tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-340831872024-03-13T06:22:25.278-07:00The Pool BizMost people come here with questions about why their pool is disintegrating. Lots suspect it's because of their salt system. Look at the Labels and find your symptom(s) there. Click on the Label to find out more. You may also want to watch the WFAA Report about how much salt sucks, listed under "Why Salt Is Eating Up Your Pool", along with a link to text that explains how salt damages stone and concrete. Happy Reading.The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-41664770286204116172012-08-20T06:58:00.000-07:002012-08-20T07:14:28.474-07:00Call Me Crazy: Zinc Balls & High Current FlowI took most of the summer off this year. It was great. Not only did I get away from the Texas heat, but I spent most of the summer in a city that has very few swimming pools - San Francisco. It was great. Foggy and cool, or sunny and cool, or windy and cool. It was cool.<br />
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Then I came home. It was over 100 degrees every day for about the first ten days I was back. Got me all tuned up and back in-the-mode again.<br />
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Two things caught my eye after a summer of not thinking much about anything but walking up and down hills and not sweating. The first is this pic I snagged at my local pool wholesale supplier:<br />
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Notice the little black sign? <i>SALTWATER PROBLEMS? Sacrificial Zinc Anode. </i>They put stuff behind the counter for easy access to their higher volume articles. They have a whole warehouse of merchandise for sale, and about one hundred square feet of display space behind the counter, and right in the center of that display area are sacrificial zinc balls.<br />
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I wrote about zinc balls <a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/bad-for-glass.html" target="_blank">WAY BACK HERE</a>. It was one of the first pieces I wrote, back when everyone was saying, "the Poolguy's crazy, but you might want to put some Zinc Balls in your skimmer baskets, anyway".<br />
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If you look at that photo again, let your eyes wander down from that sign to counter top level, and then over to your left, and you'll see another item for sale on a blue card, it's another variety of sacrificial zinc anode. This one is meant to be installed in the plumbing line so that it has direct contact to the pool's bonding grid. In fact, if you go to <a href="http://POOLTOOL.COM/">POOLTOOL.COM</a>, you'll see that Saltwater Problems have turned into big business for this company. Clearly, their top-selling items are Salt Pool related.<br />
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That's really the Smoking Gun, you know, attaching to the bonding grid. That's the same as an admission that Stray Currents are amplified and made much more destructive by these Salt Systems. That's why they want you to attach a sacrificial zinc anode to that grid; to put the least noble (softest) metal out there to bear the brunt of damage from the Stray Currents riding on your pool's bonding grid. The truth is your non-salt pool may have Stray Currents on the bonding gird as well, but you don't have highly conductive salt water to amplify the damaging effects.<br />
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Too, there's a chance that the units themselves could introduce Stray Currents onto your pool's bonding grid. No one's really done any testing to see.<br />
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Anecdotally, there's <a href="http://www.poolspanews.com/2012/082/082n_defect.html" target="_blank">the recent article in Pool & Spa News</a> that a salt system manufacturer is suing a pool equipment distributor for breech of contract; not paying for salt systems they received and resold for installation in people's back yard. You know, like YOUR back yard. The distributor explained that the reason they didn't pay was that the systems were faulty, in that they MELTED DURING OPERATION.<br />
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Hmmm... don't you hate that when your salt system melts down? It's better than having them <a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Exploding%20Salt%20Cells" target="_blank">EXPLODE</a>, but only a little bit better. One of the installing company was quoted in the article as saying, "They are melting... It's a huge safety issue... I'm afraid someone's going to get hurt. It's a public safety hazard".<br />
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Turns out the first installing activity quoted in the article has installed "more than 200" of these systems in people's back yards, and now they're worried that the systems WILL MELT. The article doesn't indicate whether this company has notified these customers about the potential hazards in their back yard.<br />
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I'm betting not.<br />
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Another company had installed about 40 units, and when failures - READ MELTED SALT CELLS - topped 25% of installed systems, they yanked them all out of their customer's back yards and discontinued sales of the units. So, they're the Good Guys in the story.<br />
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Use the link above to the P&SN article and you can see a picture of one of the char-broiled salt cells. If you recognize it as something like what you have in your back yard, RUN!<br />
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You see, with most Salt Systems, you're running something less than 20 amps, but not much less. I know 20 amps because the cell fuse for a Goldline AquaRite is a 20 amp fuse. Leave a little + or - room, and you've got somewhere around 15 to 18 amps going through that cell on an average day. If I remember my old safety courses from the Navy, it takes 100 milliamps (one tenth of one amp) to kill you, so this is about 150 to 180 times the current requirements to kill someone. So it's easy to see how it would melt the salt cell. The company who makes this stuff admits that the salt cells melt, but blames it on the installers, saying they didn't properly connect the brass pins to the salt cell, allowing them to overheat and cause melting of the plastic salt cell housing.<br />
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The reason they heat up is because with a faulty connection, you have more resistance to current flow. The argument for the safety of putting 20 amps into the water is that with very little resistance between the cell plates, you never have any Stray Current leaking out via other, higher resistance paths to ground. But as you increase resistance to the current flow through a faulty connection, and you have a power supply capable of putting out 20 amps max, you basically have a recipe for disaster.<br />
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My blog is <a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Stray%20Current%20Corrosion" target="_blank">full of incidents of pool owners feeling a "tingling"</a> when they grab a ladder or a side rail at their pool. That's Stray Currents, amigos.<br />
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I still marvel that we're having a discussion about the advisability of putting a known corrosive (salt) into pool water and then whacking in with something near 20 amps of current flow to save a buck on chlorine tabs.<br />
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Call me crazy...<br />
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<br />The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-91275254854352000412012-06-06T19:11:00.003-07:002014-09-06T09:05:02.976-07:00Shameless Self PromotionI know you all came here for help with your salt swimming pool, and there's plenty of that info here. But this post is about MY NEW NOVEL. Yes, you heard it here first. VAMPIRES IN PARADISE: A TALE OF LOVE, BLOOD & ADDICTION is available <a href="https://www.createspace.com/3872259">HERE</a> & on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vampires-In-Paradise-Blood-Addiction/dp/1477420959/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1339079710&sr=8-2">AMAZON</a>, or if you're over the "hold the book in my hands" thing, you can get the E-book for a mere 99 cents <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vampires-In-Paradise-Steven-Riley-ebook/dp/B0089ZLSUE" target="_blank">HERE</a>. If you buy the trade paperback at Amazon, you can combine it with any other purchase and get free shipping.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFQOcc1YDNOztwzYCFJN8fo0GVnM6nsGMWlxRPM6ip90-W05tIPMlR-0My67CNxyOgkQorT15rRrpBBdMNyWzX_v6BFFbNVlgrCFeVNtfcQutGWwSTwtn9AM_SUp6dE2DG9L4/s1600/VIP+COVER+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFQOcc1YDNOztwzYCFJN8fo0GVnM6nsGMWlxRPM6ip90-W05tIPMlR-0My67CNxyOgkQorT15rRrpBBdMNyWzX_v6BFFbNVlgrCFeVNtfcQutGWwSTwtn9AM_SUp6dE2DG9L4/s320/VIP+COVER+3.jpg" height="320" width="218" /></a></div>
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Try it. You'll like it... And then tell your friends.<br />
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Then, scroll on down this page for blog posts relative to your problems with your salt pool.The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-34540530814161016582012-02-20T17:46:00.027-08:002012-02-21T09:22:18.536-08:00Proof That Builder Not Playing With Full Deck Emerges<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Yep. You guessed it. The Pool Guy Rides Again. Hi Ho, Silver, and all that...<div><br /></div><div>Reason I just can't keep quiet is on full display in these two photos. Take a look and tell me, "what's wrong with these photos"?<div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpPnjeQyZWMa9flsUzvE1caTcJMJtCfooh0byDnDI_3u1v8KNziFqMZgvBe64NkY-LFvXeTKd66DuaV6xG4lkcy_jhXzr3eRyq1PJJZAikODfV1kj_7WXwWTsCs8ithQCiCHa/s1600/coates+heater.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpPnjeQyZWMa9flsUzvE1caTcJMJtCfooh0byDnDI_3u1v8KNziFqMZgvBe64NkY-LFvXeTKd66DuaV6xG4lkcy_jhXzr3eRyq1PJJZAikODfV1kj_7WXwWTsCs8ithQCiCHa/s400/coates+heater.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711400572418918722"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpPnjeQyZWMa9flsUzvE1caTcJMJtCfooh0byDnDI_3u1v8KNziFqMZgvBe64NkY-LFvXeTKd66DuaV6xG4lkcy_jhXzr3eRyq1PJJZAikODfV1kj_7WXwWTsCs8ithQCiCHa/s1600/coates+heater.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><br /><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyGnor6kwlUmZ6VSjyptrkuftAK_1Iu69Jt4alWFka7Y5hQepGdnpozJje0mQDMZHR_QifORhRShajzwCjrDkc8_tjOhGJKxF6HW3HB0p6w3HKJkEsTTJC1qq7Fpc8hznPitnc/s1600/heater+and+salt+cell.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyGnor6kwlUmZ6VSjyptrkuftAK_1Iu69Jt4alWFka7Y5hQepGdnpozJje0mQDMZHR_QifORhRShajzwCjrDkc8_tjOhGJKxF6HW3HB0p6w3HKJkEsTTJC1qq7Fpc8hznPitnc/s400/heater+and+salt+cell.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711400579010698338"></a><br /><div></div></span></span><br /><br />Yes. That's a Coates Electric Heater. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />And yes, that's an Intellichlor Salt Cell plumbed into the outlet of that Coates Electric Heater.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Still see nothing wrong with this? Okay. Let's try doing a little light reading (you're gonna have to click on the Limited Warranty to make it big enough to read. Here's a little hint; skip down to item 4 on the Coates Heater Limited Warranty):<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2I37q22UhWLEY_udA1xyKnFJZa8nqrbCUloxyQhKEn98T_a3x0x8K_nqovJl1tz807glA2ja_pR8YGBI4AzBNsedKPR3cb7gd6rXvulm48eiXw086-aMrO39h3vonZ5xtwgd/s1600/coates+limited+warranty.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 277px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2I37q22UhWLEY_udA1xyKnFJZa8nqrbCUloxyQhKEn98T_a3x0x8K_nqovJl1tz807glA2ja_pR8YGBI4AzBNsedKPR3cb7gd6rXvulm48eiXw086-aMrO39h3vonZ5xtwgd/s400/coates+limited+warranty.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711403577045402466"></a><br /><br /><br />Isn't that funny? A builder intentionally built a spa and used a Coates stainless steel electric heater with a Intellichlor salt system big enough for at least a 15,000 gallon pool, which automatically voided the warranty on the Coates electric heater.<br /><br />Why would he do that, you may ask. Especially when he's building that spa for a guy who can afford all of this:<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWuQPUKSZ7ks66moNYo6m7Hxxv3B6dBiOOqtloNxluWeCpAcT1IH3spNXSV-_m2j8MQ-Lv7nbd_e9GFURM_2NRThOcpZQd1IgFYdXbmWd12EJFNilivzixbyYqMnJiq94F8Q7V/s1600/glass+spa+2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 298px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWuQPUKSZ7ks66moNYo6m7Hxxv3B6dBiOOqtloNxluWeCpAcT1IH3spNXSV-_m2j8MQ-Lv7nbd_e9GFURM_2NRThOcpZQd1IgFYdXbmWd12EJFNilivzixbyYqMnJiq94F8Q7V/s400/glass+spa+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711406495159121746"></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgceXjpp4isVlOHFiAOfbPF9c5goDqjy5DHPJMtMG-Ja4y4C26fW7ymBQRy2PZby1NX1pucD6N4Dnc3amOqatZrxijCDw4si4FbrBjcdp-CpEwo5WcxbtP8_pHFzZbGjvJD70S_/s1600/glass+spa+3.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 298px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgceXjpp4isVlOHFiAOfbPF9c5goDqjy5DHPJMtMG-Ja4y4C26fW7ymBQRy2PZby1NX1pucD6N4Dnc3amOqatZrxijCDw4si4FbrBjcdp-CpEwo5WcxbtP8_pHFzZbGjvJD70S_/s400/glass+spa+3.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711406491565478514"></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Truth is, he built a reflecting pool on the other terrace of this guy's penthouse. Built it in the same style as the spa, with the big glass walls and - yep, you guessed it - a salt system. He sold him another Intellichlor salt system for a six inch deep basin of water that no one even wades in. And guess what material he used for the corners to join the glass panels on both the spa and the reflecting pool?<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZbkWqn77q8d7N3yI6p7zVfZLOhyuJv6QKJS9-1xXkWiTSYWJHS7YkWbV3PUFzZyJ2jqZh9YQICbDZ99S0YKiJO6rELnNubKHxMPVLy-11F4yQRUE_rrErIXo7W8Nez2RAuk1/s1600/glass+spa.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZbkWqn77q8d7N3yI6p7zVfZLOhyuJv6QKJS9-1xXkWiTSYWJHS7YkWbV3PUFzZyJ2jqZh9YQICbDZ99S0YKiJO6rELnNubKHxMPVLy-11F4yQRUE_rrErIXo7W8Nez2RAuk1/s400/glass+spa.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711408512846217554"></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />That's right. Once again, our Intrepid Builder used stainless steel. Because if it's good enough for the electric heater folks, it's good enough... Hey, wait a minute. Something's not right here. It's NOT good enough for the heater folks. In fact, they denied the warranty claim on the failed and leaking heat exchanger the minute they saw that salt cell plumbed in line. And maybe that's why the reflecting pool lost watertight integrity at one of those stainless steel corners and leaked out and down and through the deck and then through the ceiling of the penthouse below. And of course there was an automatic water leveler on the reflecting pool so no one put two and two together for awhile on where the water was coming from.<br /><br />Imagine that phone call...<br /><br />Ring... Ring... "Hello.. Yeah, this is (owner of penthouse upstairs from the flooding penthouse). Who's this? Maintenance? Yeah, what can I do for you? No. I'm not leaking any water up here. I'm good to go. No, my reflecting pool's just fine... What's that? How do I know it's fine? Because the water level is the same as it always is, that's how I know it's just fine."<br /><br /><br />Now, anyone who's read very many of my blog posts knows that I'm somewhat less than forgiving when so-called Pool & Spa Professionals make bone-head mistakes like this. I figure if you're gonna advertise your services as Pro Builder, then Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. And in this case, if this was all that was wrong, I'd say it's just a moron who knows squat about equipment, material and salt compatibility, even though every trade journal and even some manufacturers have been saying for years that you need to READ THE FU&%$G DIRECTIONS, especially the Limited Warranties - hence the term LIMITED warranty - before you spec a project that's going to include salt.<br /><br />But this guy holds a special place in my heart, because in addition to all of these money grubbing, bone headed moves, he sold two - count 'em; two - complete Intellitouch control systems: One for the spa (okay, I'll buy that) and one for the reflecting pool...<br /><br />Yes, that's right. One for the reflecting pool. The one that doesn't do anything but... well, reflect.<br /><br />And so it goes....The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-57271300290007780342011-03-05T07:27:00.000-08:002011-03-05T08:20:10.426-08:00Salt Peddlers Respond to IPSSA report. Send out Hired Guns and Crackpots to take Pot Shots.<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><a href="http://www.poolspanews.com/2011/031/031n_ipssa.html">Pool & Spa News reports</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> that people are already taking exception to the </span></span><a href="http://www.poolspanews.com/2011/012/012n_salt.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">NPIRC/IPSSA report</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> on how hard it is to take care of salt pools with weekly service visits. The crux of their complaint is that IPSSA used the wrong Total Alkalinity standard for their testing because salt chlorine generators are a base type sanitizer, so a lower Total Alkalinity should have been used for testing.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">IPPSA responded by pretty much rolling over, beating their breast, crying, "We're sorry!", and swearing it'll never happen again. Here's what they said; "</span></span><span class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We didn’t really take total alkalinity into account," (I just can't believe anyone would ever allow themselves to be quoted saying that) "and we should have... For all our calculations, we were working from the IPSSA point of view and based our figures on IPSSA’s general alkalinity, pH and hardness recommendations. I admit we didn’t test any further than those.”</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What they should have said was, "You people have been lying in all of your advertising for all of these years that your salt based chlorine generators produce a 'pH neutral' chlorine - not a base type chlorine - and so we tested your sorry salt boxes based on the claims made in your own ads. You've been building and selling these machines in mass quantities for the last 8 or 10 years and never once did any of you do a minute of research into these questions, leaving it up to non-profits and not-for-profits to do the testing that you, as allegedly responsible manufacturers, should have done before the first unit went out the factory door. Builders and service folks have been crying for guidance for years on this technology and all you've done is obfuscate, mislead and misdirect, changing your mind more often than Italy changed governments in the sixties, never once setting forth concrete water chemistry guidelines for your own equipment, and then repeatedly denied salt damage to stone and metals. And now you send out the same old 'aquarium-laboratory-in-the-garage guys' to throw rocks at us."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But they didn't. Search me why.</span></span></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-27634738253363915242011-01-22T07:57:00.000-08:002011-02-13T07:42:18.149-08:00This Just In: Industry Admits, "The Pool Guy Was Right."<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Yep. I'm still the same old humble, lovable Pool Guy. Those of you who know me well can attest to that.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Those who only know me through what I write in this blog? Well, let's just say it's a skewed opinion you may have of me. Skewed either by my sometimes inflammatory rhetoric - some people just don't like the bomb-throwers among us, think that all discourse should be couched in temperate language - or, your opinion may be skewed by your inability to see beyond your own money-grubbing determination to saddle your pool customers with unmanageable, highly destructive technology for a buck.</span></span><span style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">Up until now my detractors have always been able to rationalize away what I say by taking harbor in the lie that, "everything the Pool Guy writes is just hearsay. It's not research. It's just anecdotal. Or worse yet, just his opinion," even though I always try to post a link to some type of research or plain old scientific fact along with anything I state in this blog. The few who would admit that I did back up what I said with credible links were usually able to maintain their continued suspension of belief by saying, "yeah, but those aren't links about pools. They're studies of salt damage to winter roads, or salt damage to architectural stone in coastal areas. There's no real studies done with test pools."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">In fact, one idiot, kinda famous around the blog here (coincidentally, his name rhymes with Con), was always fond of responding with challenges to show records for the "alleged affected pools". You see, his Out was always the fact that almost no one keeps daily or even weekly records on their private residential pools. That's the kind of thing you only do once a problem presents, a problem like metal corrosion, or stone and concrete deterioration. But he would insist that since no one had any records going back to Day One of startup, he and his company - and by extension, the whole family of companies involved in salt based chorine generation technology - were off the hook, that it was all clearly the homeowner's fault for sloppy water chemistry and the Pool Guy was just mean for trying to pin it on that benevolent gang of guys and gals who populate the sales staffs and board rooms of the corporate world.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">So these corporate humanitarians would go about their business, as if none of what I was documenting was occurring. They just carried on the pretense of being helpful, responsible equipment manufacturers and representatives, answering everyone's technical questions about how best to install this nearly unmanageable and highly destructive technology on pools, and just ignore the issues I was raising here in this blog, throwing the old "show me your papers" routine at anyone who might raise their hand and ask why their pool was dissolving. And these ploys worked for a long time.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">Because the truth is, I'm just a pool cleaner in Dallas, Texas, and I sure didn't have the pockets deep enough to fund the kind of research to reproduce in a lab the problems I was seeing with salt based chlorine generators.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">But IPSSA did. That's the Independent Pool & Spa Service Professionals. They're pretty close to being a nationwide organization of, like the name says, independent pool & spa pros, who had been seeing the same problems I've been seeing for all these many years. Too, they had an organization with deep enough pockets to go and get answers to at least some of the questions.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">Now, as you look down this page, if you're saying to yourself, "I ain't reading all this", just stick with me for a few more paragraphs before you close your browser. I'll hit the highlights for those of you lacking the Geek Factor one might need to get all the way through a piece like this. And I encourage you to read at least these next few paragraphs. Because this is it; the Smoking Gun, as it were. This is a document that no one selling salt based chlorine generators can hide from. Because it is true, unbiased research, conducted by research scientists at Cal Poly State University, in real swimming pools built for the specific purpose of conducting research for the pool industry by the National Pool Industry Research Center.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">IPSSA's research protocal #1 asked the simple question: Can a Salt Water Pool Be Maintained Properly With Once-a-Week Service?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The short answer is NO. And here's why: The research concluded that salt based chlorine generators "do not provide for stable, in-specification, pool water chemistry parameters". What they found was that the pH would rise "very rapidly" after the weekly adjustments were made. This is something that all of us who service pools on a weekly basis have known about salt based chlorine generators since they first came back into vogue around 2002. Of course, you can still find manufacturer's literature that swears salt based chlorine generators make pH neutral chlorine. I explained why that's a load of crap back on November 4th, 2006 in the blog piece </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Welcome to the Caveat Emptorium</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. Here's what I said then:</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">"Now, if you look up the manufacturers sales pitch stuff, this is where they get that myth that the type of chlorine they generate is pH neutral because these three thing [chlorine gas, caustic soda and hydrogen gas] balance each other out. Not true. Much of the hydrogen gas rises to the surface and leaves the water. It gasses off, being a gas and all. Duh. That reduces the amount of hydrochloric acid created, and so the caustic soda - sodium hydroxide - neutralizes the hydrochloric acid and what’s left raises the overall pH.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">But if you’re a pool cleaner like me, you already knew that without all them fancy words. Because every week when you go to your salt pools, the pH is through the roof."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">And here, five years later, IPSSA and the NPIRC have proved that I was right, proved it in their test pools monitored by their research scientists. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Now, what has happened in that five years? According to </span></span><a href="http://www.casualliving.com/article/468216-Salt_water_pool_trend_brings_ongoing_profits.php?intref=sr"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">an article in Casual Living magazine</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, in "2002, only 15% of new pool installations were salt water. Today, [2009] an estimated 70% of all new pools are being built with electrolytic chlorine generators and the nation has more than 1.3 million salt water pools".</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">In 2005, when the problems with salt chlorine generators began to present and people like me started talking about it, not only did the industry ignore what we were saying, but they made an active effort to thwart our message, with lip service to the problems we were reporting by promising manufacturer funded research. I remember around March of 2007 a group of seven salt system manufacturers claimed - via a <a href="http://www.deckoseal.com/saltprotection_news.pdf">Pool & Spa News article, "Coping With Salt"</a> - that they were investigating these issues and that results would be forthcoming. But absolutely nothing ever came of that, except that those manufacturers redoubled their efforts to sell a salt system to every pool owner worldwide.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">So now we have salt systems on about 40% of the pools out there, and the most credible pool & spa service association on the planet (IPSSA), after reviewing the results from the most credible pool & spa research entity on the planet (NPIRC), says that these things aren't manageable on a week to week basis.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But the damage is done. The money's been made. And the consumer is still left with the impression that Salt's Great, because that's what the Sales & Marketing Guys have been preaching at them for a decade. Unfortunately, if the Average Pool Owner goes off-script and tries to find any information on their own about salt, they're more likely to read the article in Casual Living about how great salt pools are than they are to read an </span></span><a href="http://www.poolspanews.com/2011/012/012n_salt.html"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">article in Pool & Spa News</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> about the results of IPSSA funded NPIRC research on the problems with salt pools.