in this very seat one on one video trainings. We've been crushing it. We've been doing a lot of those, especially during Cauvin. But we were doing it last year way before Corona virus was a thing because we we couldn't keep up with the travel to meet everybody that wanted to learn about the LSI.
Eric Knight:
So we would teach these classes and they would be really busy classes. And what I found is around the country, we get the same questions in most of these classes. A lot of it was just it's a paradigm shift. And I think what really nailed it home for me to understand just how serious the LSI was, because again, I was a swimmer. I was not a pool guy, was Herald. Since 1984, Harald's had a pool service company and he's sitting on the beach after we come out with the very first version. The first version, the calculator did not have the LSI yet. We were planning on doing it, but we had to build the framework first. Once we out of the LSI, Harald's playing around with it on his phone. And it's just. Just throwing him for a loop, he cannot understand the temperature has that big of a difference. And the more he's playing with he's calling people in the industry say, hey, download debt. Tell me, are you seeing this? Am I seeing this right? He called me to double check the formula. Call our developer, make sure the formulas. Right. This can't be true. This can't be true. This can't be true. Of course it is.
Eric Knight:
He was pissed, I mean, livid that he wasn't livid at us.
Eric Knight:
He was mad at himself because for over 30 years he's been destroying equipment and pools and he didn't know it. Nobody told him. And one thing that's very important understand about this app. This app is his personal money. He's committed. This is his give. This is paying it forward to the industry because he wishes he had this tool when he was in business. And this is how you're going to save those surfaces, extend the life of those surfaces, pieces of equipment, salt cells, you name it. Nobody told him back in the 80s that this was a thing. Oh, by the way, not just the 80s, but the 90s. The 20, the 2000s, the 2010s up until 2017. Nobody ever informed. That's extremely humiliating for a lot of people that have been highly trained to know it all. And. We're having a few more of those sort of pivotal moments where we're discovering things about water chemistry that conflict directly with conventional wisdom in the industry. And you're going to get pushback when you do that because it's very contrarian and a lot of people don't like it. Our startup is an example. Sure, there's been a lot of pushback against our startup at first, but look how widely adopted it is now. What people realize it's just based on the LSI. And it works. So we've experienced a lot of pushback on that because they think it's our idea. It's a marketing scheme reality. We don't sell calcium acid bicarb. We don't sell any of the things that are just the LSI.
Greg Villafana:
So who cares? Don't have a dog in the fight. I wish everybody would take education so serious. All right. But what it's doing is I'm hearing all this and all I can remember is. Spending so much time in a backyard when you still got 10, 15 pools ago and you're just you know, you're shooting Hail Marys, you don't know what the hell is gonna happen. You're just trying to do everything that's, you know, in your back pocket to make this pool clear. And nothing is happening because you're not even making an educated guess to get this pool back to where it needs to. But if you are if you're adding the correct numbers into a calculator, you can get to the bottom of this issue much faster and say it's time. And what is time?
Greg Villafana:
Time is Money.
Greg Villafana:
But that sanity factor, like I remember, just they used to drive us nuts. I do. Sure. Frikkin heck is going on here, but not taking the time to really. And I think that is a big thing and didn't think about it until now. But if you've got a family member that owns a pool or you have a pool. You need to choose a weekend or time to figure these things out when you don't have the phone ringing or your team members calling you or emails to deal with like dedicating half a day and then maybe a day to just be one with the water and testing it and what you need to do to get it on track. Because I know it's really difficult when you're training yourself like on a homeowner's pool or, you know, anything like that. And since, you know, we've gotten our own pools now, it's much easier to, you know, take the time and actually do it. But I think there's a lot of opportunities. I'm sure people have very close clients that they can go visit their pool, even if whatever they're doing, like say, hey, it's for free, just let me use this as kind of my education.
Eric Knight:
Yeah, they can have the app. A lot of homeowners use our app that we hear from them. We get their messages through it. So they contact us in this. Hey, I've been using your app and I've got a question about this or that or the other, but they really appreciate it because it's color coded, green, good, red, bad. Even if they don't truly understand the LSI, it doesn't matter. They know that they have to get the number green so they can adjust where they go and then boom, it tells them exactly how to do it. So it's a dream come true for somebody who's trying to extend the life of their service. We were unaware that tools didn't exist like that because in most other industries they do. If you're in the HPC industry, there's all sorts of technology that can make your life easier. Swimming pool business didn't really have that much at the time, but there's great tools now. We were just one of the early ones. But now you look at the technology available and the calculators online and the information available. I take a lot of pride in that. We were one of the first that really drove the education campaign. But I'm not naive to think that we're the only ones that take it seriously.
Eric Knight:
We just got really loud about it and we focused on it. And that's been our strategy the whole time. Let's make let's help you pool professionals get better. In things that have nothing to do with Renda, and hopefully that translates to being more profitable. And then, by the way, we sell these chemicals that can make it even better than that. Right. But the chemicals are an afterthought. Let's start with the fundamentals. Are you using measuring cups? Are you using a thermometer? Do you use the LSI or are you still stuck on the textbook ranges? Those kind of things fundamentally can change a pool business. And it's going to improve for sure. And by the way, we I say it all the time. We are not in the business of telling anybody how to run their business. You don't have to listen to us. We're not our customers to yours. It's your business. But vet us all you want. There's a reason that the app has taken off in such a way. And it's still it's still continues to grow. Our growth has just been outstanding on the app. So we know a lot of people are using it and that makes us very happy.
Greg Villafana:
Right. Well, we appreciate everything that you guys doing and taking an education so serious because it really shows and it's extremely helpful. So I got to ask we ask everybody. Do you have a podcast or any kind of book that's made an impact on your life and where you're at today?