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And even though some of the manufacturers have modified their pitch to tone down their outrageous claims of the benefits of salt, while totally avoiding any admission that there's any downside to salt at all, you can still find manufacturers Living the Lie on "pH neutral chlorine". Like this</span></span><a href="http://www.recmanagement.com/rmnews/0118.chlorking.pr.pdf"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> ChlorKing pdf from January 2010</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, touting the delivery of pH neutral chlorine from it's X-Gen On Site chlorine generator. In bold print, no less. It used to be that nearly all the manufacturers would say it, but most of them stopped when they saw the writing on the wall about those pesky old facts finally getting into print somewhere besides a pool cleaner's blog.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Now, let's look a little bit deeper at the research that was done. If you want to </span></span><a href="http://www.ipssa.com/ipssa-research.html"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> read the full report, you can download it here</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, at the IPPSA website. The pools that were used for this research are located in San Luis Obispo, CA on the campus of Cal Poly State University. The pools are small, approximately 8,000 gallons of water. </span></span><a href="http://ceenve3.civeng.calpoly.edu/NPIRC/researchfacility.htm"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You can see the pools here, at the NPIRC website</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. They're located at the top of a hill, with a 7 or 8 foot chain link fence surrounding them. The deck area around the pools is large and there is no vegetation growing near the pools. So, although they get some debris blown in over the fence from the surrounding trees on the campus, I wouldn't say it comes close to the level of debris that we get here in Texas in our older city neighborhoods with mature, heavily landscaped yards and lots of pool side foliage and tree overhang. Too, the weather in that area is pretty mild, with the </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Luis_Obispo,_California"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">average high temperature in July being 80.3 degrees</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. Here in </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Texas"><span style=" color: rgb(0, 6, 238); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Dallas, our average high in July is 96 degrees</span></span></a><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, resulting in 88 to 90 degree pool water. So, it's a pretty safe bet that the average Dallas residential pool would have about 3 times the chlorine demand from the salt cell as would be required to maintain the FC's detailed in the NPIRC report.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">Another reason I think that would be true is my own personal experience with other forms of sanitizer in different climates. I lived in San Diego, CA for many years, and I distinctly remember keeping my pools on the high side of normal FC with 1 to 3, 7 oz. tabs every week (3 tabs being a very big old deep diver), shocking the pool with a gallon of liquid chlorine about once every never. Here in Dallas, it's typical to add 5 to 6 tabs every week during the summer, and shocking with a couple lbs. of cal hypo (equivalent to 1 gallon of liquid) about every two weeks.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">So, I bet that the salt cells at NPIRC were running about 20% to 30% output, whereas we run salt pools through the swimming season at 100% output. The result being that we have two to three times the output in high pH chlorine in our salt pools, resulting in a much more rapid rise in pH.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">I would bet it's the same in Arizona or New Mexico, or to the east of me across the sunbelt all the way to Florida: Higher ambient temps and water temps resulting in higher chlorine demand, resulting in higher output from all those salt cells and higher and higher pH's.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">You know, when I was younger and more naive about the motivations of industry and the products they sold, I used to have this theory I would share about 7 oz. trichlor tablets, and it went something like this; pool water, given the parameters we need to protect the plaster surface, which is basically an alkaline, high pH surface, tends toward high pH. And trichlor tablets tend toward low pH. The two create a symmetry, a balance of sorts, that results in pretty rock solid pH right where we want it to be at 7.5. Because week after week, on pool after pool, out in San Diego and here in Dallas - two areas with vastly different fill water - given a proper Corrected Total Alkalinity (80 ppm to 120 ppm) - I would see the same pH on all of my pools; 7.5. And as long as I compensated for the high pH of my other chlorine products (sodium hypochlorite in San Diego and cal hypo in Dallas) when it came time to shock by adding a little muriatic acid in the deep end, I had no problem maintaining that perfect pH. The result was I never scaled or etched a pool. And I used to think this was by design, that thought and effort on the part of the industry went into all this.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">But the full court press to ram salt chlorine generation down the throats of the industry by the manufacturers has proved to me that the trichlor thing was just a coincidence, and the only real design is making money, even if it scales the pool, corrodes all the metal and erodes the stone and concrete.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:Arial;font-size:medium;">Thank goodness for organizations like IPSSA and NPIRC and their efforts to bring the facts out into the light of day. Too bad they don't have the advertising budget the manufacturers have to neutralize the good they try to do.</span></p></span></div></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-54315580647619015552010-06-10T07:52:00.001-07:002010-06-11T11:59:36.490-07:00Stray Currents Are Still Destroying Your Pool... and Spa... Especially Your Heater<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Got this great comment today from PFLOVING in response to one of my first posts, in October '06, <i>Why Salt Sucks</i>. I didn't want it to just be buried in the comments so I'm creating a post just for it:</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i>Found this blog and boy u guys are onto something. I too am battling this question on corrosion. here is my story. I have a hot tub with a swg eco spa generator. Made it one year and the inline heater started to show signs of corrosion around the heater terminal. It was replaced and my pool guy placed a zinc anode disc in the strainer basket and ran a copper wire to the bonding/ground terminal on the side of the balboa heater box. In 3 months the heater was toast. The stainless turned into a rusty dripy mess. The thought was that the swg was putting out too much clorine and maybe aggressive water since he had installed lots of these swg's without very many problems in our area. I questioned the bonding that was done from Coleman since it wasn't a contiuous wire linking all the pumps and heater together. So that heater was replaced and all the bonding was tightened down the way Coleman had installed it since most connections were very loose and dielectric grease placed on those connections. 2 months later now the new heater is destroyed....eaten up. He doesn't know what to think but I know it is stray current in salt water and dissimiar metals causing this. I also think, from my research, that the titanium plates and the stainless in the heater are reacting. The zinc anode goes uneffected since its not bonded to anything, at least thats my thought. One person in the industry suggested to bond everything together but don't hook that bond up to ground or back to the house panel as this is where you get stray current. This way everything is at the same potential. Also hook the zinc anode to the bond wire which it will complete that circuit and the zinc should dissolve and not the stainless heater. Thoughts? </i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">PF: thanks for the great comment!</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">And, yes. I have quite a few thoughts on this subject. Your description of the problem fits in exactly with what I've come to believe about salt pools; if there is any Stray Current on the grid, proper bonding and salty water will amplify it's damage. Not to say that every electrical appliance attached to a pool shouldn't be properly bonded. They absolutely should be. That's how we keep people safe in water that is filtered, circulated, sanitized and illuminated via electrical devices; through proper bonding.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">That's why I can't say that your idea of creating a separate bonding grid for your spa is a good one; because I don't think it would meet code. Check with an electrician in your area to be sure. But the last thing you want to do is to compromise your bonding where water and people are involved. And you may say that you're just creating a separate grid from the other, so it will be safe and isolated from the problems. But if anyone gets hurt, all that will matter is that you may have violated code to try to create a less susceptible bonding grid. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">Second, Ground is Ground the World 'Round. Driving a new rod into the ground a few yards away from where your house's bonding rod is doesn't change much. If there are Stray Currents in the vicinity, they will be felt on your new grid as well.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">Any electricians out there who want to contribute here, I'd appreciate it. I think my logic is right on this, but I invite everyone's input.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">Having said all that; the fact that your second heater failed faster than your first heater AFTER you cleaned up the bonding indicates that the better the bonding for the appliance, the more susceptible it will be to Stray Current Corrosion. IF there is any Stray Current on the grid, it will be amplified by the highly conductive salt water and the cleaned up bonding grid will present even less resistance and a more conductive path to the equipment, in this case your heater.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">So, the issue becomes one of either getting rid of the amplifier (salty water) or troubleshooting the grid to isolate and eliminate the sources of the Stray Currents. Here's <a href="http://www.myapsp.org/forum/topics/salt-systems?groupUrl=builderopenindustryforum&id=2751531%3ATopic%3A17440&groupId=2751531%3AGroup%3A12669&page=4#comments">a link</a> to a story from a pool builder, Rod Ogilve, who had a similar problem with Stray Currents. It's a thread over at the APSP website about salt pools and what the builders think of them. Scroll down to his post that starts, "at the risk of sounding like another salt blast..." It is very applicable to your problem. After that, scroll through the whole thread while you're there. There's lots of great Horror Show pictures of salt damage to pools. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">Also, take a look at <a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Heaters%20with%20Salt">this post</a>; <i>The Trouble With Heater</i>. Scroll down until you get to the part in italics. it's the latest update to the Never Ending Saga of trying to find a pool heater that plays well with salt. So far, none do.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">My best advice is take the salt system off your spa, use a little Twenty Mule Team Borax to soften the water and forget all your problems with Stray Current Corrosion. Or spend hundreds of dollars on electricians to find out that your neighbor two blocks away has a bad sump pump.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;">Good luck with your spa!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-25071749960437055552009-03-21T07:37:00.000-07:002011-01-28T11:46:21.985-08:00Arch Plaster Study<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /><br />I do a lot of reading. The older I get – and the less time I spend in the field – the more I read all the things that I used to tell myself I would get around to reading when I wasn’t too busy cleaning pools.<br /><br />And, man, oh man, am I disappointed. For most of my career I’ve just had my head down, focusing on taking care of my pools, going to the odd show here or there, attending a water chemistry seminar now and then. But most of my experience and knowledge was gained poolside. I haven’t paid a lot of attention to what The Experts write – with the exception of Bob Lowry of Lowry Consulting Group. I’ve said it elsewhere in this blog; if you passed the IPSSA water chemistry exam in the last 20 or 25 years, you probably used Mr. Lowry’s books to study for it. He writes great, layman’s explanations of what’s happening in pool and spa water. But other than his stuff and what I’ve picked up on my own from textbooks and the like, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to many of the documents that end up, through their influence, controlling the direction of our industry.<br /><br />They’re not really documents, per se. You seldom, if ever, see the actual study information – like the real research data, for instance. The internet is huge and space on it is free, or next to free. But still, you never get a look at how tests were really done, or all the data that was collected. Mostly they’re just reports, or, more correctly, brochures. And the ones that seem to have the most stacked decks and the most biased information are the ones from companies selling stuff to us.<br /><br />Imagine that.<br /><br />Now, if you’re a homeowner wondering what any of this has to do with how salt damaged your pool, it doesn’t. Use the Labels on the right to find blog pieces about your symptoms or about Making Salt Work for your pool, because this blog piece is going to have a huge water chemistry geek factor. But if you’re one of the guys who is in that spot that I was in until about a year ago, busy with your route and your repairs, with your head down and hardly any time to read what it is everybody says are the latest governing documents for how we ought to take care of our pools, take a minute and read this:<br /><br />There’s this report that’s been rattling around the internet and the trade shows and seminars for the last several years. You can find it here:<br /><br />Sorry. Dead Link</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />or here:<br /><br /><a href="http://piscines-apollo.com/docs/arch_plaster_study.pdf">http://piscines-apollo.com/docs/arch_plaster_study.pdf</a><br /><br />It’s title on that first website is:<br /><br />High Cyanuric Acid Levels & Plaster Degradation In Swimming Pools<br /><br />by Ellen M. Meyer, Ph.D<br /><br />It’s commonly referred to as the Arch Study. It was a three part study; the first part 5 weeks long, the second part 6 months long, and the third part 4 months long. The gist of the first part of the study is that they put some freshly made plaster coupons into some test tanks and then added as much as 500 ppm cyanuric acid to them, and that over a period of 5 weeks, the cyanuric acid level fell from 500 ppm to about 140 ppm in one tank, and from 200 ppm to about 100 ppm in another tank, and that in both tanks, the cyanuric acid collected as a residue on the surface of the plaster. The fourth paragraph says, “surface analysis showed the accumulation of cyanuric acid on the plaster”.<br /><br />Okay, so just stop. Stop right there and think for a minute. We’ve all seen pools with 200 ppm stabilizer, right? If you’re honest with yourself, unless you’re Super Poolman, you probably have a handful of pools like that on service right now. I know I do. Most of my pools are under 100. But there are some that are higher. I admit it.<br /><br />Now, ask yourself a simple question; have you ever seen the cyanuric acid level in those pools drop to as low as 100 ppm and deposit as a residue on the plaster in a 5 week period?<br /><br />I didn’t think so. In fact, I know so. In fact, it is safe to say – through thirty years of empirical observation - this has never happened anywhere outside the laboratories of Arch Chemicals.<br /><br />So, how much stabilizer is 500 ppm? Well, it’s about 42 lbs. of stabilizer dissolved into your average 20,000 gallon pool. I’m talking pure, granular stabilizer melted into a freshly plastered backyard pool. Because that’s how this study was done. They took freshly troweled plaster coupons and put them in a tank and put in an amount equal to you putting 42 lbs of stabilizer on Day One of start-up. And how do I know that? Because I finally sat down and gave it several careful readings – something I don’t think many of us have done – and down in the 5th paragraph, in talking about pH control during the 6 month study, they say “because the plaster coupons were new, the pH rose continuously…”<br /><br />Oh, yeah, that’s Real World. Throwing 42 lbs. of stabilizer into a freshly plastered pool.<br /><br />So, the assumption I make about that first 5 week test was that they put these new plaster coupons into tanks and didn’t adjust the pH during the 5 week test, and viola! The pH skyrockets and the cyanuric acid falls out of solution, accumulating on the surface of the plaster. Here’s a quote from Dr. Meyer in a Pool & Spa News article: “The cyanuric acid was no longer in solution… It was on the plaster surface, having some kind of affect.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.poolspanews.com/2008/052/052acid.html">http://www.poolspanews.com/2008/052/052acid.html</a><br /><br />Now, that’s not really a scathing indictment, is it? Having some kind of affect?<br /><br />I promise you, if you plastered and filled a 20,000 gallon pool, and on Day One you dissolved 42 lbs. of cyanuric acid into the water, then went away for 5 weeks, when you come back, it would be a logical result to have more than half your cyanuric acid plated out on that pool’s surface.<br /><br />But then, if you didn’t have any pH control for 5 weeks, you’d have to demo that plaster and start over, because a little cyanuric acid on the surface of the plaster would be the least of your problems.<br /><br />So, based on these shocking results, this company - that coincidentally makes cal hypo products and owns a few non-chlorine alternative sanitizer labels - decided to do a 6 month tank test. Now they introduce water chemistry parameters. I know that because the say so, a conversation conspicuously absent from the 5 week test. They say the “water in the test tank was adjusted to try and maintain pH between 7.2 and 7.8 and alkalinity between 60 to 100 ppm”. The key phrase there is “try and maintain”. Note that it doesn’t say, like it does later when talking about the 4 month test in test pools “were maintained at…” Old “try and maintain” indicates that boat was missed. So we can assume, from the very language of the report, that, because they were using new plaster coupons, they weren’t able to maintain their own stated water chemistry parameters. You know how it is; three day weekends, somebody forgot, etc.<br /><br />Too, repeat those water chemistry parameters back to yourself; 7.2 to 7.8 pH and 60 to 100 ppm alkalinity. What happened to 7.4 to 7.6 and 80 to 120? That’s industry standard, isn’t it? Then, after stating these parameters, they contradict them in the next to the last paragraph, where they admit “that pH and alkalinity of the tanks ran on the high side (pH~8, TA~90 ppm), but then they say that despite “the high pH and alkalinity in the test tank, plaster degradation was still seen.<br /><br />Really? Look at the 3 photos, labeled 100 ppm, 250 ppm & 500 ppm. Those are the ones from the test tanks. Looks like scaling to me, which is exactly what you get when you run your pool water scaling on the Saturation Index.<br /><br />Now, these “dramatic results” prompted them to do yet a third study; “additional tests were initiated in larger bodies of water where the water balance could be maintained more easily”. They operated five test pools, maintaining their water chemistry at 7.2 to 7.6 pH, alkalinity at 80 to 120 ppm and calcium hardness at 180 to 250.<br /><br />After four months, they took pictures, which you can see at the bottom of their page. On the left, you have 14X magnified plaster coupon immersed for 4 months in 0 ppm cyanuric acid. Look hard at that photo. Doesn’t that surface look like the beginning of an etched surface? Doesn’t that look like we’ve already burned off the butter and we’re starting to expose the aggregate?<br /><br />Now look at the plaster coupon on the right, the one that was in the pool with 200-250 ppm cyanuric acid. That’s looks severely etched, doesn’t it? Well, 7.2 pH, 80 ppm alkalinity and 180 ppm calcium hardness is an aggressive environment, all the way up to 80 degrees, assuming a minimum TDS of 430 (their calcium hardness and their cyanuric acid), and all the way up to 90 degrees if the TDS was a little higher, even as little as 80 points higher.<br /><br />But let’s say that this was done in an air conditioned laboratory in Georgia. A reasonable assumption, right? So, let’s assume a water temperature of 72 degrees. That water is even more corrosive. An extra 0.1, and it being a logarithmic number, 0.1 is a doubling of it’s corrosiveness. Basically, that water is 5 times more corrosive than water balanced to the industry standard of 7.5 pH, 100 ppm TA, 200 minimum Calcium Hardness and average water temp of 78 degrees.<br /><br />I’m using the handy automated Langelier Index provided by one of the folks who host this study on the internet. You can find it here:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.tricitypool.com/tc-satindex.html">http://www.tricitypool.com/tc-satindex.html</a><br /><br />Now, I have a couple of questions about this report.<br /><br />1. Why did they use such low calcium levels? 180 to 250 isn’t mean calcium as recommended in our industry. When we all start up pools, we make sure the calcium is at least 200 ppm, and I’ve always been told by plaster consultants whose opinions I have come to respect that probably 250 ppm is a better place to start, that 200 ppm is the minimum. And the reason we start our calcium so low is to let the level grow over time, with condensation and the addition of calcium based chlorine products. But why run it so low in the lab? Why not set and hold all pools at 250 or 300 ppm? Because the lower calcium sure clouds the conclusion that it was cyanuric acid, and not out of balance water, that caused the etching.<br /><br />2. Why is the loss of cyanuric acid only mentioned in the first 5 week study? Did the application of water chemistry parameters in the 2 subsequent tests eliminate that phenomena? Shouldn’t we be able to see the buildup that they talked about in the first test in the 5 photos from the second and third test that accompany this article? Shouldn’t there have been some mention of how they were constantly reintroducing cyanuric acid to the test tanks and test pool in the 6 month and 4 month studies? Remember that quote from Dr. Meyer in a Pool & Spa News article: “The cyanuric acid was no longer in solution… It was on the plaster surface, having some kind of affect.”<br /><br />Obviously, she’s referring to the first 5 week test. But that quote is mixed in, where the previous paragraph is talking about the 6 and 4 month tests, making it sound like every time you get high stabilizer levels you end up with cyanuric acid falling out of solution. If that were the case, we really wouldn’t have to worry about high stabilizer, would we? Every time it hit 200, we’d just wait a few weeks for it to drop back to 100 and then vacuum the residue to waste.<br /><br />3. Why in the world would they use freshly troweled plaster coupons to run this test? When would new, uncured plaster ever be exposed to cyanuric acid levels as high as 500 ppm? Not only is it not Real World, it’s not even Real Lab. After all, shouldn’t the lab make an effort to replicate the conditions you’re going to face in your customer’s backyards. Like I said, unless you bring a 50 lbs. bucket of cyanuric acid poolside and dissolve most of it in on Day One of startup, you’re never going to see the conditions they talk about in this report. And by the time you do, you’re going to have two or three year old, very well cured plaster. Of course, there will be folks who will want to play What If on this point. All I can say is that What If is a game for children and not one we ought to be playing in the laboratories and in the professional journals of our industry.<br /><br />So, why do I care about the Arch Study? Because it is having an affect on our industries perception of cyanuric acid. Look at all the places I’ve found where it’s referenced as the report that shines the light on plaster damage caused by cyanuric acid:<br /><br />http://www.tricitypool.com/tc-plaster_study.html<br /><br />http://piscines-apollo.com/docs/arch_plaster_study.pdf<br /><br />http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NTB/is_23_44/ai_n15932555<br /><br />http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-139716069.html<br /><br />http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-139716069.html<br /><br />http://www.bookrags.com/highbeam/plaster-problem-arch-study-tackles-hb/<br /><br />http://www.allbusiness.com/arts-entertainment-recreation/875089-1.html<br /><br />http://www.tricitypool.com/tc-plaster_cyanuric_study.html<br /><br />http://www.poolspanews.com/2008/052/052acid.html<br /><br />That took five minutes of googling to come up with those links. And it doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the times this study is linked to in the forums - or the Finger Pulling Contest, as I like to call them - and probably 50 or 100 times throughout the thousands of forum threads discussing pools and plaster problems.<br /><br />But now, whenever people google for the Arch Plaster Study, a link to this blog piece will come up as well.<br /><br />What irritates me the most is how easily we were all duped. Honestly, why didn’t everyone say to themselves, “200 ppm stabilizer in the water may be high, but if I wait 5 weeks half of it is not going to fall out of solution, UNLESS I jack around with the water chemistry so much that EVERYTHING is going to fall out of solution.”<br /><br />And that was the first chart on the page. We’ve all sat here and looked at that for all these years, and none of us, me included, has stopped to say, “Hey, wait a minute. That never happens.”<br /><br />Is it just politeness that causes us to not ask those basic questions? I mean, when knowledgeable people have interviewed Dr. Meyer over the years, didn’t it come up? Something like, “Gosh, Dr. Meyer, you’re the first person in the history of history to report a 50 to 70% loss of cyanuric acid over a 5 week period. Are you sure you were watching that pH and not, intentionally or unintentionally, creating an environment where that was the only logical outcome?”<br /><br />The Elephant in the Room, as it were.<br /><br />Or is it because this report supports what a lot of people want to believe about cyanuric acid, and so it becomes the Straw Man for that camp? If you’re face is reddening as you read this, then maybe there’s some truth to that.<br /><br />The craziest thing about all this is, I’ve heard there are people trying to DUPLICATE THE RESULTS OF THIS TEST and consider their tests failures when they don’t achieve the same results. You see, this thing has become the standard that other efforts are gauged by. It is now assumed that cyanuric acid damages plaster and it’s just a matter of holding your tongue right to achieve the same “proof” that Dr. Meyer achieved.<br /><br />All I know is this thing gets referenced all the time, usually as “recent studies indicate that large quantities of cyanuric acid can even damage plaster”.<br /><br />I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!<br /><br />This study is being used by different groups of people to different ends. The folks at Arch are using it to generate heat for cya based products and a bump for sales of their calcium based chlorine and another reason for people to consider their alternative sanitizers, like Baquacil. People have argued with me that I’m wrong there because Arch also sells cya based products, too. Well, how is encouraging people to keep their cya level between 25 and 50 ppm anything but good for trichlor sales?<br /><br />That tricity link is on the website of a company that’s big on UV sanitizing. There’s nothing wrong with that. UV sanitizing works and it’s not a scam to be selling the units. And throwing rocks at high cyanuric acid won’t hurt those sales, either.<br /><br />This report supports a philosophy, a philosophy that high cyanuric acid is bad for us. And it is. The more I read and research, the more convinced I become that high levels of cyanuric acid are inhibiting our ability to effectively combat the growing threat of cryptosporidium outbreaks. Too, from what I've read, it does have the general effect, in high levels, of reducing the kill time of chlorine.<br /><br />But it doesn’t destroy plaster. Not in the Real World. If a guy lets his pool get to 200 or 300 or 500 ppm cyanuric acid, he’s got enough other bad water chemistry habits to destroy the plaster without cyanuric acid having anything to do with it.<br /><br />Now, I tried to play fair on this. I e-mailed Dr. Meyer on February 28th and asked her, “when you raised cyanuric acid to 250 and 500 ppm, did you use any correction factor on your observed TA?”<br /><br />On March, 13th, she wrote back that, “yes, we did use a correction factor on our observed TA for the pool study that was run. We subtracted 1/3 of our CYA reading from the observed total alkalinity to get the carbonate alkalinity.”<br /><br />I wrote again on March 14th to ask her about the issues of the cyanuric acid falling out of solution, and asked why they used new plaster vice cured plaster coupons for their tests.<br /><br />She has not responded. If she does, and if she can explain any of this, then I’ll gladly amend what I’ve posted here.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Instead of arguing about whether you can create test tank or test pool environments that will damage plaster, how about somebody asking a useful question, like, "why, when I buy that Chinese cyanuric acid in bulk from my supplier do I end up using twice as much as I used to?"</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I'm working on it. I'll have an answer in a couple of months. Sooner, I hope. Also, there’s a second, more “in-depth” brochure about the effects of high cyanuric acid that Arch has produced. I’ll be reviewing it in the next few weeks. So stay tuned.</span></div><div><br /></div></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-76170101411101130562009-03-13T09:53:00.000-07:002010-05-15T08:05:38.218-07:00The Trouble With Heaters, Take III (Updated 5/15/10)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /><br /></span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I don’t know if many of you watched The Daily Show last night. Jim Cramer, that bald headed liar from Mad Money went on Jon Stewart’s show and did everything but crawl across hot coals on his hands and knees to plead his mea culpa for all the years he spent manipulating markets for a Fast Buck as a hedge fund manager, followed by his recent stint on TV where he and his ilk have led the Average Investor to the Slaughter for Big Business.<br /><br />Stewart gave him Hell, and all Cramer did was sit there and grin like an idiot and take it, nod and shrug his agreement with everything Jon said, which included that some of Cramer’s pronouncements of how to manipulate stock prices bordered on the criminal.<br /><br />It was Great! And it dovetails nicely with another bit of news I came across this past week. Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE and world renowned Corporate Cutthroat has repented. Here’s a link to a </span><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ca8ec2e-0f70-11de-ba10-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">recent Financial Times article</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> where the managerial guru now says, “"On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world… Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy . . . Your main constituencies are your employees, <span style="font-weight:bold;">your customers and your products<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>.<br /><br />You see, there’s been a culture for many years in this country, a global culture, actually, a culture that was lionized by the success of Jack Welch in particular, to drive shareholder value as your only guiding principal. Everything was subordinate to that. Everything was based on how it affected shareholder value, which was a combination of stock price and dividends returned to the shareholder.<br /><br />Now, the Man Who Made It Famous has recanted. He has seen the errors of his way and prostrated himself before the international financial press and acknowledged his errors.<br /><br />You know, you can see the ripple effect of that philosophy in our industry, especially with our swimming pool heaters. A quick study of heater warranties over the last 8 or so years yields all you need to know of how our manufacturers were infected by the Shareholder Value phenomenon. You see, since the advent of salt systems, heater warranties have plummeted from a typical 5 years for most everything in the box, except for a 2 year warranty on a short list of items that included the heat exchangers, to a one year limited warranty. Under the old warranty, the headers, the devices on either end of the heat exchanger that hold it together, were traditionally warranted for 5 years.<br /><br />It’s a Cause and Effect kind of a thing. Salt comes along, heater problems skyrocket – I’ll cite particulars to back up that claim in a minute – and the result is a scramble to protect shareholder value by paring down the warranty to an innocuous one year, leaving their customers twisting in the wind.<br /><br />That’s been our culture for many years. You Go Along to Get Along. If Hayward dumps a dog of a cleaner on the market - and they did - the worst thing anybody says is Nothing. If Jandy marries up a heater to a salt system on a pool and the salt causes the heater to have a failure mode that is absolutely beyond doubt the problem of the salt, unless Jandy makes note of it in a tech bulletin, you Say Nothing.<br /><br />Until recently, all of this has been a successful model for driving shareholder value. Let’s look at the effects of this by taking a closer look at heater warranties.<br /><br />The standard warranty on, for example, the Jandy LT/LX heater is one year, and when you read the warranty on the last page of the Owner’s Manual, it lists several exclusions, and #3 on that list of exclusions is:<br /><br />“Not maintaining a proper chemical balance in your pool and/or spa [pH level between 7.2 and 7.8, Total Alkalinity (TA) between 80 to 120 ppm, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) less than 2000].”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.haywardnet.com/products/Manuals/pdfs/Manual227.pdf">With Hayward, their warranty</a> is also one year, and as restrictive as Jandy's (see Hayward Onwer's Manual page 14). Under Exceptions, they state: Leakage substantially contributed to by sediment, lime precipitate and/or higher than normal dissolved solids (pH above 7.8) in the tank, copper tubes or waterways".<br /><br />Higher than normal dissolved solids (pH above 7.8) leaves a lot to the interpretation of whoever shows up to field your complaint. Most salt pools will have constant excursions into the range of 7.8 and above. That's the nature of the beast. So, it's hard to say what they intend with this exclusion.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://www.raypak.com/poolframe.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In their warranty information, Raypak</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> provides a one year warranty, and excludes the situation of "not maintaining a proper chemical balance (PH level must be between 7.4 and 7.8 and total alkalinity between 100 and 150 PPM. Total dissolved solids (TDS) must be no greater than 3000 PPM)".<br /><br />Pentair has the worst availability for warranty information. They don't post any warranty information anywhere in the public domain. They just say that the warranty info is included on a card that's inside the box when you buy the heater. I don't particularly feel like buying a heater to complete this blog piece.<br /><br />I have several Pentair and Teledyne Laars (now Jandy) heater Owner’s Manual from as recently as 2003 and in it they specified the industry standard, at the time, 5 year/2 year warranty that I discussed earlier.<br /><br />What’s particularly tricky here is navigating the water chemistry parameters in light of the addition of salt to as much as 35% of the pools out there. They’ve stuck with their pre-salt water chemistry parameters for TDS. Jandy is less than 2,000 ppm, Raypak is less than 3,000 ppm, Hayward is “higher than normal” and Pentair is unknown. In fact, Jandy makes a point in there 2003/04 LX/LT Owner’s Manual of pointing out that their water chemistry concentration levels are taken from Basic Pool & Spa Technology published by NSPI. NSPI doesn’t exist today. The Association of Pool & Spa Professionals (APSP) has taken their place as the industry recognized advisors on water chemistry standards.<br /><br />APSP’s thinking on TDS has evolved quite a bit since salt came along. They used to say 3,000 ppm was the upper limit for TDS. Then, they decided that didn’t give enough allowance for the minimum 3,500 ppm salt (TDS) required for those systems. So they amended it to be 1,500 ppm above Start Up level. In other words, if you had 400 ppm TDS tap water, and you added 3,500 ppm salt (more TDS) to it, then your Start UP level would be 3,900 ppm. So your upper limit for that pool would be 5,400 ppm TDS. That’s what APSP and RWQ (Recreational Water Quality) folks say. And they are the industry recognized experts.<br /><br />Read all about </span><a href="http://www.mdstudiosinc.com/APSPPHOEblast/limits.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">APSP's take on TDS & salty water HERE</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />But swimming pool heater manufacturers have stuck with 2,000 and 3,000 ppm TDS limits. Salt is definitely part of TDS, so it's hard to imagine that any of these heaters would be covered for any warranty issues related to high TDS. But that’s okay, because they’ve reduced the length of the warranty from the old 5/2 year warranty to one year only.<br /><br />Do you see the pattern emerging here? They’ve done a brilliant job of protecting shareholder value at the expense of the reputation of their products and at the expense of their customers.<br /><br />The thing that feeds into this, the Smoking Gun, as it were, comes from the heater manufacturers themselves, when they started offering cupro nickel heat exchanger upgrades on some of their swimming pool heaters right in the middle of the Salt Storm. You see, heat exchangers have turned out to be the most expensive failure items with salt. That and a few other components I’ll talk about later. The heat exchangers fail mainly through the mechanisms of impingement corrosion and erosion corrosion.<br /><br />I would say that in Texas – at least in the Dallas/Fort Worth area – more than 90% of the pools are built with a heater. Mostly those heaters are 400,000 BTU gas fired heaters. They last anywhere from 7 to 10 years – unless of course it’s a Hayward H400 or a Pentair Mini Max Lo NOX TSI. If you have one of those, your mileage will definitely vary, if-ya-know-what-I-mean. But then, after many years of faithful, or not so faithful service, your heater breaks and the Repair Pool Guy tells you it’s going to be “about $1,000” to get it back in shape. That’s when you have to decide whether you want to be the proud owner of a well maintained Classic Heater, or you buy a new one or – and we hate it when you go this way – you decide you can live without a heater.<br /><br />If it’s a pool only, then it’s usually live without. If it’s a pool/spa with a computer, then you might be the kind of folks who use your spa enough to cough up the $3,000 for a new heater, installed.<br /><br />I wrote a </span><a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/2007/04/unbridled-competition-meets-lack-of.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">blog piece back HERE</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> about a pool owner who uses his pool every day, and that means that with our Dallas weather, he’s using his heater about 6 months of the year. Since he has a salt system, he goes through heaters about every three years, instead of the 7 to 10 years that non-salt pool owners get out of theirs. But he loves that salt. And we love selling him heaters, and we did advise him that he could make them last longer if he just got rid of that salt – commonly referred to as Due Diligence, something often lacking in this, and most other industries – but, like I said, he loves that salt. So, it’s a match made in heaven.<br /><br />So, three of the heater manufacturers (Raypak, Hayward & Pentair) have added the option to upgrade to a cupro nickel heat exchanger to combat the Impingement/Erosion Corrosion. The heat exchanger is the part of the heater that the water actually flows through. You heat up the finned metal tubing that constitutes the heat exchanger with an open flame, and that makes the water hot. Used to be they were all made of copper. Inexpensive, long lasting copper. Not so much any more.<br /><br />The reason they’re offering cupro nickel is that a standard copper heat exchanger isn’t designed to stand up to the flow rate of water that has 3,500 ppm salt plus background TDS (Total Dissolved Solids). By that, I mean everything else that’s in the water; calcium, manganese, stabilizer, etc. That’s what I was saying earlier about how the heater manufacturers haven’t amended their position on TDS, even though all of those manufacturers except Raypak also sell a line of salt chlorine generators.<br /><br />About a year ago, I was communicating with someone who has been a frequent contributor - on background – to this blog. I asked him what he knew about Impingement/Erosion corrosion, the type of corrosion your heater suffers from when the TDS of the water goes too high for your flow rate. And this is what he said then, quoting from the text of a water chemistry seminar he had attended:<br /><br />“The actual text… is ‘Erosion itself is not corrosion. However, even mildly abrasive conditions may remove a corrosion film from a surface which is protective of a substrate, thus exposing a fresh metal to corrode and thereby accelerate damage. In fresh water pools it is known that flow-rates above 7 to 8 ft/sec will erode copper piping and may remove a protective film from the substrate's surface exposing fresh metal to corrode, accelerating the damage… TDS will accelerate both the galvanic and erosion deterioration processes. High TDS will allow more electric currents to be conducted and will cause copper piping to erode at flow rates in excess of 2.3 ft/sec.’ ”<br /><br />You see, a certain amount of corrosion can be a good thing. Take copper, for instance. We’ve all seen how a copper portico will weather and turn green with age. That green is a form of corrosion, a tarnish that develops and seals the surface, protecting the underlying strata from any further corrosion. Or like the black tarnish that shows up on silver. That’s oxidation. And what are other names for oxidation? Rust. Corrosion. That’s why ships at sea will use a lot of brass. Because the brass will get that same green tarnish that copper gets – because brass is mostly copper – and that tarnish protects it. On commercial vessels, that’s why they don’t polish their brass. I remember in the Navy we used to polish the brass all the time. “Work it May, Shine it Must” was what they used to tell us. All that effort defeated the purpose of why brass was chosen in the first place. Yet another reason why the term Naval Intelligence in an oxymoron.<br /><br />So, when you’ve got a 2 horsepower pump pushing 5,000 ppm TDS water through a copper heat exchanger at velocities in excess of 2.3 ft/sec, you start stripping off that protective coating. The result, over time, is a failed copper heat exchanger.<br /><br />The other thing that is going on is Galvanic Corrosion, also known as Stray Current Corrosion, which I’ve talked about ad nauseam elsewhere in this blog (see the Label Stray Current Corrosion to your right).<br /><br />So, it’s better for your salt pool if you make sure that the next heater you buy has a cupro nickel heat exchanger. That will make it more resistant to the effects of impingement, or erosion, corrosion.<br /><br />Another factor, and in fact A Very Big Factor, is your style of heat exchanger. There are two types out there.<br /><br />The first, and most common type is where a bundle of parallel tubes sits over the burner tray. The water shoots straight down the first tube, makes a 180 degree turn and shoots straight back up the next tube, another 180 degree turn and etc, usually for nine tubes.<br /><br />The second type is where a coil of copper or cupro nickel tubing is wrapped around a burner tray, with the water navigating a constant curve through the heat exchanger.<br /><br />The second type is better. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a link to the </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=idIWxNnH3iIC&pg=PA999&lpg=PA999&dq=impingement+corrosion&source=bl&ots=7ubxPY3a9C&sig=FPg0JS9xZm-qCPsGmPaEpRN8sTk&hl=en&ei=CIWySc_AJYmcMv25qecE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA998,M1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">ASM Handbook where they talk about these forms of corrosion</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">.<br /><br />In here they say that most impingement or erosion corrosion damage “occurs first at locations where directions of flow changes, such as elbows or U-bends. Large radius bends are less susceptible to such damage”.<br /><br />So, here are the heaters that offer the second type of heat exchanger, the one without the 180 degree U-bends, the ones with the coiled tubing around the burner tray, also known as the “large radius bends”:<br /><br />Sta Rite Max E Therm & Pentair Master Temp.<br /><br />That’s it. They are, in fact, the same heater. I’m not saying that Pentair bought Sta Rite just so they could get their hands on the Sta Rite heater and put it in a crème colored box, but Pentair bought Sta Rite just so they could get their hands on the Sta Rite heater and put it in a crème colored box.<br /><br />A Very Good Move.<br /><br />They’re both great heaters. I have heard of heat exchanger failures with these heaters at the inlet/outlet plate with salt pools, and I heard that from someone who's reputation is sterling in relating data to me about frequent and common failures in pool equipment, but that’s not been my direct experience with the heater.<br /><br />But, once again, referring to the ASM Handbook, page 999: "When impingement attack occurs in heat exchangers... it is usually confined to a short distance on the inlet end of the tube where the fluid flow is turbulent". That's exactly what my source with the sterling reputation has been telling me.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />And now this heater comes with a cupro-nickel upgrade. Your pool professional may not even know about it yet. It's not yet stocked at the wholesale distributors. It's the Catch-22 of distribution; in order for them to regularly stock something, they have to have a history of orders for it. But for you to get something they don't normally stock you have to pay freight from the manufacturer. Add the extra cost of the cupro-nickel heat exchanger and you are probably talking several hundred dollars more. But it's worth every penny.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The Sta Rite Max E Therm & Pentair Master Temp heaters are the best, most reliable heaters on the market. Hands down. And now, with the cupro-nickel heat exchanger upgrade, they earn the first ever Pool Guy Seal of Approval.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Anybody who reads this blog regularly knows that I've never said many nice things about any pool equipment manufacturer's stuff, so this really is a big deal.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I love this heater. And with cupro-nickel, I recommend it. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><i>EDIT 5/15/10: Since I wrote this, yet another Master Temp has failed on one of my salt pools. First the thermostat failed, then the heat exchanger. All within the first year. They had a salt system that required 3,000 ppm. So, then, I took a hard look at everything we were doing on this pool to see what it could be that was contributing to the problem. The local Pentair guy told my heater repairman that he had seen that a lot of companies were running chlorine tabs in the skimmers during the winter and he thought it was probably this. But I take the tablets away from my guys in the winter. It's a real easy way for me to get the stabilizer level down to normal on my tab pools. The guys don't have tabs to use anywhere, so the result is that by spring, after the rains, I have pretty normal stabilizer levels going into summer. During the winter we just add a little cal hypo each week. Our water here is soft (120 ppm calcium from the tap on average), so the extra calcium is usually not an issue. </i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><i>The reason the Rep thought that guys might be using tabs in the winter is that, when the pool water gets down to 50 or 55 degrees, the systems stop making chlorine. You see, they measure the conductivity of the water to determine the salinity level of the pool, and when the water gets cold, it changes that value enough that at 55 and below, the conductivity measurement is so far out of bed that it can't be used. And the water's so cold that the pool hardly needs chlorine anyway, so it's not a bad thing that it shuts off. But since it does, it requires that small amounts of any other chlorine product be used to keep the chlorine level up. I guess some guys out there drop a tab in the skimmer. But we don't, for the reason I stated.</i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><i>Then, I got a call from a friend of mine asking me to talk with another pool service company owner here in Dallas about a Master Temp that he's put several heat exchangers on, the last one the cupro nickel that I was so high on last year. The cupro nickel lasted two years. All of the copper ones before that (four in all) lasted a year or less - just like what I saw. I talked to the pool company owner for awhile and we kicked around the idea that the only thing we didn't know in these situations and the only part of all of this that was really out of our control was stray current corrosion. </i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i>It reminded me of something I'd read online at an APSP forum, a post by Rod Ogilve:</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i>"...I have an interesting story. First let me tell you a little back ground, we have a water table average of 4' to 5' deep. Virtually every pool has well points. OK, this problem started 9 or so months ago. A customer called to tell me their salt pool has a problem with stray voltage. Whenever they touch the hand rail, they get a little shock. I did not build the pool, but I know the electrician and know the bonding was done correctly. I first checked the obvious to no avail. Eventually, I took up the deck and found the bonding wire to be OK. I installed a copper mat under the deck to increase the grid. This did not help. I had the power company come out and tested everything. They could not find a problem. We drained the pool to get rid of the salt, and the problem was reduced 90% but not perfect. The owners gave up and decided that is life. I have always ran this through my head as to why we could not find the cause. Two weeks ago I drove by just to check, and while I was there, a man drove up and asked if I knew anything about submersible well pumps. I asked him where he lived, and he was about 1/2 mile away. I went over to his house and pulled the pump out of the well casing and noticed the wires at the pump were exposed to the water. I told him to call and get another pump and have it installed. The pool customer called the next day to ask how I fixed the problem on the pool. Would you believe the stray voltage was traveling 1/2 mile and manifesting itself at the pool. I found out today the power company had a faulty ground on a pole, so the voltage was going the pool because it was the best ground in the area due to the faulty power company ground. Well, the pool now is full of salt again, and the customer is happy (at least for now :) "</i></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i>Rod Ogilve is a very well respected pool builder. He's APSP CPB (Association of Pool & Spa Professionals Certified Pool Builder) and so, as far as pool experts go, he's about as good as it gets.</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i>Here's a link to the whole thread. It's mostly pool builders like Rod who have posted to it. The majority consensus is that salt sucks. There are some great horror show photos of salt damage to stone and slate that rival anything I ever posted in this blog. You ought to take a look:</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><a href="http://www.myapsp.org/forum/topics/salt-systems?groupUrl=builderopenindustryforum&id=2751531%3ATopic%3A17440&groupId=2751531%3AGroup%3A12669&page=4#comments"><i>Link To APSP thread on salt systems</i></a></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i>So, getting back to the Master Temp heaters. I still like the Master Temp for any application but salt. I no longer have a recommendation for a heater with a salt system. I strongly believe that there are too many other variables - like the bonding grid throughout a neighborhood and the opportunity for stray currents to be amplified by the more conductive salt water - that you can't control.</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i>Another Flash Bulletin: All of Hayward's heaters now have a Cupro Nickel heat exchanger. You can no longer buy a Hayward heater with a copper heat exchanger. But still, if you ask any Big 3 Rep if salt has an adverse effect on heat exchangers, they will tell you no. And if you come to a Rep with a heat exchanger problem due to salt, he'll tell you he doesn't have this problem with any other installer, it's all your fault, something you're doing or something your guys are doing, like putting tabs in the skimmers.</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i>And the most incredible thing to me is that they do all of this with a straight face. They tell us there's no problem with salt WHILE THEY UPGRADE THEIR HEATERS TO A MORE SALT RESISTANT METAL.</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:medium;"><i>Okay, fine... Back to the blog post:</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />A new heat exchanger installed is over $1,000.00, and I’ve been noticing a lot of people that got to this blog by Googling for “damaged heat exchanger salt pool”, or variations on that theme. So, it is a worthy investment.</span><br /><br />And here’s the Smoking Gun I was talking about. In December, 2006, Hayward had a brochure on their H400 heaters that read: “Cupro nickel is a supremely resilient material that provides product durability and longevity. Cupro nickel aligns well with today’s popular salt -based systems and offers outstanding corrosion resistance".<br /><br />Yet their warranty as of today is that “higher than normal dissolved solids (pH above 7.8)” will void your one year limited warranty.<br /><br />These are all things that, once again, dovetail nicely into protecting shareholder value. But over time, as all major corporations are learning the shortcomings of shareholder values as a strategy, it has adversely affected the reputation of their products and the patience of their customers.<br /><br />Here are some of the real tragedies that have arisen out of Heaters with Salt:<br /><br />The Jandy LT & LX heaters have a dry well for the high limit switches. The way it works is that these brass dry wells are set into the plastic inlet/outlet header and the high limit switches are pressed against that brass surface. That way, as the water rushes through the header, it’s heat will be transferred to these switches via the brass dry well. That keeps the high limit switch dry so that it won’t become corroded while still allowing it to accurately sense the water temperature. This is how we avoid a runaway heater. If the temperature of the water gets up to 135 degrees, then the first switch will turn off the heater. And if that part fails, then the second high limit will turn it off when it reaches 150 degrees. It’s a great system and all heaters have similar safety devices.<br /><br />If you look in the Jandy LX/LT Owner’s Manual, you won’t find any mention of the brass wells. On the parts diagram, they show an exploded view of the inlet/outlet header, and they picture the high limit switch assembly. But no brass wells. So, why is all this important?<br /><br />Because if you put this heater on a pool with a salt system, especially the salt system that Zodiac makes because it uses 4,000 ppm salt, which is even more corrosive than the 3,500 ppm that most of the others use, my experience is that within a year or two, you’ll have your first high limit failure. The threads of the brass well fail and allow water, salty water, to enter into the dry well and corrode the high limit switches. Not a big deal, right? Just replace the high limits and you’re back in business. Problem is, the next time it happens is sooner than the last time. And the next time is sooner than that, etc. You see, the corrosion on the threads gets worse and worse.