Eric Knight:
Well, first of all, thank you guys for taking education so seriously. I've enjoyed the podcast that you're having people on hearing perspectives of all sorts. One, it's a real honor to actually be considered a voice that matters in the industry. So thank you for having me on. You're welcome. As for podcast and books, because I was flying a lot. I've been reading a lot of books, so there have been just some awesome ones. I think some of the. Some of the genres I like are history. I like looking at like social history of how behavior developed over time. I love Malcolm Gladwell books. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life is Life Changing. That's a great book. You will need a thesaurus, though, because there's a lot of dictionary because there's a lot of really high gravity vocabulary in that book. But I listened to Problem. My favorite podcast is Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. I love that because he puts historical events. If you are there and he personifies them, and in so many ways, I think some of the best authors, including, like like I said, Malcolm Gladwell. The reason that I like that so much is because they're making it relatable. Poor chemistry. If you read the stuff that I have to read, it's not relatable.
Eric Knight:
Their studies, their journal articles, their peer reviewed, its its literature reviews and citations and its academia. It's not relatable. How do you translate that into a backyard pool? Much of what I did in grad school was learn how to decipher that, even though I didn't take chemistry class. I know how to read that kind of material and it's boring. I tell you what, it's so boring. But. My entire M.O. since twenty sixteen has been to distill that into a relatable format that can be digested and actually understood. I use a lot of analogies. If you read our blog, I use a lot of simplified explanations to try to make these concepts make sense. Like calcium being a floor or how P.H. will physically rise up because of physics will explain those things in ways that you don't have to necessarily get the actual detailed science. You just have to know what it's going to cause. And if you know that you can predict and you can control it and who cares what the actual science is, you understand you're taking that into account. So. That's been my whole goal since I've been at Orinda.
Greg Villafana:
Good. Thank you. And where can people find Orenda? Where can I follow you and download the app? All that good stuff.
Eric Knight:
Well, we're all over social media. So Orenda Technologies. We're on Facebook, either Orinda Tech or read the technologies on Facebook or on Instagram or on LinkedIn. Our Web site is or Renda Tech O R E NDA TDC H. Dot com. The app is just called or Renda in the app store and Google Play. We're not hiding. Pretty easy to find. If you're searching for pool topics in terms, you'll probably find one of our blogs. And we have a YouTube channel, Renda Technologies as well. Lot of videos on there. So we're everywhere we can be. And if you have subjects that you would like us to cover, like maybe you have a question that hasn't been answered anywhere else. Send it to us. Because if it's, for instance, the one I'm working on lately, why do fiberglass pools chalk up? It's not actually a form of scale, because if it were, you could have put an acid on it. It would clean it off. It's actually a different issue. Scale does happen. But I'm reading now that there's some polymers in those gel coats that get oxidized. Once the gel coat opens up a little bit. So it's really farseeing science. I have to get more research done on it, but we're going to start writing about the damage to fiberglass pools. That's a great question that we get a lot. And so we really want to do our due diligence. But if you have topics you want us to cover, we'd be happy to do it. You know, just give us time to get there.
Greg Villafana:
So very good. Well, we really appreciate it. Eric, this is a great conversation. Appreciate your time. And we really look forward to some more episodes with you. Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it.
Tyler Rasmussen:
Hey, pool chasers. Thanks for checking out this episode. Did you know that each episode has its own page on our Web site? This is where you can find more information about the guests and episode topic as well as all the resources that we discussed throughout the show. To get to the Web page, click the link below. Also below, you will find links to the sponsors of the show as well as links to follow us on our social media channels. On our channel, you will find some of our favorite clips and bonus material. Please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Our tag is Pool Chasers. We also have a Facebook group for the poor Oasis community. Here you will find like minded professionals all looking to make each other better. One last thing. If the episode has brought you value, please check out our Patry on page to support us. And if you could, please write and review the podcast. We would love to hear what your favorite topics are. Thank you for your time and your ear. Yeah, they're both chasers.
Quickly and accurately automatically transcribe your audio audio files with Sonix, the best speech-to-text transcription service.
Sonix uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to convert your mp3 files to text.
Get the most out of your audio content with Sonix. Do you have a lot of background noise in your audio files? Here's how you can remove background audio noise for free. Sonix has the world's best audio transcription platform with features focused on collaboration. Automated transcription is much more accurate if you upload high quality audio. Here's how to capture high quality audio. Sonix takes transcription to a whole new level. Sometimes you don't have super fancy audio recording equipment around; here's how you can record better audio on your phone.
Sonix uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to convert your mp3 files to text.
Sonix is the best online audio transcription software in 2020—it's fast, easy, and affordable.
If you are looking for a great way to convert your audio to text, try Sonix today.
Show Notes
[01:37] Introduction to Erick Knight with Orenda Technologies
[04:37] Competitive swimmer background
[13:57] The swimming pool at the Olympics going green
[21:26] Two disciplines in balancing water chemistry and range chemistry
[25:00] What is LSI and how was it introduced into the pool industry?
[29:29] The factors in finding the LSI
[30:35] When and how to apply LSI to your swimming pools.
[38:37] Recommend tools for testing water chemistry
[40:40] Do you have to be perfect on the LSI?
[45:53] LSI calculation report can be sent via email
[49:33] Scared of calcium?
[56:59] The positive and negative side of the LSI app
[01:04:01] Good professionals are not afraid to tell their customers the truth
[01:11:25] Homeowners can understand the basics of water chemistry but you can take it to another level
[01:14:14] Is there still pushback from the pool industry on the LSI?
[01:17:57] Harold pissed when he found out how big of a difference the temperature made in LSI
[01:22:39] Everybody can use the Orenda app