<br /><br />So, what’s a mother to do? Well, if you talk to Jandy, at first they tell you to replace the header. But when you price it out and figure that with labor you’re looking at somewhere near $1,000.00 for the job, you call them back and tell them that you’ll recommend your customer buy a different heater before you do that. Then they tell you about this little kit they have, called the LX/LT Sensor Stud Assembly Replacement Kit, Part Number R0383200. It’s carded for easy display. How funny is that? A part that’s not even detailed in the Owner’s Manual, but they had enough call for it that they carded it for wall display.<br /><br />You order the kit and go take the heater apart, and I mean take it completely apart to get to this thing, and you put the new brass dry well in and you replace the corroded high limits, too, and you’re done for around $350 to $450, depending on how fast you work and what your labor rates are.<br /><br />Then, in a year or two you get to do it again.<br /><br />That’s why I strongly recommend against installing a Jandy LT or LX heater anywhere you have a salt system installed.<br /><br />Now, people will say, “Hey, Pool Guy. Where do you get off badmouthing a perfectly good heater because someone told you they saw something happen on a pool somewhere?”<br /><br />Allow me to retort: I have 16 pools on service with LT heaters. 13 of them have salt systems and the other three have tablet feeders. I got all those pools on service when they were brand new. Since I put them on service, 11 of the salt pools have had high limit failures, most of them numerous times. None of the pools with tablet feeders have had high limit failures. Fortunately, most of the failures occurred during the three year extended warranty that comes with a new pool when all the equipment is from a single manufacturer. But now they’re all out of warranty and the homeowners are facing these annual repair bills, with no end in sight. Their options are about $150 to $185 per occurrence for high limit switch failures, $350 to $450 per occurrence for dry well & high limit switch replacement, or about $1,000 for inlet/outlet header replacement, or about $3,000 to buy a new heater that doesn’t have this problem.<br /><br />Now, I’m just a pool cleaner. And my ethic has always been to never sell anything to a customer that isn’t going to work out for them, and if I inadvertently do, go back and clean up my mess. Because just as Jack Welch and Jim Cramer and all the guys at Bear Stearns and AIG et al are finally starting to understand, your main constituencies are your customers and your products.<br /><br />You see, these are the things that irritated me the most about the Salt Revolution; how cavalierly they threw salt water at pool heaters. It was good for quarterly profitability and for Hitting the Numbers. But, it turns out, not good for much else.</span></div></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-59826829474443916522009-02-23T06:51:00.001-08:002009-02-25T10:02:33.655-08:00The Great Thing About History...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br />I love history. I read all the time, and four out of five times, the book you'll catch me reading is a history book. I think history is important. I think history teaches us all we need to know about the present. It's like the old saying, "those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it".</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">And, yes, I'm talking about Salt. You knew it was coming, right? Well, this blog - and my customer base - are now old enough to start making some cyclic observations about Salt Damage.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I posted a photo a long time ago, when I first started talking about salt damage to the automatic cleaners - Polaris in particular, because that's what most of my customers have. The picture showed a rusty, chewed to the nub drive shaft on a Polaris 280 Black Max. Here it is again.</span></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5ad92SWhaWzulhyphenhyphenMPuceGuP3Mh5K190OBaFgGP76H4LqHlXHQA4wk30nS4143jXJPkS2avRTPa_HnB3QyaxGbNk4u6yfmIblzUzKeVNlZBFNkSavJyIS_B6GalBwnfr_t9mZL/s1600-h/drive+shaft.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5ad92SWhaWzulhyphenhyphenMPuceGuP3Mh5K190OBaFgGP76H4LqHlXHQA4wk30nS4143jXJPkS2avRTPa_HnB3QyaxGbNk4u6yfmIblzUzKeVNlZBFNkSavJyIS_B6GalBwnfr_t9mZL/s400/drive+shaft.JPG" border="0" alt="Polaris 280 drive shaft damage submitted by Park Cities Pools" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306008613890199266" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />Here's what I said the first time I posted about it: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">"I pulled this Polaris 280 out of a pool on 2/11/06. It came out of a 30,000 gallon pebble finish pool with Oklahoma flagstone coping and decks and waterfall. This pool was brand new and fresh filled on 02/16/04. This pool also has a Zodiac Clearwater LM2-40 salt system. I had to replace the wheel bearings and the wheels when I replaced that drive shaft. At the time, this wasn’t happening to my other two year old Polaris cleaners, so I figured it was a combination of the bumpiness of the pebble finish, in conjunction with the salt, that caused that Stainless Steel Drive Shaft to last about as long as the plastic teeth on the wheel it was meshing with."</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">So now, just nearly three years later, I had to rebuild that cleaner again, and, you guessed it, the drive shaft was worn down. Here's the photo:</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbuIt7TgsheBcwCBpDynEuuiefHitQF9YCQTMRF_yAPPaOMM1WX4m2MYL5vgR-VHIXqdw2Ru9n7NC8zRvzs4kvaI5dbs3-c1SMwQEgSoQOJ5nsr97Va29eY810hVnZWN3-sMaA/s1600-h/MVC-005F.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbuIt7TgsheBcwCBpDynEuuiefHitQF9YCQTMRF_yAPPaOMM1WX4m2MYL5vgR-VHIXqdw2Ru9n7NC8zRvzs4kvaI5dbs3-c1SMwQEgSoQOJ5nsr97Va29eY810hVnZWN3-sMaA/s400/MVC-005F.JPG" border="0" alt="Polaris cleaner drive shaft submitted by Park Cities Pools" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306010460152124386" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />You can see how, once again, the teeth on the drive shaft are worn down to nubs. But notice anything different? Right. There's no rust. Now, the history of this part is that when it failed, I called Polaris and told them the story, how it was only a two year old cleaner and what a bone job it was that my customer was going to have to pay for that part. So, Polaris took a look at the photo I e-mailed them and put a part in the mail to me, even though it was a full year past the one year warranty on parts other than the frame. And I'm assuming that between the time that Polaris 280 was manufactured in the early part of 2004 and when they shipped that replacement drive shaft to me in 2006, they spec'd a higher grade stainless for their drive shaft.<br /><br />Golly, I wonder why they would do that? I wonder, what was going on about that time that might have prompted them to go out looking for a higher grade stainless for their drive shafts? Oh, yeah, I remember! Salt! It was making a big splash - pun intended - back about that time.<br /><br />Funny thing is, in 2006 all of the salt system manufacturers were telling you that guys like me were crazy and that what we were seeing we weren't really seeing, and if we were seeing it, it Wasn't Their Fault, or it was God's Will (commonly known as the Bible Belt Defense).<br /><br />So, bottom line is that the higher grade stainless steel lasted almost exactly a year longer than the first drive shaft. But in the end, the chattering ass-whipping it took from the pebble finish on this pool did it in. But that's not bad. A 50% increase in the life of the part, in probably the most adverse conditions a pool cleaner can be put in; salt, a rough, bumpy surface, and water temps that range from 90 in the summer down to about 45 in the winter.<br /><br />But notice in that picture there is still a patina of rust back toward the plastic turbine. Here's a picture of the other side of the drive shaft turbine:<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaml5M166_mBneT6f5GxP71yuLFKrHUPDic6S1mfmpW4qtA6aVwLXtEMvrWjpxgKrIGdvpamHmiyf-cxrbclk0g9kSHsp1YOb6BlgnYE1DyRRZ7drrhUU1HJwAgeBpyy5pU1ky/s1600-h/MVC-003F.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaml5M166_mBneT6f5GxP71yuLFKrHUPDic6S1mfmpW4qtA6aVwLXtEMvrWjpxgKrIGdvpamHmiyf-cxrbclk0g9kSHsp1YOb6BlgnYE1DyRRZ7drrhUU1HJwAgeBpyy5pU1ky/s400/MVC-003F.JPG" border="0" alt="Polaris drive shaft rusty pin submitted by Park Cities Pools" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306014951453083730" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />You can see that all the rust is emanating from the pin in the drive shaft turbine assembly. I showed a lot of pics of that back in the first post I did about rust damage to auto cleaners. And Polaris paid attention to history there, too. Here's a pic of side by side drive shafts from that post in April 2007, a year after they sent me that first warranty drive shaft:<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcMG9HzNVXaPZJvOeDY7h3z63jCCA2uVP1BpKwyOatf39WgKey1G3bnOcWr03lIitGXrjWdffrCPC3_MNa_z9PqQB-svuHd8Drsww27yjdKw0eCteAcmjH6DwwXMX79GLLaAO/s1600-h/drive+shaft+side+by+side+1.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWcMG9HzNVXaPZJvOeDY7h3z63jCCA2uVP1BpKwyOatf39WgKey1G3bnOcWr03lIitGXrjWdffrCPC3_MNa_z9PqQB-svuHd8Drsww27yjdKw0eCteAcmjH6DwwXMX79GLLaAO/s400/drive+shaft+side+by+side+1.JPG" border="0" alt="side by side comparison of old and new style drive shafts submitted by Park Cities Pools" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306016304041275362" /></a><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Conspicuous by it's absence is the pin in the turbine. Polaris gave up on the galvanic cell dissimilar metals thing and just started molding the turbine to the drive shaft, somewhere around the time that this picture was taken. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">So, see? Here's a pool manufacturer doing what it can to re-engineer it's product to meet the demands of the harsher salt environment.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Now, if they could just figure out a way to get rid of the brass frame inserts that the stainless axle screws thread into, we'd be all set. Here's a repost of the pics I took back in April 2007 when I first started seeing frame insert failures:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAZF6_NpmBTJniO3X0KCVyeSWsrHsLPGoVs6-m0psMKRLKJBI-VNJXKjoNoZ_AP_UbWddwizol2lAO1tGOAt-Hi_p_YPFGQiwvGMLWfp-qNY254Y2VvoQWh6xtM70dYM_EQJKv/s1600-h/Inserts.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAZF6_NpmBTJniO3X0KCVyeSWsrHsLPGoVs6-m0psMKRLKJBI-VNJXKjoNoZ_AP_UbWddwizol2lAO1tGOAt-Hi_p_YPFGQiwvGMLWfp-qNY254Y2VvoQWh6xtM70dYM_EQJKv/s400/Inserts.jpg" border="0" alt="Polaris 280 Black Max frame insert failures submitted by Park Cities Pools" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306053904474646450" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2W9KZOScKngpmGkYEweiGilgwnV9au8xb56sVDG5vjFLsWcoyngZBwjSis38YO34QzL6uwkDnqnMB8lvJ8xpndEk8UsEUca__sV54sl3pPnEQ1UA_tI09u5feLqbmhzx0EY1f/s1600-h/frame+axle.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2W9KZOScKngpmGkYEweiGilgwnV9au8xb56sVDG5vjFLsWcoyngZBwjSis38YO34QzL6uwkDnqnMB8lvJ8xpndEk8UsEUca__sV54sl3pPnEQ1UA_tI09u5feLqbmhzx0EY1f/s400/frame+axle.jpg" border="0" alt="Polaris 280 Black Max frame failure submitted by Park Cities Pools" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306054169984309778" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />You can see in the top pic how the inserts are just shards. The bottom pic shows where those shards came from. They just pulled right out of the frame, and the wheel - axle and all - came off. But, to their credit, Polaris has a 5 year frame warranty and every time I've called them with a frame failure they've stood behind their frame and sent me a new one, with exchange, free of charge.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Even outside of the five year warranty, the frame price is under $100.00 retail.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In sharp contrast, Letro cleaners have a 1 year warranty on every part, including the frame. Which isn't a big deal until the brass frame inserts pull out, which recently (October 2008) happened to one of my customer's Letro Legend Platinum Grey models. We've been taking care of that pool since it was new, too. It filled in June 2005. So, the frame inserts lasted 3 years and 4 months on a smooth plaster surface. Imagine my surprise when I looked up the cost of a new frame for that cleaner and found that it was 140% of the cost of a whole new Letro Legend Platinum Grey cleaner with hose. That's right; 140% of the cost of a whole cleaner.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Letro is owned by Pentair, and Pentair makes a salt system, too. So, you'd think they would know there are issues with these brass inserts and stainless steel screws. And you'd think that, like Polaris, they'd step up and take care of frame failures due to deterioration of the brass inserts. I mean, the brass inserts are the only way I can imagine the frame failing, short of stripping the cleaner down and taking a ball peen hammer to it. So, you'd think they'd be extending a little more of a helping hand than, in essence, saying, "Sorry about that, but thank you for playing Beat The One Year Warranty".</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">On the other hand, there's lots of things about Pentair that I like. When I have to replace a pump, most times I'll sell my customers the Pentair Challenger. It's been around forever, and except for those darned tabs on the pump basket handle, it's the best, longest lasting, easiest to fix pump on the market. And I could rave all day about the Sta Rite Max-E-Therm & Pentair Master Temp heaters. If you have a heater, it ought to be one of those.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;">But that's why - in my continuing series of Making Salt Work for your pool - I recommend that if you have a return side cleaner, you're WAY better off, and will receive a whole lot more support from the manufacturer, if that cleaner is a Polaris.</span><br /></div><div><br /></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-36188495810763858772009-02-16T11:01:00.000-08:002009-02-25T10:07:35.387-08:00Making Salt Work<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Did I say that? No, it can't be. Can it? <br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Has the Pool Guy flipped his lid? Has he gone over to the Dark Side? The truth is, neither. But, contrary to industry opinion, I am a realist. And after all these years of fighting the Good Fight, I think it's time to admit that Salt Is Here To Stay.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I didn't say that was a Good Thing. I said it was A Reality. A Sad Reality. But A Reality nonetheless.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">So, after a long hiatus, I'm back with suggestions on how to make your salt system work for you. I still think you ought to remove it from your pool. But if you're sold on your salt system and you just Gotta Have It, then stay tuned to The Pool Biz for articles on how to make it's integration work for you.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In that vein, some time ago, I wrote to the folks at the one of the Diving Board manufacturers - Interfab - and asked them if, in light of all that's gone down with salt over these last several years, they had developed any products that would be more salt compatible. Diving Board folks in general took about the biggest hit on any of the manufacturers that were affected by the salt craze. Imagine being them; three or four years of covering warranty in an environment you never foresaw - the 3500 ppm salt environment - and just when you're getting your feet back under you from that, with a new line of products designed to weather the salt storm, you wake up to the worst economy since 1932. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">But, when I asked them, toward the end of last summer, which were definitely rosier times, this is what they said:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">"We DO in fact have products that are more salt friendly than others and would certainly mitigate rust in a salt pool environment. Products that we would promote for use in a salt pool environment include the following products:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br />Edge Diving System (NEW)<br />T7 Diving System<br />X-Stream Slide<br />G-Force Slide<br />Sacrificial Zinc Anode (NEW)<br />Powder Coated Rail Goods<br /><br />As always, we’d have to stress to customers that there is no guarantee against rust or corrosion in a salt pool environment. By taking steps to ensure proper pool water/salt chemistry, that any return jets are pointed away from any in-pool rail goods, and that any necessary product maintenance is performed, you can certainly help diminish the risk of rust.<br /><br />The diving set up that you saw in our counter brochure is called the Edge Diving System™. [Ed. note: I had written and asked about that system in particular. You should take a look at it. It's a unique approach to keeping the salt from corroding the diving board base] It was specifically designed to replace all of the rusting steel Techni-Spring diving bases, and our competitor’s product equal, that are out in the field. The Edge Diving System is comprised of composite materials and fits the same 12” on center jig as the steel Techni-Spring base. I have attached both a photo of a rusty steel Techni-Spring base and an Edge Diving System for reference."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMLzRlK71266eGE7vn7GFM2czi94EOQnudxX4VJHA9Q01RzamIBr1ZnhfbCB_pY9p1kACaZ52nPJ8YNuGxD_UeUvkG2ywgK-jALnjtNk7xM0C03wEQADCQuNznwJwkERiMaBkq/s1600-h/TSB_steel_rusty1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMLzRlK71266eGE7vn7GFM2czi94EOQnudxX4VJHA9Q01RzamIBr1ZnhfbCB_pY9p1kACaZ52nPJ8YNuGxD_UeUvkG2ywgK-jALnjtNk7xM0C03wEQADCQuNznwJwkERiMaBkq/s400/TSB_steel_rusty1.jpg" border="0" alt="Salt Damaged Interfab Techni-Spring base. Photo supplied by Interfab" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303487638005849410" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4oBo4tl4n5Q1i5Tlth8tXBo80yGQy2UuxT3lUfUI_ZeSJWGTumMZQ0fhyphenhyphenJ2_E6bUvQkEijMRBVwyr48g-qVt8qOIyH5NGLgnN_FUHEjGZLJES1jDvZromI13L2yWrd4_eACb/s1600-h/Edge_WHT1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4oBo4tl4n5Q1i5Tlth8tXBo80yGQy2UuxT3lUfUI_ZeSJWGTumMZQ0fhyphenhyphenJ2_E6bUvQkEijMRBVwyr48g-qVt8qOIyH5NGLgnN_FUHEjGZLJES1jDvZromI13L2yWrd4_eACb/s400/Edge_WHT1.jpg" border="0" alt="Interfab Edge Diving System. Photo supplied by Interfab" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303488359466360290" /></a><br /><br /><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Now, take a look at the second photo, of the Techni-Spring base. It beats the salt by not attaching the base fasteners where the salt water can pool and lay and work it's corrosive magic on the threads. I mean, let's face it, if your jig is buried in the cement of your deck, with the fastening studs projecting up out of that, and the threads of those fastening studs are down at deck level where they can be compromised by the corrosion wrought by salty water, then you're looking at breaking up that deck to replace that jig. So, if you attach the base to those fastening studs about 10 or 12 inches above deck level, then you've put those threads somewhere that it's impossible for the salty water to pool around. It's hard to see where those bolts attach in that photo, you can click on it to enlarge it. Then, look where the spring is attached to the composite base. You'll see the rubber nut caps. That's where it fastens.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Here's a link to the </span><a href="http://www.interfab.com/userfiles/File/install/t7_diving_install.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">T7 install PDF</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">. Page 9 shows a very good photo of a cutaway of the base and the fasteners. See how they've moved all the attaching hardware off of deck level? Brilliant in it's simplicity.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">They go on to say: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">"The T7 Diving System, X-Stream Slide and G-Force Slide are all upgraded products that are comprised of composite materials and very suitable for salt pools.... This year </span>[2008]<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">, we started offering a sacrificial zinc anode, which we designed specifically to fit most residential pool ladders and rails. (1.90” OD) We recommend the use of the anode on any pool rail that comes in contact with the pool water. (Deck to stair rails, pool ladders, etc.) The anode is installed below the waterline and is in direct contact with the metal that it will protect. Generally, only one anode is required, however, if a pool ladder has plastic treads, you will need an anode for each 'arm' of the ladder since the plastic tread will not maintain the current flow. I have attached a PDF copy of the bag card that comes with the anode, along with a couple of photos of an actual anode."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpW0sr6ew3x-dPysrCbvTyhJw1jL391RNgCW7mf5fEjL3Vx5kHcCwWIqwjrG1Vnh9A4DqhDyBHuLh0PPUt6_tKOYcdwx7J6cfI2o2HK3JdeVywpqbfpNKdMoXrs8P4LB1Eey9S/s1600-h/anode_zinc_E.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpW0sr6ew3x-dPysrCbvTyhJw1jL391RNgCW7mf5fEjL3Vx5kHcCwWIqwjrG1Vnh9A4DqhDyBHuLh0PPUt6_tKOYcdwx7J6cfI2o2HK3JdeVywpqbfpNKdMoXrs8P4LB1Eey9S/s400/anode_zinc_E.jpg" border="0" alt="Interfab zinc anode. Submitted by Interfab" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303489681457665682" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1xB1oCBHD9WZTLf1p1pKR6Rzlpo_S0BWixFTsvrVFy9LVrmp5J-lMdGTfGq8NTeHoO6ZzrvME5pT3FriHw1XCUoye77pkd8qG154qOXJ4cG8oOe00QuPa_T9Z3fxwie0hkMs/s1600-h/anode_zinc_C.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1xB1oCBHD9WZTLf1p1pKR6Rzlpo_S0BWixFTsvrVFy9LVrmp5J-lMdGTfGq8NTeHoO6ZzrvME5pT3FriHw1XCUoye77pkd8qG154qOXJ4cG8oOe00QuPa_T9Z3fxwie0hkMs/s400/anode_zinc_C.jpg" border="0" alt="Interfab zinc anode. Submitted by Interfab" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303489534954248706" /></a><br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">They make a very important point there; if a pool ladder has plastic treads, you will need an anode for each arm of the ladder since the plastic tread will not maintain the current flow. What's interesting about this is how much we've all had to learn in order to deal with adding salt to pool water. These are engineering concerns that didn't need to be addressed before salt came along. Now they're part of ladder design, for example. Each action like this drives the cost of engineering, of the end product and, in the end, the final price tag for the whole pool. And we haven't even talked yet about maintenance, which will be in upcoming blog pieces.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Still think your salt system is cheaper than conventional chlorine? Read on:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br />"Lastly, powder coated rails offer yet another layer of protection against rust and corrosion for pool rails. The layer of powder coat paint acts as a barrier between the elements and the stainless steel rail. One thing to mention is that if a powder coated pool rail is winterized and continually pulled in and out of the anchor sockets, the risk of paint chips and scratches increases which expands the risk of rust at those damaged paint areas. For optimum rail protection, a powder coated rail in conjunction with a sacrificial zinc anode is the best way to go."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-style: italic;font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Powder coated rails. They're very effective, and they're beautiful, too. But they are not inexpensive, and you need to consider those costs as part of the price of maintaining your pool when a salt system is installed.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So, as you can see, I'm not selling out here. I'm not saying Salt's Great and I'm not shilling for a ladder manufacturer - although I think these folks have the best idea so far about how to keep that salty water away from their hardware.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Bottom line is I'm still against the idea of you putting salt in your pool. But if you do, do it right, and spend the money you need to spend so that a year from now you don't have a rusty mess on your hands.<br /></span></span><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-44761725860991527882008-09-07T10:40:00.000-07:002009-02-25T10:09:24.022-08:00It's Still The Environment, Stupid, Part II<div><br /></span></span>I just wanted to add a little to what I said a couple of weeks ago. I've been doing some </span><a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_2251-2300/ab_2270_bill_20080813_enrolled.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">light reading</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">. It's pretty interesting stuff. California Assembly Bill 2270, better known as AB2270. It has the whole Water Quality industry in an uproar.<br /><br />Here's the part they take exception to: "This bill would authorize any local agency that maintains a community sewer system to take action to control residential salinity inputs, including those from water softeners, to protect the quality of the waters of the state, if the appropriate regional board makes a finding that the control of residential salinity input will contribute to the achievement of water quality objectives."<br /><br />They're really upset about the water softener thing. Because the WQA, or Water Quality Association represents the interests of salt based water softeners lots more than they represent the interests of water quality. If you think I exaggerate, Google AB2270.<br /><br />See? Every return is some internet snippet about how to go about OPPOSING AB2270. Initially, I Googled AB2270 thinking to read the assembly bill. But the internet is so cluttered with opposition to AB2270 that you can't find it that way. I had to Google California State Assembly and then enter the bill number and get it that way. Oddly, it passed 27-12 on the Senate floor and 53-19 on the Assembly floor.<br /><br />So, how is it that the opposition can have so much rhetoric on the internet and so little popular support in the government? Too, this bill will cost the State money. They're allotting some bucks in there for reimbursement to people who have to unhook their salt based water softeners. So, it's taking business out of the State and it's going to cost the State money to unhook the systems. Why would they vote for that?<br /><br />Because they mandated a goal of recycling 1,000,000 acre-feet of USEABLE waste water by the year 2010. As in the 2010 that's two years from now. One year, 3 months to be exact. And that's 1,000,000 acre-feet, which is 326 BILLION gallons of water.<br /><br />Along the way, they found out that people and plants don't like salty water. So, this bill helps them to get to their goal by allowing the local water authorities to "control residential salinity inputs". Because they want better Water Quality. Then, along comes the Water Quality Association and opposes it.<br /><br />Odd. Wouldn't you say?<br /><br />Anyway, with my new found desire to be FOR things, instead of just AGAINST them, I want to announce that I am FOR AB2270. Not that I can vote in California or anything. But then, I don't imagine that many of the folks at WQA really live in California, either. They clearly spend a lot of money lobbying in California. But live there? Not so much.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">After all these years, It still stuns me when I run up against a group of people who can't see that what they're FOR is BAD for everybody else. It's only GOOD for their particular pocketbooks. Color me incredibly naive, but I still believe that if they outlawed swimming pools, I'd spend my meager savings on figuring out a New Gig, instead of blowing my reserves trying to hold back the Hands of The Clock.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Which segue's nicely to talking about How Much Salt Pools Suck. I feel pretty certain that the reason AB2270 didn't have any provisions for Salt Pools is because it's not a code requirement that they hook up backwash lines to the sewer in California. Even still, there's the <a href="http://www.lacsd.org/info/industrial_waste/chloride_in_santa_clarita/saltwaterpool.asp">Santa Clarita ban on Salt Pools</a>. But my point is, that once other states start taking a look at what California has done with AB2270, they'll cut and paste it onto their legislative agendas. And if, in those states, it's code for swimming pools to backwash to the sewer, then they'll add that Santa </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Clarita addendum to the whole package, and Viola! No More Salt Pools.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">PS: I added new links to 2 industry articles about the ravages of salt systems on swimming pools. Click on them to your right under the heading Why Salt Is Eating Up Your Pool. Bon Appetit...</span></div></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-15006878494453190502008-08-17T13:24:00.000-07:002009-02-25T10:10:40.170-08:00It's Still The Environment, Stupid<span style="font-family:arial;">I was looking at my site meter the other day and noticed that one of my biggest fans had been visiting the blog nearly every day. So I dropped him an e-mail to ask if he’d like an alert when I published something new, and he answered back that he was “just visiting your blog to kill time… to see if there was anything new”. It made me realize it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. A lot’s happened in Salt World since my last post.<br /><br />As a fer instance, Pool & Spa News came out as definitely in the Salt Camp (see Pool & Spa News, July 31, 2008). Hmmm... maybe that's why they quit corresponding with me. You think? </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">They even titled the whole issue Salt Service Solutions. It has some information that will actually help people stuck taking care of salt pools. But, like all good marketing pieces, it passes that information with a lilt in the author’s voice and skip in his step. Sort of like Snow White doing the housework with the help of chipmunks and bluebirds set to Roger’s & Hammerstein. But when you chase out the critters and cut the music, you see that taking care of salt pools is still just Doing The Dirty Work.<br /><br />As another fer’instance:<br /><br />Governor Charlie Crist is going to sign <a href="http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=69764">A BILL </a>passed unanimously by both houses of the Florida legislature that will shut down the discharge of something like 300 million gallons of treated waste into the Atlantic Ocean each day. They’re stopping for myriad reasons, one of which is that the discharge is killing the corral reefs. If you’re wondering what that’s got to do with salt systems, it’s what’s going to happen when those municipalities start trying to recycle that wastewater and run up against high salinity levels and the expense of desalinization and start looking for ways to reduce the salinity, and like other municipalities, start restricting chloride discharge into the waste stream, like <a href="http://www.lacsd.org/info/industrial_waste/chloride_in_santa_clarita/watersoftener.asp">HERE</a>. Then later, they’ll get around to your salt pool, like <a href="http://www.lacsd.org/info/industrial_waste/chloride_in_santa_clarita/saltwaterpool.asp">HERE</a> and <a href="http://www.wcponline.com/PDF/0701Letters.pdf">HERE</a><br /><br />It goes kind of hand-in-hand with a <a href="http://suncoastpasco.tbo.com/content/2007/dec/22/pasco-reclaimed-water-system-growing-meet-demand/">STORY</a> at the Tampa Tribune Online, about how Pasco County wants to expand a treated waste water program to eventually include 30,000 cusotmers, who will use treated wastewater for their lawns. And that’s where I feel like I’ve “been there, done that”. <a href="http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=67097">SCOTTSDALE</a> did the same thing a while ago. Then, within a few years, the golf courses using the treated effluent started yapping that their greens weren’t green anymore, and the culprit was high chloride levels in the treated wastewater. If you read the letter from the Environmental Manager in Thousand Oaks, CA that <a href="http://www.wcponline.com/PDF/0701Letters.pdf">I LINKED TO </a>about a paragraph back, you know that salinity, chloride in particular, is a pass-through pollutant. In other words, it’s not normally filtered out of wastewater.<br /><br />That was one of the hinky things about the Pool & Spa article, Grains Of Wisdom. On page 37, in the box titled Salt Select, they quote Bob Harper as saying that it’s okay to use potassium chloride. I quote; “In areas where salt going into the water system is not desirable, it does provide an alternative”.<br /><br />By the way, his company, Goldline, is the only one who says that. Ecomatic, Jandy, Pentair, Zodiac, Autopilot and The Chlorine Factory all say to use Sodium Chloride Only. Ecomatic, in fact, says, “be sure to use sodium chloride and not potassium chloride.”<br /><br />Besides, Bob should know better than that. He’s been The Man at Goldline since November 2006. So, he should know that sodium chloride dissociates immediately when it hits the water into sodium and chloride, and potassium chloride does the same thing. <a href="http://www.watertechonline.com/article.asp?IndexID=6636976">HERE'S</a> a quote from Water Technology Magazine about using potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride (remember, these are the folks trying to put a <em>positive</em> spin on water softeners): "potassium chloride is a viable alternative to sodium chloride... when the application requires a... low sodium waste brine". Notice they didn't say Low Chloride. And if you ever notice, when water treatment folks are complaining about this stuff, they always refer to the “elevated chloride levels” in the wastewater stream. Like that pesky <a href="http://www.lacsd.org/info/industrial_waste/chloride_in_santa_clarita/introduction.asp">Santa Clarita, California Salt Pool Ban</a>, which in the introduction says, "The purpose of this website is to educate the community about the Santa Clara River's <strong><em>high chloride</em></strong> (salt) <strong><em>levels</em></strong>, and the reasons and options for reducing <em><strong>chloride levels</strong></em>", [emphasis mine]. In fact, they don't use the words sodium or potassium anywhere in their introduction.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So, like I was saying, when the potassium hits the water, it turns into potassium and chloride. When it’s pumped out of your pool and onto the ground or into the sewer, it doesn’t resociate and become potassium chloride again. So, the chloride ends up adding to the chloride level of the wastewater stream. It may later combine with potassium and form potassium chloride again. Then again, it may combine with sodium and form sodium chloride, or calcium and form calcium chloride. But as long as it stays in water, it’s just chloride. If it wasn’t dissociated, you couldn’t create chlorine from the chloride ions that result from pitching sodium or potassium chloride in your pool. Get it? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And you may say, “Well, Bob’s degree is in marketing, so why would he know all that?”<br /><br />My point exactly. But then, it was Pool & Spa News who asked him the question. Not me.<br /><br />One other note on potassium chloride; it sells for $18.97 a 40 lbs. bag at Lowe’s. Home Depot’s about the same. Sodium chloride runs about five or six bucks a bag.<br /><br />Another point about that same inset box, they show you a picture of Coarse Solar Salt, Kiln Dried. It is classified as a Water Softener salt by the manufacturer, and on their website, they say it’s “99.5 pure salt”, and “contains small amounts of insoluble particles from the environment”. That would be the 0.5% that’s not-salt.<br /><br />IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH AHEAD. IF YOU’RE SCANNING AND NOT READING, MAKE SURE TO READ THIS:<br /><br />What we found here in Dallas, by having similar grade salts from a different manufacturer analyzed by a metallurgist, is that the solid residue was “0.427% of the salt sample, by weight”. Pretty close to 0.5%. These solids split into about a 50/50 mix of gray and red particles, and the “red particle was silica sand (SiO2) containing alumina and iron oxide (red rust)”, hence the reddish stains we were seeing.<br /><br />You see, we were running into issues of staining as a result of pouring 500 or 600 lbs. of salt on pool start up (after waiting the 30 days, of course) and ending up with stains where the salt laid and dissolved. Some service companies had started noticing less pronounced but still noticeable stains from just adding one or two bags of salt. One company even started to add all salt through the skimmers as a result of the staining problem. So, salt grade became pretty important to us. And, it turned out, important to our supplier, who did The Right Thing and decided to step up their game and only sell Food Grade salt, less the 0.5% insoluble environmental particles.<br /><br />In fact, Pool & Spa News has been selling ad space to folks selling food grade salt since shortly after this all went down. Coincidence?<br /><br />I mention this for all the people who like to be dismissive of me by saying “it’s easy to be against something. Why don’t you try being FOR something?” So, there you go. I’m FOR not staining pools by using contaminated salt.<br /><br />All it took to be FOR that was $5.00 for the bag of salt, about $150.00 for the metallurgist’s analysis and the desire to Right a Wrong. Now, ask yourself, what have YOU done to bring about a positive change in our industry lately? Oh, yeah, let me qualify that; a change that didn’t end up putting money in your pocket.<br /><br />It’s a Small Club, isn’t it?<br /><br />Another reason to be a little careful about the salt you select is that if you choose, say, Diamond Crystal salt pellets with Softener Care, you’ll be adding phosphates along with the salt pellets, and Oh-Dear-Lord-In-Heaven-Above, don’t get the Snake Oil… I mean, the Phosphate Remover Guys all riled up about putting phosphates in your pools. You see, the Softener Care additive is sodium hexametahosphate. Each bag is 0.03%. Doesn't sound like a lot, but for a 20,000 gallon pool, 550 lbs. of salt will add 2.6 ounces, by weight, pure sodium hexametaphosphate. 3.2 ounces if you’re running a Zodiac, because they require 670 lbs. for the same size pool.<br /><br />On the same page in the article, right above the Salt Select box, is a box labeled Mixing metals. It’s nice to see The Industry finally talking about it. I started talking about it on October 14th of 2006, right after Baboosa put me on to the term and I looked it up. I’ve written 10 more pieces to go along with that, because I think it’s that important (see </span><a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Salt%20and%20Metal%20Parts"><span style="font-family:arial;">Salt and Metal Parts </span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">tag). P&SN gave about 6 column inches to it, and that included their whole discussion of TDS as well. Salt systems nearly sunk two ladder and rail manufacturers, took a huge toll on pool heaters and copper plumbed pools, and just about every other piece of metal that comes in contact with your pool, and Galvanic Corrosion got six column inches. Oh, well.<br /><br />But enough about that. Let’s go back to the opening paragraph of this article. By the way, that guy pouring the salt in the pool is either photoshopped in or he’s about 8 feet tall. His feet dwarf that brick coping. And he casts no shadow. Hmm… Vampire? No, that’s no reflection in a mirror. Anyway…<br /><br />“The systems…are dummy-proof,” says Scott Ford of Tropical Aquatics. And using that as an opening statement, P&SN takes up four pages explaining how different and special and destructive salt pools can be.<br /><br />For example, this article recommends that you maintain salt pools at a 7.2 pH. That is destined to lead people to read that and think that there’s a new standard for salt pools, set around 7.2 instead of 7.5, and so anything from 6.9 to 7.5 will be okay. Huh?<br /><br />I’m looking at my old NSPI guidelines and it says here that Ideal pH is 7.4 to 7.6. That’s pretty much what’s been taught at every water chemistry seminar that everybody in our industry has ever attended and is pretty much what everybody in our industry lives by. Well, everybody except for the Hamilton Index crowd, or the Tin Foil Hat Brigade, as I like to call them.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwznhEuwTvgym_n5oNgmDpY1gI17Hfs7IWDKBfai4pe7xTTBHgQB-CCKNFzALhdU9s5K82W6RbQCletAB7B0DXg_qkLsNW-jxValnJZM8I2hhwzRDHP2S89KFVUl3lZiR8KGK0/s1600-h/TeslaPoolTinHat.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwznhEuwTvgym_n5oNgmDpY1gI17Hfs7IWDKBfai4pe7xTTBHgQB-CCKNFzALhdU9s5K82W6RbQCletAB7B0DXg_qkLsNW-jxValnJZM8I2hhwzRDHP2S89KFVUl3lZiR8KGK0/s400/TeslaPoolTinHat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236957739111105522" /></a><br /><br />Oddly, though, I agree with 7.2. Not as the new center of our scale, but as the lowest allowable for a salt pool, as the target to shoot for each week during service because the one thing you know with a salt pool is the pH is going to rise.<br /><br />The issue here isn’t whether I agree with a deviation of 0.3 on the pH scale (7.2 vs 7.5), which is still a lot, pH being an exponential scale and all. 7.2 represents water that is 4 times more acidic, hence four times more etching, than 7.5.<br /><br />The issue is that SOMEONE BESIDES A MAGAZINE needs to go on record as saying that salt pools are different chemically and they need their own well researched and well documented, not to mention well publicized, water chemistry parameters. AJ Wilson, who they’re quoting here, is a sharp guy. He knows his stuff and he’s right about this 7.2 thing.<br /><br />What he’s getting at is that if you have a salt pool, you’re going to see a rise in pH from week to week. So, if you start at 7.2, maybe you’ll end up at 7.8 by your next visit, instead of starting at 7.5 and ending up at 8.2 by your next visit. 8.2 and any Total Alkalinity between the APSP recommended 80 to 120 ppm will cause lots of scaling with that high calcium San Diego water AJ is dealing with. Not so much here in Dallas, where our tap water is 70 to 120 ppm and we have to add calcium after startup.<br /><br />So, I agree with what AJ’s saying. But where’s the test pools to prove it? Where's the industry sanctioned research behind these conclusions? The current APSP standards weren't written over dinner and drinks at some pool show, you know. Research went into determining those parameters.<br /><br />But since we're fiddling with pH, why not fiddle with TA, too? Won’t lowering TA a little, perhaps outside of the biblical 80 to 120 ppm we preach, have a similar effect on this issue? Of course it will. But then we’re right back where we started, aren’t we? It’s just a bunch of pool guys trying to pass on helpful information to other pool guys, and the end result is more likely to be that you’ll get hung out to dry if something goes wrong and you tell your customer or, even worse, the builder, “oh, this magazine I read said to ignore the APSP guidelines for water chemistry, so I’ve been running it acidic the last couple of years”.<br /><br />This all goes back to when Salt Reps were standing up in front of whole rooms full of pool guys, at association meetings and such, and when we would tell them about the inherent rise in pH of their systems, they would say, “That’s impossible. Salt systems produce pH neutral chlorine.” That was the whole answer. End of discussion. Move on. And while some of them may have since amended their story and admitted that, well, maybe there sorta coulda might be a rise in pH with a salt system, they haven’t done anything to go back and do any real research to come up with water chemistry guidelines unique to salt pools.<br /><br />Instead, they leave it to guys like AJ Wilson and guys like me to take the liability on our shoulders. Read the owner’s manuals. That’s what they’ll be waving at you in court.<br /><br />For example, Goldine’s owner’s manual says to follow APSP guidelines and then tells you keep pH between 7.2 to 7.6.<br /><br />APSP guidelines are 7.4 to 7.6. So, which is it? APSP guidelines or 7.2? Remember, a 0.2 difference is three times as acidic. If 0.1 is twice as acidic, then 0.2 is three times as acidic.<br /><br />Jandy Aquapure’s owner’s manual says with their system, the “pH produced is close to Neutral pH and tends to stabilize at approximately 7.8.” (You thought I was making it up about the Reps saying that Neutral thing, didn’t you?)<br /><br />Well, once again, which is it? Neutral or 7.8. Because 7.8 is a long, long way from Neutral. It’s 0.8, in fact, and if you were shaking your head over Goldline’s contradiction about just a few tenths on the pH scale, now we’re talking about water 8 times more scaling than Neutral pH.<br /><br />Ecomatic recommends 7.2 to 7.8 and then goes into an explanation almost as long as this blog piece about why that, and your TA level might not work for you, and how it’s all sorta…ya’ know… Whhhhhppppp… hold it… hold it…. Phhewwww… Out There, Maaa-a-n, and you’ll know when you have it right because your pH will stop fluctuating – which is true, but their explanation needs about 8 hours of water chemistry classroom training to fill in the gaps. Remember too, we're talking about the Owner’s Manual, geared for everybody down to the pool owner who, going in, knows nothing about balancing water.<br /><br />Then, Zodiac, who has the highest salt requirement of any mainstream salt system available in the US, recommends 7.4 to 7.6, just like APSP.<br /><br />Autopilot says 7.2 to 7.8, allowing +- 0.3 pH of saturation. And that’s great if you’re a pool tech. You can look at the charts provided and actually make out what their version of balanced water is supposed to be. But getting back to the Target Audience; Joe Pool Owner. Is he going to get it? Or is he going to let his eyes roll back in his head and say, “Yeah, Honey, everything’s fine. The kids can swim.”<br /><br />Because the truth is, if he really did wade through all this and used the chart and the calculator and did all the math, what he’ll find out is that come winter, if his pool water is balanced at 60 degrees F, 600 ppm Calcium Hardness, 75 Total Alkalinity and TDS Above 1000, he’s got to tell the wife that they can’t heat the spa to 103 until he either raises the Total Alkalinity to 125 or lowers the pH to 7.2, and then reverts back to the previous readings before the spa cools off again.<br /><br />A note in passing: Is the fact that no one ever worries about that the reason that plaster in spas on pool/spa combos with salt systems always gets those little calcium nodules? I vote Yes. And voting’s all we’re going to do, anyway. There’s no research going on beyond what Pool Guys are doing, at their own peril of liability, in their customer’s back yards. If I’m wrong, and there’s this whole industry of research happening that none of us out here in the field know about, then somebody write and tell me.<br /><br />By Golly, Scott’s right. These systems are “dummy-proof”.<br /><br />Now, I’m going to beat Sean to the punch here. As he’s reading this, he’s hopping up and down behind his laptop, scrolling down to the comments section to write and tell us that if that’s what we’re all worried about, then why not just use AutoPilot’s Total Control System and let the machine monitor and adjust the pH, too?<br /><br />And I say - like I always say about salt systems - if your idea of “better” is spending yet more and more money on yet more and more “accessories” for your pool, then by all means, buy it.<br /><br />Or, you could just use chlorine tablets and enjoy pretty much rock solid pH that “tends to stabilize” somewhere around 7.5. Not 7.4. Not 7.2. Not 7.8.<br /><br />Seven Point Five.<br /><br />And if you want soft water, buy Twenty Mule Team Borax for $2.99 a 4 lbs. box and really live it up.<br /><br />Well, we’ve gotten to the second page of the P&SN article… Just kidding. That’s really about it. The only other thing I keyed on, and it’s probably just a poor choice of adverb, was this: “The conditioner – typically cyanuric acid – only protects the chlorine”. Typically? That implies there are other “types” of stabilizer. Did I miss something? I know I’m getting old. Did ya’ll come up with something else to stabilize chlorine while I was taking my afternoon nap?<br /><br />So, what’s the Governor of Florida and Pasco County got to do with any of this? Well, several years ago, in California, when they started looking really hard at their dwindling water resources and began considering and then implementing reuse, certain areas zeroed in on salt based water softeners as one way to improve their wastewater quality. Soon after, certain water districts banned water softeners. Then, Santa Clarita banned salt systems on pools that backwashed to the sewer. Now, the Governor of California is poised </span><a href="http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1146604.html"><span style="font-family:arial;">TO SIGN LEGISLATION </span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">allowing every water district, at their discretion, to ban salt based water softeners.<br /><br />California Assemblyman John Laird said this about the Water Softener Industry, who are the only people lobbying against the bill; “ It’s not time to protect somebody that’s polluting groundwater at a time that we have to rely increasingly more on groundwater as part of a comprehensive solution”.<br /><br />A few years from now, when the water they’re starting to reuse in Florida isn’t working out so well because of its high chloride content, The Governor of Florida, or the Mayor of Tampa will be saying the same thing about water softeners – and later, salt pools – in Florida. And then when you come to this blog, you’ll see a whole list of counties and states and water districts that have banned their use.<br /><br />It started with Santa Clarita. It spread to Dixon, CA and then Scottsdale, AZ, and now the whole state of California. And the pattern is the same. They try to reuse their wastewater and then they find out how damaging that water is.<br /><br />And time after time, the only people who oppose the restrictions are people making money off the pollution of our groundwater. That would be people who sell appliances that use tremendous amounts of salt for their operation. You know, like water softeners and pool salt systems and... water softeners and pool salt systems and... Yep. That about covers it.<br /><br />I stated earlier that the P&SN article talked about how destructive salt systems can be. The very last thing they talk about - almost reluctantly, it seems - is "Compatible equipment". They talk about how hard salt systems can be on the aluminum tracks for an automatic pool cover. They quote Randy Parsons as saying, "I've had a number of [pools] where the tracks have been destroyed by salt." Word here in Texas from the local Automatic Cover Guru is that when those tracks are corroded, they usually have to be jackhammered out of the tile line to replace them. You see, they're set into the tile line at the time of pool construction, and so having a corroded track is just about the worst and most expensive thing that could happen to a pool owner.<br /><br />Boy, P&SN, talk about Burying The Lead.<br /><br />Many of you in the industry who read this blog regularly who think I’m So Wrong on So Many Levels, you ought to take a moment here and re-read some of my earlier pieces.<br /><br />I ranted about stone and concrete damage and the manufacturers and reps called me a liar. Now they have all added disclaimers to their owner’s manuals and websites.<br /><br />I was the first in the industry, with Baboosa’s nudging, to talk about salt systems causing galvanic corrosion. The manufacturers and the reps called me crazy out of one side of their mouth and told you all to put zinc balls in your pump baskets out the other.<br /><br />I was the first one to talk about Exploding Salt Cells and everybody and their brother jumped up and down and called me certifiably insane. And then I pointed out half a dozen incidents of it occurring around the world, and can point you now to </span><a href="http://poolnerd.com/2007/03/29/salt-water-chlorine-generators/"><span style="font-family:arial;">ANOTHER POOL GUY’S BLOG </span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">(scroll down to SAFETY) where he describes first hand his experience with the explosion of a properly installed salt cell.<br /><br />I’ve talked a lot about the environmental impact of your salt pools on our environment, and you all say I’m overstating the case, even after I’ve pointed out several places where levels of sodium and chloride in wastewater are being legislated and even your salt system manufacturers now work a caution about how salt will “damage or destroy certain types of plants” into their disclaimers. In case you Missed a Memo, those Dead Plants are The Environment.<br /><br />I can just hear ya’ll at the public hearings when they outlaw these things; “But my kids can swim with their eyes open underwater. That ought to be worth something!”<br /><br />Good luck with that.<br /><br />And we haven’t even talked about the lawsuits that have started to pop up, as pool owners file suit against builders and builders turn around and file suit against manufacturers. Oh, you hadn’t heard? And, yes, I predicted that, too.<br /><br />Folks, the Titanic has hit the Iceberg. You can either make for the Lifeboats or Stand Around and Rearrange the Deckchairs.<br /><br />To put it literally instead of metaphorically; the manufacturers and the media in our industry are doing everything they can to create a body of work – sometimes referred to as evidence in the event of future litigation – that says, “We warned those pool stores and builders and service guys that there were downsides and that they needed to think really hard before they sold these salt systems. Look, we wrote about it here in our warranties and over here in our media publications and over here on our websites. We Have No Liability if things go astray after installation”.<br /><br />No one’s going to hold their feet to the fire over what they say in a marketing brochure. No one’s ever going to lose a lawsuit over No More Green Hair! But in the little-read and oft-overlooked Fine Print, they’ve covered their asses quite well.<br /><br />It’s called The Writing On The Wall. Take a moment and read it.<br /><br /><br /></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-41788555817778559402008-06-29T09:55:00.000-07:002009-02-25T10:25:44.098-08:00The 2.6 Million Dollar Salt System (cont.)<span style="color:#000000;">I’ve been keeping an eye on the renovation of the wave pool and enclosure at the Southland Leisure Centre this last year. I first brought it up</span> <a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Indoor%20Salt%20Pool%20Problems">here</a> <span style="color:#000000;">where I talked about the City of Calgary being forced to perform a 2.6 million dollar renovation of their wave pool a mere 31 months after the addition of a Lectranator commercial salt system. To recap that story, what happened was, “in a wave pool situation -- which no one could have really anticipated -- the salt is going airborne as a result of the wave action,’ said Ron Krell, manager of Southland Leisure Centre. ‘We're getting a coating of salt in the leisure centre equipment.’, and all that airborne salt caused a whopping 2.6 mil damage.</span></p><p>EDIT:</p><p>Well, today I'm doing something that I've never done before on this blog. There was a rather long blog piece that followed that opening paragraph. A little piece of detective work where I tried to put together disparate pieces of the puzzle about what happened with the indoor wave pool at the Southland Leisure Centre, and about halfway through the day I received a very lucid explanation of why I was wrong in some of my assumptions. So, I have deleted the rest of this post. </p><p>In it's place, I am posting the contents of an e-mail I received from Mr. Ron Krell, the manager of the Southland Leisure Centre. He talks a lot about the entire renovation of the Centre and all of the contributing factors. I found it all interesting. But if you just want to specifically know How The Salt System Ate The Leisure Centre, I've highlighted those passages. The emphasis (bold print; italics) is mine.</p><p><em>Hi there: I had the opportunity to read your blog and I wanted to let you know that your comments about the renovation and lifecycle replacement of 25 year old equipment are a bit off the mark. It is somewhat understandable as you are not privy to all the information about the project and only gleaning snippets of information from various sources.</em></p><p><br /><em>I will provide some further background that may assist in clarifying how some of the work for the Southland Leisure Centre project came to be and how that relates to some of your comments and observations. The original renovation that was approved by City Council was for $8 million and approved in June 2006. This was to include upgrades and updating to the Southland Leisure Centre Locker Rooms, add an Aquaplay Family Water Feature, Steamroom, New Fitness Expansion Area with new fitness equipment, Elevator and Accessible Service Counter. The Council approved funding also allowed for painting most of the common areas and pool to provide for an updated look to complete this portion of the renovations as well as a Council mandated Public Art Project which is part of the Capital funding formula. This funding had been provided to keep the Centre updated and make improvements so that our base of Customers would continue to enjoy using it and of course, attract new users. If you have had the opportunity to use the Centre in the last few years, for example, you would not have been impressed with the locker rooms as they were impossible to keep clean, i.e. old tiling, old grout that was difficult to repair and clean, damaged lockers, etc…….many areas were in need of updating………nothing worse than coming into a public facility and finding it in poor condition in spite of our best efforts to make the old stuff look good!</em></p><p><br /><strong><em>As for the Salt System……a decision was made in 2004 to install a Salt Lectranator system at Southland. It was installed in November 2004 as an add on to our current pool system with the intent that it would replace Chlorine Gas (as you know Chlorine Gas is a volatile, dangerous and difficult substance to work with). The filtration was a DE (Diatemacous Earth) based system. The intent to replace the chlorine gas with the salt system as recommended by a Consultant showed that such a system could work in a large wave pool provided that the proper number of Lectranator cells were specified. Based on this information, the project went ahead. Since the original install date in November 2004, the salt system never quite seemed to work properly, i.e. did not produce enough Chlorine to meet the demand. As a result, the Consultant determined that the lectranator system must have been slightly undersized and additional cells were added in March 2005. Even after the upsized installation, the system never met its targets and further to that, we began experiencing salt issues in our mechanical areas, exposed metal surfaces, humidification systems, etc…. </em></strong></p><p><br /><strong><em>The system did not perform and the situation was deteriorating. As you can imagine, the entire system was original (25 years old) with the exception of the newer salt lectranators. In April 2007, I started as the Manager of this Leisure Centre. After a review of the mechanical areas, the aging equipment, the noticeable salt damage and concerns with our inability to meet chlorine demand versus bather load, concerns with DE (carcinogenic material), leaking and corroded piping, large amounts of staff time trying to troubleshoot the system, assurances from the supplier that the system would work when it repeatedly became more apparent that it was not working, etc…..………It was decided with the support of the Director of Recreation and the General Manager of Community Services to approach City Council outlining the concerns about this situation. As a result of a report to Council in June 2007, approval was given for a further $2.6 million to update the pool system at the Southland Leisure Centre. The salt system and DE were removed and replaced with Liquid Chlorine, UV and Sand Filters along with an older boiler system, piping, etc…. and ……..we know that these systems work well and will position us to operate more efficiently and effectively for the next 20+ years. </em></strong></p><p><br /><em>In today's dollars, the Southland Leisure Centre's replacement value is in the neighbourhood of $125 million and has approx. 1.8 million visitors per year. The decision to update and upgrade the pool mechanical systems was not taken lightly and the expenditure is a positive one to protect the long term operational integrity of this facility. As you can see, the $8 million and the $2.6 million came about as separate projects. As well, I recognize that some of the facts and assumptions that you flagged were taken from bits and pieces of information, media, etc……..Please note that the Village Square Leisure Centre renovation was also approved by Council in June 2006 in the amount of $8 million. They do 'not' have a salt system, but do have gas chlorine which will be changed out as part of their project. That Centre is also 25 years old and in need of various lifecycle replacements, updating, etc……..</em></p><p><br /><em>This is the first time that I have viewed your information and I appreciate the opportunity to provide some information that may help clarify why we did the system change here at the Southland Leisure Centre. If you have any questions, please contact me at the numbers provided below. </em></p><p><br /><em>Thank you<br />Ron Krell Manager </em></p><p><em>Southland Leisure Centre # 159</em></p><p>So there you have it. No need to speculate any more. It wasn't high free available chlorine with no stabilizer that caused all that corrosion, as so many members of the Head In The Sand Society have speculated. You have it right here, in the words of the manager who had to deal with all of this. Truth is, the Lectranator never even produced enough chlorine to meet bather load. it's hard to imagine not enough free available chlorine could have destroyed the Leisure Centre equipment in some 31 months, when sufficient free available chlorine from gas cylinders hadn't done it in the twenty plus years prior.</p><p>It is exactly as I've always said; It's the Salt, Folks. It's the Salt.</p><p>But there's more.</p><p>I worte back to Mr. Krell seeeking permission to publish his e-mails in this blog. His response (oncea again, emphasis is mine);</p><p><em>Hi: sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I would be comfortable with you printing my response for your blog....I cannot remove the non disclosure statement as that is automatically added to all of our emails at work. However, I would approve your reprinting my wording verbatim as long as it is stated factually. Would that work for you?? Let me know what you think.<br /><br />Also, I would be interested to hear more information about salt systems.................my opinion based on the experience here is that I believe that salt systems can work in smaller applications without too much difficulty.....however, <strong>I don't trust salt over the longer period as I think that it eventually permeates the equipment and corrodes it</strong>.<br /><br /><strong>Mid-size Wave Pools can utilize it with mixed results, i.e. Collicut Centre in Red Deer, but will show damage to equipment eventually. That Centre opened in 2000 and it is showing signs of salt damage here in 2008.....not as bad as what we experienced at Southland, but enough to be of concern.<br /></strong><br /><strong>Large Wave Pools seems to be a non-starter for a salt application. It failed at Millwoods Pool in Edmonton and now had very poor results here at the Southland Leisure Centre (230,000 gallon US). I am not sure that the Engineering Consultant had enough information about salt to determine that it could not work.....I believe that they took the approach that the system designed for Millwoods was undersized and that by merely upsizing the salt lectranators, they could achieve the perfect operating formula. It did not work as outlined in my previous email. I suspect that they were surprised by this, as we were.</strong><br /><br />My guess is that salt in the larger applications with large bather loads reaches a threshold level at which point the salt cannot convert to chlorine as quickly as required and even adding additional salt cells does not make a difference.....reaches a saturation point. I am not a chemist, but it is the closest that I can come to describing the situation based on my Grade 12 and University Chemistry courses.<br /><br />I would not be able to prove this theory, but my experience tells that that I am probably not far off on this one. Your thoughts??<br /><br />Ron</em></p><p>So, we're not just talking about a single facility that experienced heavy and expensive corrosion as a result of installing Lectranator commercial salt systems. According to Mr. Krell, "it failed at Millwood", "had very poor results" at his facility, and after eight years, Colicut Centre in Red Deer "is showing signs of salt damage", "enough to be concerned".</p><p>It turns out it's just a matter of time and they all experience these issues. I'm going to try to contact some of these facilities to find out more about their unique situations. Seems to me that with all this Public Money being spent to fix the issues wrought by Salt Chlorine Generation, that some bright-eyed reporter at the CBC should be interested in what is apparently common knowledge among the folks working with these systems in an indoor environment.</p><p>Since he'd asked for my thoughts, I wrote back to Mr. Krell and gave him as condensed a version as I could of why I think it's utter insanity to install a salt system on any pool or spa:</p><p><em>My opinion is that the core issue with salt systems is that they use salt. Salt is a corrosive. There's no way around it. All chlorine ends up putting salt (sodium chloride) into our pool or spa water. The new system you mentioned that you've installed on your wave pool, the liquid chlorine feeder, has one of the highest salt contents of any of the bottled/packaged sanitizers. But it's still nowhere near the level of salt that we start with on a salt pool. Typically, our tap water is below 250 ppm (parts per million) chloride. That's been established here in the US as the "level of taste" by EPA and it's the target that most water districts shoot for. So, with a freshly filled pool, that's where you start. Then you introduce sanitizer. Over time, you will increase that sodium chloride level to as much as 1,500 ppm or 2,000 ppm. Usually, that takes years. And especially in something like a wave pool, where so much water is aerated and lost and you're constantly introducing low chloride fill water to make up for it, you may never see those elevated sodium chloride levels. But even if you do someday end up with that high sodium chloride level, you will also have accompanying elevated levels of calcium and manganese and iron and copper and everything else that's in our water supply system and that bathers end up excreting into our pools. That's the point that, before salt systems came along, we would drain and refill our pools. The old standard was 3,000 ppm TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) maximum.</em></p><p><br /><em>So, we never had reason to worry too much about all the different mechanisms by which sodium chloride could damage our pools and our pool enclosures. There would be isolated incidences of pool enclosure roof collapses, and the investigation would usually point chloride stress corrosion of the supporting bolts. But as a whole, industrywide, these were very isolated instances.</em></p><p><br /><a href="http://corrosion-doctors.org/Forms-SCC/swimming.htm" target="_blank"><em>http://corrosion-doctors.org/Forms-SCC/swimming.htm</em></a></p><p><br /><a href="http://www.thefabricator.com/MetalsMaterials/MetalsMaterials_Article.cfm?ID=731" target="_blank"><em>http://www.thefabricator.com/MetalsMaterials/MetalsMaterials_Article.cfm?ID=731</em></a></p><p><br /><em>Both of those links cite the same instance of a pool enclosure roof collapse due to chloride stress corrosion.</em></p><p><br /><em>However, the use of calcium chloride as an accelerator in the mixing of concrete has been cited in many instances as the main contributor to subsequent chloride stress corrosion that results in the earlier than anticipated failure of metal bolts and support structures worldwide.</em></p><p><br /><em>So, as you see, it doesn't matter where the chloride comes from, the result is the same; premature aging of the components of whatever structure we are trying to maintain, whether it be a bridge or a swimming pool or it's enclosure... or the bolts in a waterslide.</em></p><p><br /><em>This is the point where I feel that my industry has departed from reality on the subject, and I think it's for no other reason than greed. Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."</em></p><p><br /><em>And therein lies our problem. The internet is lousy with reports of salt damage to everything in nature. Ask a metallurgist at what level salt will corrode and they'll most likely tell you that, in the right circumstances, pitted against the right substance, salt will corrode at levels as low as 10 and 20 ppm. Ask a highway maintenance engineer what the number one cause of road damage is and he'll tell you it's the salt they use to keep the roads clear in the winter.</em></p><p><br /><em>The things you've told me in your last e-mail support what I'm saying - and what scientists have been saying for hundreds of years. You mentioned that a mid sized wave pool in Collicut Centre in Red Deer is showing signs of salt damage after 8 years. Your own wave pool showed signs thirty-one months after salt system installation. I have met customers who had stainless steel filter tanks and put salt systems on their residential pools, and within one year they had to buy a new fiberglass filter (about $1,200 for a residential model) and by the next year, their limestone coping and decks were spalled and looked thirty years old instead of two or three. None of these things would have occurred and the normal life cycles in each of these instances would have been 20 and 30 years without salt (I service some stainless steel DE filters that are easily 20 years old, on non-salt pools, of course).</em></p><p><br /><em>Yet, the pool industry is simply ignoring science so that they have another gadget to sell to pool owners. And it's a gadget that comes with a significant after market. Salt cells, even the best ones out there, are typically rated for about 10,000 hours of operation. In a commercial environment, with 24 hour a day operation, that's not much more than a year. And from everything I can find, manufacturers customarily provide a one year warranty for commercial use. When you imagine the after market in salt cell sales - at $500 to $800 per cell - if every pool were converted to salt chlorine generation, it's easy to see why it's hard to get objective information from the manufacturers. And it's impossible to see where the highly touted savings over other chlorination methods comes in.</em></p><p><br /><em>I know I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist here. That's not it. I just feel that the sale of salt systems has become Sales and Marketing without Borders. There is applicable research that's been done on the effects of salt on every component that makes up every configuration of a swimming pool. There is research on it's effects on stone, concrete, metals - such as copper, aluminum, brass, cupro nickel, and all types of stainless steel - and in every instance, the research proves that damage is accelerated proportional to the increase in chloride levels over background.</em></p><p><br /><em>Further, there is abundant research available on the debilitating effects of stray current corrosion on submerged or partially submerged metals - such as ladders, rails, lights, light conduit, heater heat exchangers, etc. Stray current corrosion is often called "electrolysis", the very process whereby we create chlorine from salt. For example. I replaced a 20 amp fuse on a residential salt system the other day. That fuse provided power to the salt cell. Hence, that salt cell was receiving just shy of 20 amps of current from plate to plate, in the water, up until that fuse blew. Stray current corrosion is usually measured in milliamps. There are indications of it's damage nearly everywhere a salt system is installed. There are now pool specialty equipment companies that sell zinc anodes to mute the effects of stray current corrosion. Yet the manufacturers continue to insist that it doesn't exist, that because they met UL 1081 standards in a laboratory environment, that the discussion is off the table.</em></p><p>Well, that's all the news that fit to print for this installment. Happy Trails to all you Salt Reps trying to work up snappy comebacks when this stuff comes up in your Lying Contests.., I mean Sales Seminars.</p></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-74106771819934408512008-05-12T08:06:00.000-07:002009-03-10T10:30:18.420-07:00You Can Get More With A Gun & A Smile Than With A Smile AloneI’ve noticed that many of the links on this blog are dead. I’ll be going through the archives and trying to update them this next month or so.<br /><br />The one that surprised me most - sort of - was that Bio Guard removed all of their Material Safety Data Sheets from their website. They didn’t just move them so that my links would be dead. They completely removed them and put a note, “To request MSDS for BioGuard products, please contact our BioGuard Customer Care by phone at 1.800.932.5943”.<br /><br />Just a few months ago their entire library was available at their website. Now, they want to control who they release that information to. Why?<br /><br />Perhaps it’s because they prefer that the public thinks their “essential minerals” in their <a href="http://www.bioguard.com/mp/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=b3392df38b224110VgnVCM10000053d7010aRCRD&vgnextchannel=b3392df38b224110VgnVCM10000053d7010aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default">Mineral Springs program</a> are a “proprietary blend of minerals” instead of common salt and borax. Yes, the same Borax that Ronald Reagan used to shill for on Death Valley Days. I guess if you’re selling common salt and a laundry additive for something like $40.00 a 30 lbs. bag, you need to control who you release that information to.<br /><br />You can achieve much the same results of a bag of Mineral Springs <a href="http://piscines-apollo.com/bioguard/123231.pdf">Beginnings</a> with about $5.00 worth of salt (a forty lbs. bag at the Big Box store), a 4 lbs. box of sodium tetraborate decahydrate (20 Mule Team Borax) that sells for $2.99, and a little over a quart of muriatic acid to neutralize the borax.<br /><br />If you use the median percentages for a bag of <a href="http://piscines-apollo.com/bioguard/123230.pdf">Renew</a> it’s 2.4 lbs salt, about 7 ozs. of 20 Mule Team Borax, and 4 ozs. of liquid muriatic acid. That’s between $1.50 and $2.00, depending on where you shop. How much are you paying for Renew?<br /><br />Here’s excerpts from an e-mail from a lady whose had quite enough of the whole Mineral Springs program:<br /><br />“I stumbled across your blog as I was hunting for cheaper prices for Mineral Springs-Renewal that we have to put in our pool every week. I started reading all the articles and although I thought I was a fairly-informed consumer.<br /><br />I can see I was totally wrong when it comes to these systems. So my question is--what now? Our pool was put in by [Big Pool Company], (Atlanta, Georgia area) in August 2007. We have had no troubles except now--trying to keep the PH low and the cyanuric acid up and the price of the Renewal--it is totally stupid--up to 26-30 dollars per week--no, I did not sign up for this! We take a pool water sample to our local [Big Pool Company] store in Loganville, GA and they test it for free--we never leave there without needing 90-150 dollars of chemicals.....<br /><br />Our pool is still under warranty and after reading your articles and all the links--I want our of this system--any suggestions???? Any advise would be appreciated.”<br /><br />$26 to $30 a week for $2.00 worth of salt and laundry powder... Think I’m making it up? Look again at the MSDS for Renew and do the calculations yourself. The “Inorganic salt” is salt. The Boron Salt is a product very similar to 20 Mule Team Borax. The Inorganic Acid is a granular acid to balance the pH from the high pH Boron salt (I substituted an equivalent amount of liquid muriatic acid in my calculations), and the Aluminum salt is just in there as a desiccant, to keep things dry. When you add it all up and replace with off-the -shelf bulk items, it comes out to about $2.00 for 4 lbs.<br /><br />I’ve talked about all this before. Click on the Label <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Getting Screwed Buying Salt</span>. It’s all there. And the BioGuard links have been Renewed, for a lot less than $30 a week.The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-53998006651521393402008-04-06T06:42:00.000-07:002009-02-25T10:16:31.026-08:00Green Pools - and other nonsense - In Florida<span style="font-family:arial;">A few weeks ago, I saw a newspaper story in the Orlando Sentinel titled “Ensure that your swimming pool is on the road to greener pastures”. Now, normally, green is a bad color for a pool. But it’s the latest thing, you know; Green Pools - as in Environmentally Friendly Pools. Here’s the link to the story:</span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><a title="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/home/orl-green0908mar09,0,599071.story" href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/home/orl-green0908mar09,0,599071.story"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/home/orl-green0908mar09,0,599071.story</span></a><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The story goes something like this; while homeowners have become ecologically aware about their homes and their landscaping, they aren’t paying as much attention as they ought to their pools. But the Florida Green Building Coalition has the answers.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />To quote the article; “Pools are not environmentally sustainable, according to this nonprofit corporation that sets green-building standards in Florida, oversees green-building certification and serves as a resource for builders and consumers. Although a popular amenity for homes in Florida, swimming pools and spas utilize precious fresh water resources and harmful chemicals in their operation and maintenance,’ the coalition says in its Green Home Standard Reference Guide. If you want your pool to go green, the organization recommends taking steps to minimize or eliminate the use of chemicals, minimize the energy used for pumping and heating and reduce reliance on fresh water by minimizing evaporation.”<br /><br />So far, so good. I agree with everything they’re saying. Pools aren’t environmentally sustainable. They require tons of extra electricity to filter the water, electricity that wouldn’t be part of the home’s carbon footprint if the pool wasn’t in the backyard. Too, they require an entire industry in chemical manufacturing and subsequent distribution to the end user, the pool owner or your local pool service company. That’s another whole carbon footprint that gets stamped on our society so that a select few people can enjoy a backyard pool. Minimizing energy use for heating and evaporation, too, a good idea. Sounds like a pool cover, either the bubble type or the automatic, track driven safety cover would handle that. The automatic one is going to add to the electrical load, but it’s easier to use and so would get used more often, thus saving more water and heating costs. So, the offset is probably real.<br /><br />Then, the article veers off into the Twilight Zone. If you know anything about pools and the issues that surround their environmental impact, you can tell that this is where the reporter, G. K. Sharman, exhausted their knowledge of these topics and started cutting and pasting disparate pieces to try to cobble together a middle and an end for the story.<br /><br />The story goes on; “Use a salt- or UV-sterilization system instead of chlorine. This is the top item on the coalition's list of pool standards.” Now go back to the first quote from the story - “swimming pools and spas utilize precious fresh water resources” - Yes, they do. But nothing makes pool waste water more expensive to reclaim than adding 3,500 ppm salt to it. Desalinization is the most expensive of the waste treatment procedures, and almost no municipalities in the US use the technique. They just rely on dilution to keep the chloride level below their established threshold.<br /><br />The story goes on; “Pools generally need chlorine concentrations of 2 to 4 parts per million to stay clean. The chemical generally is added weekly and in high quantities, but it can evaporate fairly quickly.”<br /><br />First of all, chlorine doesn’t “evaporate”. I guess that was just a handy word used for expediency at the cost of accuracy. But if it did, chlorine produced by a salt system would “evaporate” just as quickly as chorine added to a pool through chlorine based products. Further, you’re increasing the carbon footprint of the pool by adding another appliance; the salt system. Not to mention that its a bit misleading to advise people to use a salt system instead of chlorine. In spite of salt systems being at the top of the coalition’s list of ways to reduce chemical use, you’re still using chlorine. The article even says so, after just telling you to use salt INSTEAD OF chlorine, they say, a “ salt system converts salt into chlorine, eliminating the need to transport and handle chlorine tablets or liquid”.<br /><br />Ah-hah. So, is that what they meant? Eliminate the carbon footprint of the manufacturing and distribution system by making your chlorine at home? Has anyone done any studies that show that inexpensively manufactured (read cheaply made) and inefficient home electrolysis units, usually operated at less than optimum performance by homeowners, are more environmentally friendly than a professionally monitored manufacturing process?<br /><br />Did you see what I just did? See how I asked them to prove their claims by showing us studies? I learned that from a Salt Rep. There’s this Huge Pain In The Ass Salt Rep who’s always answering every question about the disastrous effects of salt water pools by saying, “Okayfine, just show us the records for that pool with the salt damage for the last thirty years. And then show us contrasting records from other pools that you don’t have these problems with. Oh, you don’t have the records? So very sorry, we cannot help you.”<br /><br />But getting back to the efficiencies of professionally manufactured chlorine versus homemade chlorine. When you manufacture chlorine, I’m thinking that you’re probably going to be a bit more aware of the process, and things like salt level, conductivity, cell plate condition and cleanliness, etc. - all those things that go into minimizing the cost and greenhouse effects of manufacturing - than a homeowner who looks at a salt meter every once in a while and based on it’s less than accurate readings, dumps a bag or two of salt into the pool and cranks up the salt system output (which increases the energy consumption and increases the carbon footprint... get it?)<br /><br />But homemade chlorine must be what they think is best, because the very next thing they say is, “A salt system converts salt into chlorine, eliminating the need to transport and handle chlorine tablets or liquid. ‘Chlorine is a toxic chemical,’ said Tracy DeCarlo, a Florida Green Home certifying agent and a home-design function analyst with Detailed Solutions Inc. ‘I don't believe we should be drinking it or swimming in it.’ Pool water that is sanitized by a salt system feels like bath water and won't ruin hair or bathing suits the way chlorine does, DeCarlo says.”<br /><br />Did you catch that? Ms. DeCarlo says that chlorine’s a toxic chemical and we shouldn’t drink it or swim in it. But chlorine made from a salt system won’t ruin your hair or bathing suit the way that chlorine does. I’m confused. If we’re talking about HOCL, we’re talking about HOCL. I don’t care where you get it.<br /><br />But doesn’t that sound familiar? That thing about the bathing suits and ruining your hair? Doesn’t that sound like something right out of a salt system marketing brochure? Because it is.<br /><br /></span><a title="http://www.jandy.com/html/products/chlorinegenerators/" href="http://www.jandy.com/html/products/chlorinegenerators/"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.jandy.com/html/products/chlorinegenerators/</span></a><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">By the way, while you’re checking that out, check out the UPDATE at the bottom of that page. I like to call that the Pool Guy Update. It wasn’t there until I started blogging about all of this stuff a year and a half ago.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />So, anyway, I wrote to Ms. DeCarlo about this mix up.<br /><br />I would have written to the newspaper, but they’ve removed all contact information from their online publication. Last season, this newspaper used to list the e-mail addresses of the editors of their different departments. But this year, they just created a Comments section (or Rant Here Section, as I like to call it) for people with opposing viewpoints. It cuts way down on all the e-mails they have to read, and relieves them of their journalistic responsibility to be responsive to the public. Geez, and they wonder why newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur.<br /><br />Anyway, getting back to Ms. DeCarlo. I wrote to her and said that her, “salt system recommendation really snows me. I can't think of a single appliance that is less environmentally friendly than a salt system... On your own website [Ms. DeCarlo has a website, a good one, called Detailed Solutions. Here’s the link: </span><a title="http://buildingtips.net/" href="http://buildingtips.net/"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://buildingtips.net</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">/ ] you link to an article you wrote encouraging folks to use salt-free water softeners. In volume 2, issue 4 you state, ‘Traditional water softeners... work by exchanging calcium and magnesium ions with sodium or potassium. These methods lead to increased salt concentrations, which are then carried into drinking water and into the environment’. And you're right about it being carried into the environment. Electrolytic salt chlorination systems do the same thing, either through the release of brackish (3500 to 4500 part per million) backwash effluent, draining the pool for maintenance, and even splash out during use. In every one of those cases, the salt contaminated water finds it's way back into the environment. Even if you discharge it to the sewer system, salt is considered a ‘pass through’ pollutant and is not removed from the waste stream during waste water treatment.”</span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />She responded the same day:<br /><br />“I certainly appreciate your feedback and wanted to let you know that when asked about pools I specifically told them that I am far from an expert on the subject. I gave them several ideas that can contribute to a green pool and told them to get proper information from someone in the industry. I didn’t expect my input to be included in the article.<br /><br />Tracy DeCarlo<br />Detailed Solutions, Inc.<br />Home Building Function Analyst<br />Certified Green Professional<br />Florida Green Home Standard Certifying Agent<br />Certified Aging in Place Specialist<br />Free EZINE - 'Tips for Designing a Functional Home'<br /></span><a title="http://www.buildingtips.net/" href="http://www.buildingtips.net/"><span style="font-family:arial;">www.buildingtips.net</span></a> "<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And there’s the rub, you see. Ms. DeCarlo isn’t even in the pool business, and G. K. Sharman knew that, but went ahead and just cobbled together some information from the Green Building Coalition’s website - </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Read Page 1 & 2: </span><a title="http://www.floridagreenbuilding.org/db/standards/homes/HomeRefGuide5.pdf" href="http://www.floridagreenbuilding.org/db/standards/homes/HomeRefGuide5.pdf"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.floridagreenbuilding.org/db/standards/homes/HomeRefGuide5.pdf</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">- and some quotes from a person who told them upfront she was not a pool professional, and submitted this mish-mosh of misinformation to the editor for publication.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />I wrote back to Ms. DeCarlo and thanked her for responding and tried to provide her with some other information to back up my assertion that a salt pool has no business on the Green Building checklist, except maybe to subtract points if you come across one.<br /><br />She responded:<br /><br />“Here in Florida a salt chlorinator is considered a green item by the Florida Green Building Coalition. Points toward green home certification are awarded for the use of ‘Sanitation system that reduces / eliminates chlorine use (prereq)’. I’m glad you addressed this issue and will forward the detailed information from your email to the document committee.”<br /><br />Now, that response made me think that this Green Building Coalition in Florida wasn’t all bad. So I wrote to the Executive Director, two times, to ask him for comment. His name is Roy Bonnell and his e-mail is </span><a title="mailto:execdir@floridagreenbuilding.org" href="mailto:execdir@floridagreenbuilding.org"><span style="font-family:arial;">execdir@floridagreenbuilding.org</span></a><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">He was, as they say, unavailable for comment. Now, I’ve looked through the rest of the Green Building Coalition’s website and I’ve read over their documentation for building green, and I have to admit, in every area except the pool area, I’m impressed. There is an incredible amount of detail in all of those other areas. It appears that a lot of thought and hard work went into the green building standard for everything else. But then, Im only an expert on pools. Perhaps the other areas are, to the appropriate expert, just a bunch of boilerplate.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />For the pools, though, there isn’t even the semblance of boilerplate. It looks like they just called up a Salt Rep and asked them to write them a little ditty, down to and including a WEB PAGE LINK TO A SALT SYSTEM MANUFACTURER IN THE GREEN HOME STANDARD REFERENCE GUIDE! Sorry for shouting. It was just so unexpected after seeing the depth of the other areas. It was almost like they were saying, “We really don’t understand swimming pools, but these guys say they do. So, hold onto your wallet and click on this link.”<br /><br />But in the final analysis, who cares, right? After all, it’s just one little One Horse State. Can’t even get their elections right, so who’s going to pay any attention to their Green Home Standard?<br /><br />Well, let me tell you a story. This falls under the category of Folklore. It’s something that someone told me a long time ago. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But it sounds about right. You be the judge.<br /><br />A long, long time ago, back when they first started using cyanuric acid to stabilize chlorine, the health departments were wondering what the “safe” level in the water should be. You see, it was brand new back then, and nobody knew if, after swimming in it for a couple of years, their kids might grow six toes or a second head. They knew that when they fed lab rats a 100,000 part per million diet of the stuff, they died. So, they figured that to be on the safe side, they would establish a one thousand fold level of safety for us humans and they set the the maximum level at 100 ppm for pools regulated by the health department. The first health department to adopt that standard was the Los Angeles County health department, which, in those days, led the way for health departments across the nation. So, it became the standard because “Los Angeles said so”.<br /><br />Now, I’ve looked around the internet at all the green building standards I could find, and so far, Florida’s is the most in depth and complete - except for the part about pools - and I just didn’t want for that to become the standard for a Green Pool, “because Florida said so”. I mean, we already got a President and a War On Adjectives and a Recession because Florida said so. I really think that’s enough.<br /><br />Don’t you?</span><br /></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-258191123729820882008-02-25T13:33:00.000-08:002008-04-12T09:52:53.670-07:00<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;">How To Use This Blog</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />You're probably here because you own a salt system and you're having problems with it damaging your pool or pool equipment. That seems to be the bulk of the traffic that I get. If you are, look over at the Labels and look for your symptom. Click on whatever looks like it's close to what's going wrong with your pool. That will open up a window with the blog entries where I talk about those issues. There are over 50 blog entries, so there may be anywhere from 2 to 10 blog pieces that deal with your topic.<br /><br />You may also want to watch the video that WFAA did about how much salt sucks. There's a link to it after the labels, along with a link to a text that explains how salt damages stone and concrete. It's pretty technical, but any layperson can understand it. It will come in handy if you're looking for ways to explain to whoever sold you your salt system why they ought to be paying to recope your pool.<br /><br />If you're here because you're considering buying a salt system, then just click on any of the labels and start reading. Everything you've been told by whoever is trying to sell you a salt system is a lie, and I have done all I can to document the sources that refute the most common lies that they tell when they're trying to twist your arm into buying these things.<br /></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-39109091985970110422008-01-27T08:41:00.000-08:002008-01-29T07:08:12.669-08:00<div><br /><br /><br /><font face="arial"><font size="5"><strong>How Salt Systems Don’t Work</strong><br /></font></font><br /><font face="arial"><br /><p> </p><br /><p><br />There was a Pool Show in town here lately. It was a three day event. Lots of classes. Lots of exhibits. I’m sure a lot of good and sorely needed training got done there.<br /><br />I didn’t go.<br /><br />Not to say there’s anything wrong with Pool Shows. But, except for the rare class or two taught by people on the Tech Side of Life With No Monetary Interest In Whether You Buy What They’re Teaching (and you good guys and gals who do that know who you are and we love you for it) the rest of it is just A Show.<br /><br />But, it’s the only time I ever find myself feeling sorry for Sales Reps. Think about it; standing at a booth all day long, trying to figure out ways to make a black plastic pool pump look and sound sexy. How hard is that?<br /><br />The reason I bring The Show up at all is that they had one seminar, added to the schedule at the last minute, titled, How Salt Systems Work.<br /><br />As I said, I didn’t go. I heard, though, through the Pool Guy Grapevine, that in some of the other seminars, those that were water chemistry centric, the main complaint of the folks in attendance was What The Hell To Do About These Damn Salt Systems. Of course, the people attending the water chemistry seminars were the “hands on” folks, the ones who see these systems in the field and try to explain to their customers each day why their pools are falling apart.<br /><br />But enough about Pool Shows. Let’s talk about what happens when Salt Systems Don’t Work.<br /><br />Here’s a picture of a salt cell plate that was about three years old when we replaced it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOb3D2U0jLRvDwctm1mmMYuNK0ANGT2Wr0XvvgiB_aeb951-aZBNfxHEWI0xrTXJeb_T4QRKcqLFY6pMtdVsyCYSxrMwXD00FkauOL7K7EFvlirKJi600fHuk3Jvd5eUjgaSqU/s1600-h/close+up+center+plate+5.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160198830244736898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOb3D2U0jLRvDwctm1mmMYuNK0ANGT2Wr0XvvgiB_aeb951-aZBNfxHEWI0xrTXJeb_T4QRKcqLFY6pMtdVsyCYSxrMwXD00FkauOL7K7EFvlirKJi600fHuk3Jvd5eUjgaSqU/s400/close+up+center+plate+5.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />This is the center plate in a pack of seven plates. This is The Weak Link In The Chain, so to speak. It gets eaten alive by being the return path for all of the current flow. As you can see, it is literally eaten alive. The way it works is that current is applied to one of the Outer Plates in the pack of seven adjacent plates by an insulated conductor. That plate is electrically connected to the outer plate on the other side of the pack by another insulated conductor. Then low voltage, high current is applied to these outer plates. The current jumps from the two outer plates to the next two plates, then in turn to the next two plates, and then, the plates on either side of the center plate deliver their full current flow to it, and it provides a path back to the power supply to complete the path for current flow.<br /><br />Here’s a basic drawing of what’s going on, using a simpler, three plate pack as an example. Don’t laugh. I don’t use PC Paint very often.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie-3rD05roXGraXf-PQAlgkFXG-Eg78IkI_vVa0xTap0xD_9hPUXYFXiK8ZHNo0HwHPLR58ePtHf8fCfP8wTJOECf-BzocNGI1wdciWRoJYz-MjzHyjp2Gq0JGbGgVrcZFu8PJ/s1600-h/salt+cell+battery.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160201050742828978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie-3rD05roXGraXf-PQAlgkFXG-Eg78IkI_vVa0xTap0xD_9hPUXYFXiK8ZHNo0HwHPLR58ePtHf8fCfP8wTJOECf-BzocNGI1wdciWRoJYz-MjzHyjp2Gq0JGbGgVrcZFu8PJ/s400/salt+cell+battery.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The first plate in the foreground receives current flow from the battery – in our case, a power supply – and it passes that current flow over to the last plate in the background via that heavy dark line, which if you crack open a salt cell with a sledge hammer like I did, you’ll see is an insulated bar to avoid stray conduction to the center plate as the current flows through it. Then, the Magic of Electrolysis occurs. The current flow – up to 8 amps of current – passes from the two outer plates to the center plate through the water. <a href="http://msnucleus.org/membership/html/k-6/wc/oceans/4/wcoc4_2a.html">That’s why you have to add some salt to your pool water.</a> Without it, the water wouldn’t be conductive enough to pass the proper amount of current flow.<br /><br />Part two of why you add the salt is so that, with that big whopping current flow, you zap the inactive chloride ion that got there when you poured the salt into the pool. When you pour it in, the salt immediately dissociated into sodium and chloride. The chloride is just in there, doing nothing, until it passes between those cell plates and the current flow turns it into Cl(little lower case 2), which is an oxidizer, and that Cl(little lower case 2) mixes with the water to form hypochlorous acid, the killing form of chlorine.<br /><br />That’s where those Salt Reps get off telling you that you only have to add salt once. When hypochlorous acid does its job and kills something, the HOCl (hypochlorous acid) dissociates and that Cl is back to being an inert chloride ion again. Now, the next time it passes through the cell plates, it gets zapped back to life, mixes with some water and makes HOCl all over again.<br /><br />So that’s true. Once added, you never have to add salt again. As long as your kids never splash even a drop of water out, as long as you never backwash your filter, as long as you don’t have any water features which aerate the chloride rich water, as long as it never rains and dilutes your pool water. Which is why, in spite of the way the Salt Reps twist the science to make it sound like There Really Is A Free Lunch And This Is It… there really isn’t. But you knew that, right? They are, after all, salesmen. What did you expect?<br /><br />But getting back to why I took pictures of that cell plate. Oh, by the way, for comparison, here’s a picture of what’s left of that cell plate alongside one of the other plates from that pack that was lucky enough not to be in that center, return to battery, position.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgal3z3sbhd5oYZfOUzTfhxlQSdUj6H4tPI6tTA8BLBIi8t6_u2X-yDtmEVbBrV1qqBplQV1mSAGnBUl__kdUHY5vz2cRwOYpqVqNR8LY0Og2fDwW6uYoJ986WHLX5dOV5BXZAV/s1600-h/2+plate+comparison.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160200015655710626" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgal3z3sbhd5oYZfOUzTfhxlQSdUj6H4tPI6tTA8BLBIi8t6_u2X-yDtmEVbBrV1qqBplQV1mSAGnBUl__kdUHY5vz2cRwOYpqVqNR8LY0Og2fDwW6uYoJ986WHLX5dOV5BXZAV/s400/2+plate+comparison.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />When this salt cell failed the only indication we had was that the chlorine level in the pool kept getting lower and lower. Depending on the time of year, you could go more than a couple of weeks before you make the decision to spin the connectors off the cell and take a look inside.<br /><br />During that time, from the moment that Return To Battery Connection just dissolved away and there was no longer a return path VIA THE SALT SYSTEM for current flow, where was that current flow going? The power supply still had +28 VDC available at it’s output, and the physical connection to the two outer plates was still there, but there was no longer any way for those plates to do their little Jump From Plate To Plate trick and return, finally, to ground.<br /><br />You see, in a perfect world, current flow follows the path of least resistance. So, on Day One of operation, these salt systems are operating exactly as they did in the lab, when they proved that they were emitting less than the maximum allowed Stray Currents to receive their UL listing. But when the salt cell fails like this one failed, the current flow starts looking for new ways to get to ground, back to battery, as it were. And it will follow any path it can find to get to ground. The more resistance there is, the less current will flow. But when you’re starting with 8 amps, you can still have a pretty healthy current flow when it finds it’s way via other paths to ground.<br /><br />Paths like: Salt cell plates to bonded (grounded) and very expensive heater. Or salt cell plates to bonded ladder or grabrail. Or salt cell plates to bonded light niche. Or salt cell plates to anything metal that is submerged in your pool. But still you should be safe, right? I mean, that Stray Current flow will go right to ground via the bonding lug, right?<br /><br />Well, that’s when you get to add in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion">Galvanic Corrosion </a>to the <a href="http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/StrayCurrent/Introduction.htm">Stray Current Corrosion</a>. Take a pool ladder, for example. Stainless steel mounted into a brass anchor cup set in the deck. Now, splash salt water on it all day every day the pool is being used. The chloride rich water sets up a Galvanic Cell that causes corrosion to form BETWEEN the stainless rail and the brass anchor cup. That presents resistance to current flow. Now, you come along and grab that handrail and you get a tingle. Because you present less resistance to current flow than the corrosion building up in the anchor cup. And when you have that scenario, you go out and Google for:<br /><br /><em>Salt system conducting electricity on handrails</em><br /><br />That showed up on my Site Meter this week. But that’s nothing new. I’ve had lots of hits like that over the last year and a half.<br /><br /><br />Now let’s take this a step further. Let’s back this scenario up to when the salt cell’s center plate first started to deteriorate. I’m guessing, but from the looks of it, I’d have to say that this plate was in pretty bad shape for over a year. So, for over a year, it wasn’t able to provide as efficient a path to ground as it did when it was brand new, and I’d say that the Stray Currents were ramping up from the minimally allowed level to something that sends people out on the internet Googling for things like:<br /><br /><em>Pool salt system conducting electricity</em><br /><br /><em>How do you troubleshoot a swimming pool heater plumbed with plastic pipe for electrical electrolysis</em><br /><br /><em>Stray electric current salt water pools</em><br /><br /><em>Zinc anode skimmer basket does it work</em><br /><br /><em>“Chlorine generator” “copper pipes”</em><br /><br /><em>Dealing with stray currents around pools</em> (from Australia… Imagine that)<br /><br />Using the old Site Meter info again, in a sample group of the most recent visits, this represents 17.5% of the people who come to my blog via a Google search.<br /><br />Now let’s take this even a step further. This deterioration of the plate begins the minute you plug the salt system in the very first time. So, it’s a safe bet that the Stray Current Corrosion begins within a few days, weeks, months (?) of your system being brand spanking new.<br /><br />Every manufacturer admits that your salt cell is only going to last you about 10,000 hours, which under normal use is from three to five years, and the reason why is because they know that from day one, the cell plates are wearing out just like this one did. And my contention is that as they wear out, the Stray Current Corrosion is ramping up.<br /><br /></font><font face="arial">From Day One.<br /><br />These cell plates are made of ruthenium coated titanium, which, in the <a href="http://www.corrosionsource.com/handbook/galv_series.htm">Galvanic Series</a>, is just about the hardest, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_metal">most noble</a>, least active, <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cathodic">least cathodic </a>metal compound around. And still, it disintegrates with current flow. Your brass and copper and stainless steel pool components don’t stand a chance.<br /><br />Another thing that makes me think I'm on the right track here is something I remembered reading in the Save-T 3 automatic pool cover owner's manual, on page 13:<br /><br />"Since 1999 when Underwriters Laboratories (UL) dictated that all metal components of automatic pool covers must be bonded to the pool grid, <em><strong>we have seen an increase of galvanic corrosion</strong></em> [emphasis mine] on some of the aluminum components. In addition, the popularity of electric chlorinators where salt is added to the pool water has increased."<br /><br />Here's <a href="http://www.coverpools.com/docs/800061_SAVE-T_3_OWNERS_MANUAL.pdf">the link</a>. It's a slow loader, but it does work.<br /><br />What that's saying to me is that, as the salt cells age, and as they emit stronger and stronger stray current, we see more and more corrosion in any metal that's bonded to the pool grid, as that stray current seeks a way back to ground. Like the pool covers; the incidence of corrosion INCREASED after they were required to be bonded to the pool grid.<br /><br />Anyway, that’s why I wanted to write a blog piece about How Salt Systems Don’t Work, because I’m sure that none of this was brought up in that industry sponsored seminar, How Salt Systems Work.<br /><br />So, the next time one of your customers asks you, "Didn’t you just replace that (fill in the blank with your favorite salt damaged component) a couple of months ago?", just print out this blog piece and hand it to them and say, “Yes, and here’s why we’re going to do it again real soon”.<br /><br />Unless, of course, you sold them the salt system, too. Then you’ll just have to do what everybody else is doing; shrug your shoulders and pretend that you don’t know what’s going on.<br /><br />Good luck with that. </font></p></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-45527653639211712202007-12-27T08:35:00.000-08:002008-01-04T10:25:27.060-08:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;">Why I Do What I Do...</span></span><br /><br /><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />Yeah, I know. I said I was gonna talk about stone next. But this is a blog, right? Short for weblog and defined as <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">a person’s inner dialogue splashed across the internet for all to see.</span><br /><br />Something about a blog that most folks who visit them don’t realize is that, just as it paints a portrait of who I am for you, it can, in some instances, give me a snapshot of who my visitors are. Or more accurately, what it was they were looking for when they showed up on my doorstep, and ultimately, what information, and hence what impressions, they left here with.<br /><br />Now, whether they left here thinking about salt and salt systems a bit more critically, I can’t tell. But I can tell by what they read and by the links they click on what I’ve exposed them to. And when it comes to salt systems, this is The Only Place On Planet Earth that they’re going to be exposed to that information. Period.<br /><br />Kinda sad, huh? I mean, think about it. Of all the hype out there talking up how great salt is, there’s only one place in the whole world that serves as a repository for the Other Side Of The Story, which turns out to be very well documented and TRUE.<br /><br />Case In Point:<br /><br />I had a visitor yesterday who got here from a Google search.<br /><br />They Googled <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">black stain, salt cell</span>. Gee, I wonder why anybody would be Googling for that? Try it and see what you get.<br /><br />The first hit is The Pool Biz and the excerpt reads like this: “Now, think about your salt cell. What we’re doing is literally jumping .... Black Stains Around the Pool Light The in-line zinc anode is attached to the ...”<br /><br />The next hit is “Histology learning systems Appendix A”. A couple hits down from that is “Nitric Oxide: NO-dependent photo-toxicity...” Then after that; “The human endothelial cell in tissue culture”.<br /><br />Gosh... I wonder which reference they clicked on first?<br /><br />Coming into the blog from that Google search brought them into this piece:<br /><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/2007/03/stray-currents-are-dissolving-your.html">Stray Currents Are Dissolving Your Swimming Pool</a><br /><br /><br />That piece starts out with “I finally see how the manufacturers get away with selling you something that does so much damage to your pool while their sales continue to increase and no one comes along and shuts them down.”<br /><br />Pretty much sets the right tone, wouldn’t you say?<br /><br />They read down until they got to these links and explored them both:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.pooltoolco.com/catalog4.html">http://www.pooltoolco.com/catalog4.html</a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><a href="http://www.pooltoolco.com/catalog3.html">http://www.pooltoolco.com/catalog3.html</a><br /><br />These are the links that take you out to The Pool Tool Company’s online catalog and describe some Hot Items that are just flying off the shelves these days; Sacrificial Anodes for your skimmer baskets, in-line plumbing, and to bolt on to your metal ladders and rails. Now, this is a Swimming Pool Tool manufacturing company that sells these items to protect your plaster from staining due to electrolysis. In theory, electrolysis itself isn’t a problem. If you have 100% conduction from cell plate to cell plate, and no stray currents, then you can’t get any black staining. You know, like the black stains this person is trying to find out about that they suspect is caused by their salt cell. But, obviously, there ARE stray currents with most, if not all, of these salt system installations, resulting in a phenomena known as Stray Current Corrosion, and metal stains appearing on plaster is just the tip of the iceberg. As PoolToolCo says:<br /><br />A Must For <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Salt Pools</span><br /><br />Plaster Discoloration<br />Metal Erosion<br />Heater Damage<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Black Stains</span> Around The Pool Light<br /><br />Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Salt Pools Black Stains</span>... Very close to the original search term, no?<br /><br />So, anyway, here’s a company that every Pool Guy knows about, and probably owns one or two of their specialty tools - because they’re the only ones who know and make the tools we really need for those special applications - and they say point blank; <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">salt systems damage the heck out of pools</span>. So much so that you better be doing something proactive to protect your plaster, your heater, your other metals - like ladders, handrails, light rings and the metal niches they bolt to - from discoloration, erosion, general damage and staining.<br /><br />Gosh, I’ve read every salt system owner’s manual in existence, even the ones from Canada and France - believe it, I have - and oddly, they don’t mention any of these phenomena. I wonder why?<br /><br />Getting back to My Guest; after they read those pages, they watched the video linked as WFAA Report On How Much Salt Sucks - pssst... the link’s on the right side top of this page, under the heading Why Salt Is Eating Up Your Pool.<br /><br />Then they read the link right under that; The Science Behind Why Salt is Eating Up Your Pool’s Hardscape, which explains how crystallization expansion pressure damages your stone from within through a little thing called sub-florescence. Then they went and read up on the Santa Clarita, California Salt Pool Ban, and then finished up by clicking on the Current Posts icon and spending another 28 minutes reading, probably to the bottom of this page. That exposed them to the warnings from the manufacturers not to use Potassium Chloride in place of Sodium Chloride, about SR Smith’s efforts to create a hardier equipment line to stand up better to the ravages of chloride corrosion, AND the fact that every once in a while, salt cells go BOOM.<br /><br />Total Elapsed Time spent finding out WAY MORE than why they’re getting black stains in their pool; 50 minutes, 7 seconds. I hope I was of some help.<br /><br />Now, that visitor was from Florida. Which is funny, because there was a comment left a few posts back saying that all the corrosion I gripe about is just a Texas phenomenon. Seems we don’t know how to bond a pool here in Texas. Here’s an excerpt from those comments:<br /><br />“Your corrosion issues that you describe are also few and far between here [Florida] probably because we are one of the toughest states with California and Maryland (of all places) to build a pool from the standpoint of inspections and enforcement of proper building practices. Metal connections corrode when current flows over them. Current can't flow over them if the electrical potential is the same between them. There has to a difference in potential for current to flow. How do you know that of all the corrosion issues you have seen, all of them had intact bonding grids with properly made connections to the steel, in the light niches, to the handrails, etc. Salt doesn't create stray current in a pool, it magnifies the problem which is that you have stray current in the pool. As you may know, it provides a more conductive solution for it to move around in. But, in a pool that is PROPERLY bonded, and according to the principle of the Farraday cage, that current won't flow in the cage[,] only out to the ground.”<br /><br />And while those may sound like very well founded points grounded in firm logic and science, I'd like to contrast it with excerpts from an e-mail I received shortly after I started this blog last year;<br /><br />"I read your material with great interest and wish to encourage you to keep up the fight. I run a reasonably large pool company here in... Florida that has been building pools... for [lots and lots of] years. We started using salt systems about 15 years ago when they were in their infancy (we tend to be front runners on pool issues). We started with units like the [manufacturer's name withheld] and other arcane units. My initial position with the company was to run the service department. At that time, almost every pool we built (about 200 a year) had a salt system on it. My indoctrination was in the form of countless service calls for staining, 'shocking', and a host of other 'unrelated' issues. When I started here, I spent a year tracking the complaints, making voltage checks, resistance checks, breaking down different units into its components and so forth. What I found was exactly what I expected given the construction of this sytem in the form of a battery. What I could not understand was the industry manufacturers with their (what I understand now to be) scripted answers to my problems. As you say, it ranged from 'grounding issues', improper materials, low grade stainless, and on and on. Especially frustrating was that we all knew how long we had been in the business and that the only common denominator was the salt system. By the time I had amassed my data, based on the soil type and condition of an install, I was able to tell the manufacturer of the last generator we were using what the 'stray' voltage amount would be and how long before the stains and corrosion would appear. Like I said, we tried [every salt system on the market]. In the end, we decided that there was insufficient profit in pursuing what was clearly a damaging component. Over the years, we have dealt with all manner of product that has one or more detrimental effects on a pool. But not until these salt systems had we encountered a unit that deals a blow to the entire pool. I think the biggest single factor was the propensity to negatively effect the grounding system around the pool. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">The stray current in the system created an environment where the grounding lugs would corrode off and leave large portions of the pool disconnected and very prone to shocking our customers. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Emphasis mine]</span></span></span></span> Whether it was hand rails or coping sections, it made the whole pool experience less inviting."<br /><br />So that's pretty much in sharp friggin' contrast to what that first guy was saying. It's also in sharp contrast to what I learn by seeing who visits the blog and where they come from and what they want to know.<br /><br />And that’s the thing about reading my little Site Meter. I really get a sense of what problems people are having with their salt systems, instead of just burying my head in the sand and assuring myself that it can’t be happening and if it is happening then it’s God’s Will or Somebody Else’s Fault, like some people do.<br /><br />To give you an example, of the last one hundred people who visited this blog, here’s just a few samples of the Google searches that got them here:<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Travertine around pools with salt generator </span></span>(these folks are from Charlotte, North Carolina. So, we can add North Carolina to the list of places where they’re seeing problems with salt eroding travertine pavers and coping.)<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Using salt system pool water for irrigation</span></span> (this person ended up <a href="http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=66916">HERE</a>,which is an article I linked to about a proposed California rule to ban salt discharge into waste water. ALL salt discharge into ALL wastewater. Now they know that it’s not the best thing to irrigate with.)<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Seal flagstone salt pool </span></span>(this person lives in Mountain View, California. They followed the link, The Science Behind Why Salt Disintegrates Your Pool’s Hardscape. Now they know why they have flagstone issues. SOMETHING ELSE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO KNOW BEFORE THEY BOUGHT THEIR SALT SYSTEM...)<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Salt water pool damage grass</span></span> (this guest got here through Google Australia. Gosh, I thought that salt pool’s weren’t having any problems Down Under. Could that be just marketing hype? Because we’re always told that the Aussie’s ground water is so saline that they hardly notice the difference in their salt pools. Sorry, mate. Guess you missed that memo.)<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Flagstone and salt pool problems</span></span> (this visitor is from Souther California. Everybody always says the flagstone issues are only occurring in Arizona and Texas. Hmmm... Could everybody be wrong? Or just lying to prop up the sales of a failed technology?)<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Pool stray currents</span></span> (this visitor is from Hollywood, Florida. Oh, no! Another improperly bonded pool in Florida. This week...)<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Salt chlorinators and effects on brick coping</span></span> (these folks are from Leesburg, Florida. If you go to all the forums, they say that Florida’s not having any problems with salt and coping because they get lots of summer rains that flush all the salt out of the coping. I wonder why so many people from Florida and California - both Northern and Southern CA - keep looking for information about problems with salt pools when EVERYBODY KNOWS that they’re not having these problems? It’s only happening in AZ and TX. Right?)<br /><br />That’s 7 of the last hundred visitors. Google provides me with 17% of the traffic to this site. Thats only 17 of every hundred visitors. So, that means that 41% of the people who get here through Google are searching for answers to problems they’re having with salt chlorine generators, and they are from Maine to Florida, Southern California to Washington State, from Canada to Malaysia to Bahrain to Australia to Sweden... Pretty much all over the world.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />I remember last year I was talking to a reporter from one of the trade magazines about my little Site Meter and the insights it gave me. They were working on a story about salt damage to pool coping and decks, and they said, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Gosh, that's a story all by itself. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">They never did a story on it, though. In fact, most everyone's done everything they can to look the other way since then.</span></span></span></span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br />And that’s why I Do What I Do.<br /></span><br /><br /></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-88839374415107805342007-12-26T06:23:00.000-08:002008-01-29T07:13:05.395-08:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE</span></span><br /><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br />My New Year's Resolution is to reorganize the blog. I've started by adding a heading here titled Why Salt Is Eating Up Your Pool. I moved the YouTube clip from the news report here in Dallas about how salt is damaging pools here, and I have put in a link to a technical manual for the preservation of stone buildings and monuments that explains in terrific detail how salt invades and destroys the hardscape around your pool. They're not talking about your pool. They're talking about buildings and such. But limestone is limestone, whether it's used for a building, a sculpture or for pool coping. And as you read about crystallization damage in stone, you see that salt damage is salt damage, whether it's coming from the salt in ground water, ocean spray, or even the trace amounts in the humidity of the air that settles on stone, seeps in and does it's damage, or gets splashed out of your pool and onto the stone by your kids playing.<br /><br />I hope to expand that section to include more documentation about these processes of destruction, and even more importantly, what steps you can take to arrest the damage that the salt's doing to your pool hardscape. I'm looking hard at stone right now, so bear with me if the next few blog entries seem to be overly stone-centric. After that, I'll tackle the other issues, like galvanic and stray current corrosion, and environmental issues associated with using salt in your pool, and try to give each of those areas a heading and a group of linked reference material, as well.<br /><br />It just feels like I've done the smart-ass, shooting from the lip thing long enough. No matter how right I am about salt, no matter how cute and funny I say it, and no matter how many references I provide in the text of my rants to prove it, I think that because the references aren't grouped into easily accessible areas, what I say is more easily disputed by the Fast Buck Artists who still want to sell you salt. I'm hoping to make this blog more of a jumping off point for folks trying to prove to themselves that it's not worth trading soft water for tens of thousands of dollars of damage to their pool. Maybe putting the reference material in groups will help accomplish that.<br /><br />Funny thing... Speaking of smart-ass remarks. I just can't resist here. I only had eight visitors to the blog on Christmas Day. I was surprised that I had that many, being as it was Christmas and all. And one of those eight was a Salt Rep, signing on from his home IP address. It does my heart good to see that they can't even get through Christmas with the family without stopping to see what The Pool Guy is gonna say next about salt.<br /><br />Like Old Lodge Skins used to say, "My heart soars like a hawk".</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Happy Holidays.</span></div>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-73902152979788506582007-12-19T08:49:00.000-08:002009-03-11T15:25:14.312-07:00<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong></strong></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong></strong></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong></strong></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>THIS JUST IN: “SALT APPROVED” EQUIPMENT NOT WARRANTIED AGAINST SALT CORROSION. </strong></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>FILM AT 11…</strong></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Yeah, I knew it was too good to be true. I didn’t read the Fine Print. I pointed out in the last blog entry that SR Smith had developed a line of “Salt Friendly” equipment, and even come up with a snazzy SALT APPROVED logo. Then someone wrote to me and pointed out that if you dig a little further, like here: <br /><br />http://www.srsmith.com/warranty.php <br /><br />you’ll see that their warranty “specifically excludes… rust or corrosion of any metallic parts”.<br /><br />And it’s really tempting to take a shot here. I mean, I’m The Pool Guy! I’m supposed to point out when the Emperor Has No Clothes and be really funny and snarky about it.<br /><br />But I can’t, in good conscience, take that shot. First of all, they’re hardly the Muggers here. In fact, they’re the ones who Got Mugged. Then, when you roam around their website and look at all they’ve done to try to make the stuff they sell more salt resistant, it makes it even harder to take that Cheap & Easy Shot.<br /><br />If you ask me it’s a miracle that anybody in the ladder/rail/slide/diving board business is still in business after standing warranty these last five years on all this salt damage. If it had been me, I’d have Cried Uncle years ago, and either closed up shop or just come out and said, “no warranty on pools with chloride levels above 2500 ppm”, which pretty much means salt pools.<br /><br />But they didn’t. Instead, they did what they could to weather the salt storm while developing a product line that is at least an effort to make their stuff more salt resistant. THEN they threw up their hands and said, in effect, no more warranty on salt damage. They just left the word salt out of it, referring to it broadly as “rust or corrosion”.<br /><br />I don’t blame them one bit.<br /><br />There are other companies in that business who are still providing Unconditional Warranties against rust and corrosion, and I hope that keeps working for them. Truth is, I see them all as Victims of the Greed of the Big Three, who continue to flog the Dead Horse of Electrolyzed Salt Technology.<br /><br />And you may be saying to yourself, “But my (fill-in-the-blank-with-your-Favorite-Full-Line-Greedhead-Manufacturer) stood warranty on one of my customer’s (fill-in-the-blank-with-your-Most-Frequently-Ocurring-Salt-Damaged-Equipment; heater, cleaner, etc.) without any questions or problems, so what’s the big deal about these ladder and diving board guys stepping up and standing warranty on their stuff?”<br /><br />Well, just look behind the curtain and you’ll notice that the Full Line Manufacturer in question also sells a Salt System, and even if it’s not his Salt System hanging on the wall that caused all the damage, it’s a Salt System nonetheless, and it would be a hypocrisy that even a starry eyed Pool Guy who just thinks that the Sales & Tech Reps are the Coolest Guys On Earth (like I did when I was younger and more easily awestruck) would see through and point out that they ought not to try to Seek Shelter from The Rain that They Made.<br /><br />Moving On…<br /><br />I get Hate Mail. Imagine that. Hate Mail. If that’s too strong, then let’s at least call it Intense Dislike Mail. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know I’m a smart ass. And I’m a snarky S O B to boot. But if left to my own devices the only THING that I’m trashing is salt chlorine generators. Clearly, I take a dim view of the people who sell and defend that technology, as well. But, a lot of people write to me and, on their way to disagreeing with me, start in calling me names and casting aspersions on my integrity. Now, disagreement is at the heart of all healthy arguments. Name calling takes us to a different place; a place that I’m more than equipped to go. And so, when people’s rants drift into that arena, I admit I take particular delight in sniffing out their weaknesses and letting them know that I know what they are. That is usually when they stop writing to me.<br /><br />But the thing that gets me is this; except for one Salt Rep - who no one has really been able to figure out why he rants around the internet like he does - everybody I’ve crossed keyboards with in that way has been someone who works in the swimming pool service industry. My own Brothers, so to speak. And every time they write to me, you’d think by their tone that I’d been talking about their mother instead of talking about making chlorine through the process of electrolyzing a saline solution. It’s as if I’m attacking some knowledge that they hold sacred by contradicting what they’ve been taught by the industry about how great and trouble free - and obviously liability free - chlorination through salt systems is supposed to be.<br /><br />I can’t really explain their reaction. Even after all the evidence that’s piled up these last couple of years that proves beyond even a shadow of a doubt that Salt Systems are hard on swimming pools, they continue to hold onto these myths and outright falsehoods that they’ve been taught so they don’t have to feel guilty for having participated in screwing their customers by selling them a salt system. It’s like that circle of good old boys, sitting around the garage, drinking beer and farting and reassuring each other that, “Hey, salt’s great. Keep selling it… Here. Pull my finger again.”<br /><br />I’m reminded of something Baboosa wrote in the Comments Section of one of the blog entries back in November of last year: “There are a number of … ‘technical’ people making erroneous statements because they heard something from someone. Then they give a presentation in front of a group and repeat what they heard as though it was their own verified experience or fact. Then the people that went there to learn go away and disseminate this garbage to everyone they meet. So another great myth is born. That's just my experience... not some BS someone told me.”<br /><br />Which brings me to my point. In the latest installment of Hate Mail, a long time reader tells me that I strike him “as one of those guys who even though they know that they are wrong about [a] random topic, can't just say ‘got it, I made a mistake, I'll move on from it, and not do it again’”.<br /><br />Further down in his rant, after displaying a fair knowledge of pool bonding, he goes on to posit that we should all “just use Potassium chloride instead. Would that please you since it isn't salt[?] You can make chlorine just the same and it is a doctor recommended alternative for people who use water softeners and also have hypertension. I use it in my pool because I have no deck[,] just artificial rock with grass planted right up to the edge. I didn't need a manufacturer's rep to tell me that salt is no good for the grass when water splashes out. Jeez, I figured that out from Sunday school when I was a kid. It's been a while but aren't there references to salting the soil.[sic] Maybe not, who cares, it's common sense anyway.”<br /><br />Since I published his comments, it ends up making me feel responsible for someone who might read them and run off and pour potassium chloride in their pool. So I went off and looked up why we don’t use potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride.<br /><br />First, I turned to the folks who manufacture salt systems. I called their tech lines and said, “Hi. This is The Pool Guy and I was wondering… Hello?... Hello?...”. After that, I turned to their owner’s manuals. I have them all as PDF files, so I just searched for Potassium Chloride and Sodium Chloride, and this is what I found:<br /><br />The Ecomatic User’s Guide, page 16 says, “be sure to use sodium chloride and not potassium chloride”.<br /><br />The Jandy AquaPure manual, on page 18, paragraph 4.7.1 says, “Use sodium chloride only”.<br /><br />The Pentair IntelliChlor manual, page 13 says, “Use salt that is at least 99.8% pure NaCl”. Later in that paragraph, it also states, “Use sodium chloride only”.<br /><br />The Zodiac Clearwater LM2, LM3 & Duo Clear manuals all says, “Only 99.5% pure refined salt (sodium chloride) should be used with a [Clearwater or Duo Clear] chlorinator”.<br /><br />Even the Chlorine Factory R40B manual says, “Use clean, kiln dried 99.6% (or purer) coarse rock salt”.<br /><br />So, there’s that.<br /><br />It’s that spacing thing again. See? But anyway, that really didn’t explain why we shouldn’t use potassium instead of sodium chloride. So, I kept looking. I went to ScienceLab.com and read their Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for both. Under potential chronic health effects, it says of potassium chloride that the “substance may be toxic to blood, cardiovascular system. Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organs damage.” The same spot on the sodium chloride MSDS says, “Repeated or prolonged exposure is not known to aggravate medical condition”.<br /><br />So, there’s that, too.<br /><br />Then, there was the implication of his statement that somehow switching to potassium chloride, KCl, would alleviate all of our problems with masonry damage from salt, which is NaCl. Hmmm… Gee, golly… Gosh, how to explain here, er, uh… Salt is just a shorthand way of referring to NaCl, the most common of the “salts”, Potassium chloride is still “a salt”. And as far as lessening the damage to masonry, you can go <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Yh4xMVb7uOQC&pg=PA154&dq=POTASSIUM+CHLORIDE+STONE+DAMAGE&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=wEBuw3vGBs4Vnml5wSgZqrw7yjg">HERE</a> and look at Table 7.1, whose title is “<em>Salts that have been known to damage stone masonry and their sources</em>”. Potassium chloride is the seventh one listed there. Potassium carbonate, potassium sulphate and potassium nitrate also made the list, as well as four different sodium compounds.<br /><br />Now this reference here is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And the reason why is because it comes from Google Books. Google Books is putting everything it can, while respecting copyright laws, on line for us to read. Isn’t that great? Because now anyone with even a modicum of curiosity about something can look it up in authoritative texts like "Conservation of Building and Decorative Stone", by John Ashurst and Francis G. Dimes, instead of just eavesdropping on the finger pulling contest of “people making erroneous statements because they heard something from someone”, and then go “away and disseminate this garbage to everyone they meet”. That way, you won’t end up with a pool full of potassium chloride, a warranty voided by the manufacturer, and that God-I-am-so-Dumb look on your face.<br /><br />Now, I still don’t know specifically why the manufacturers don’t want you to use potassium chloride in your Salt Pool. Maybe because it would be harder to sell the idea of a Potassium Pool, seeing as how potassium chloride is also one of the key ingredients in the Lethal Injection cocktail that’s about to get banned by the Supreme Court. It just doesn’t have that soothing ring to it. Know what I mean?<br /><br />It MAY have something to do with its conductivity. PERHAPS it’s less conductive, which would make the cells work harder and wear out faster. I don’t know so I don’t want to state that as fact.<br /><br />I do know this; potassium chloride is $11.38 for a 40 lbs. bag at Lowe’s. Salt pellets and salt crystals range from $4.73 to $4.99, which is about a one hundred and forty percent upcharge to possibly void your warranty.<br /><br />And I know this, too: I’m sure the guy who wrote in recommending the use of potassium chloride will write to me and say, “got it, I made a mistake, I'll move on from it, and not do it again”.<br /><br />Now, just as important as making this guy feel small and stupid, I want to emphasize that reference book that I got from Google Books. Go back and read the text that follows that table we were looking at. It says pretty much everything I’ve ever said in this blog about how and why salts damage different stones. It talks about the wetting and drying cycle. It talks about the porosity of the different stones. It talks about the hygroscopic nature of salts, how they can go through the wetting and drying cycle and the subsequent re-crystallization cycle that does all the damage just from changes in humidity of the air around the stone. So, you see, that’s why we get the pattern of excessive and rapid deterioration in the splash zones, fading to more subtle but still present damage as we move away from those splash areas. In fact, I posted a picture a while back of some limestone coping directly ABOVE a sheer descent, and you could see an apron of wear on that stone that displays this phenomenon exactly, where the humidity of the air directly above the sheer descent is higher due to the ever-so-slight aeration of the water by the sheer descent. Here’s that photo again. You can click on it to enlarge it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9aqPAbUDOYG68kXgP4cEFjg-Mqn3GFh1QtJMKhjyoTxGVBy35u2ilzAgjxV4OdysyOs5BgM4P9izWj2b2V2RryVee8UwTcdsebsH3LWK9QIFOdzYu28zeuvGQRFeFUK5msCQ1/s1600-h/co-sheerdescent2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9aqPAbUDOYG68kXgP4cEFjg-Mqn3GFh1QtJMKhjyoTxGVBy35u2ilzAgjxV4OdysyOs5BgM4P9izWj2b2V2RryVee8UwTcdsebsH3LWK9QIFOdzYu28zeuvGQRFeFUK5msCQ1/s400/co-sheerdescent2.jpg" border="0" alt="Submitted by Park Cities Pools, a Dallas Pool Service & Pool Repair Company"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5145729373393251922" /></a><br /><br /><br />So, keep them cards and letters coming, folks. I promise I’ll answer them all. </span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-32963702941829413882007-12-03T11:42:00.000-08:002008-01-04T10:24:38.443-08:00<span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:180%;"><strong>Boom Goes The Dynamite, Part Trois</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It’s good to have this blog. It helps me stay centered. You see, I subscribe to the usual industry magazines, and every time I read one, I set it down feeling like I haven’t lived up to all I could have done to be successful in the pool business.<br /><br />Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not crying. I’m very happy with all that I have. It’s exactly what I always wanted; enough pools to keep me busy but not too busy and just enough money to let me and my wife enjoy our lives without pinching pennies. But we’ll never be rich - unless our investment portfolio in lottery tickets finally pays off.<br /><br />But when I read those magazines and see all those young, fresh scrubbed faces just tearing it up out there and getting promoted to this CEO position, or showcased as that Builder with Something Extra, I tend to kick at what I have and ask myself why my phone doesn’t ring with those kinds of offers.<br /><br />And then in a blinding flash it comes to me: It’s because you’re such an ass, Pool Guy. Hell, even your wife says so. I mean, let’s face it, with a blog like this and the attitude of belligerence and irreverence from which it was born, what did you expect?<br /><br />And then I grin and toss that industry magazine in the recycle bin and go back to being Critical Bill, in all the ways that Bill was Critical. (hint: Things to do in Denver when you’re Dead. Great movie. Dark and Brooding, yes, but Great, especially Bill.)<br /><br />Because the truth is, in twenty-five years of doing pools, there’s nothing I have enjoyed more than tweaking the nose of the Powers That Be by pointing out that the Emperor of Salt Has No Clothes.<br /><br />At first, I was nervous about it. I knew what I was seeing – ruined coping and decks, rusted diving boards and handrails, disintegrating heaters, odd discolorations in plaster – and everything I read and researched said it was salt and electrolysis and stray current corrosion and galvanic corrosion that was doing it. But every time I asked someone in the industry - some of those self same folks who get their pictures and bio’s in the industry magazines - they’d tell me I was crazy, or that I was seeing things, and they’d remind me of all that acid I did in the sixties, and… anyway. But I went ahead and posted everything I was seeing to this blog.<br /><br />And, boy, did I hit a chord. Turns out the Good Guys in this industry – and there are some. Not as many as I had hoped, but some pretty Heavy Hitters, whose hearts, it turns out, are in the right place, even if they are muzzled somewhat by their success – these Good Guys started writing to me and encouraging me to keep it up, to keep the bastard’s Feet to the Fire. So I did.<br /><br />I suppose that, after a fashion, it did get me into the trade magazines. Quoted as “an anonymous blogger”, the dust I kicked up and the pictures I sent in made grist for a few articles and got everybody talking a little more openly and honestly about the destruction of pools and decks and equipment by salt systems. But only after a fashion. Because for everybody who reached inside their jeans and rummaged around and found that they still had a pair and admitted that they were seeing the same problems I was seeing, there were legions of naysayers who called me a liar and a troublemaker and worse. Those were pretty much the salt manufacturers and their reps.<br /><br />Imagine that.<br /><br />And then there was that great, vast middle who said nothing. If you find yourself getting a little red in the face as you read that last line, then, yeah, I’m talking to you.<br /><br />You sat there and you said nothing. You watched pools fall apart. You watched people get hyped and pressured into buying those hunk of junk salt systems. You listened to those people rant and rave about how soft their water felt when you knew that their pools were going to fall apart in a year or two.<br /><br />And you said nothing.<br /><br />Now, I’m not talking to those of you who were actually selling these systems to your customers after the truth started coming out. You guys are just crooks. You’re what gives our business its well earned Rep. The sooner you all find a new hustle and move on and out of the Pool Biz, the better. But, of course you won’t. I mean, you all obfuscated for all this time about salt systems, hid the truth and kept selling and selling and made piles of money doing it, and then pretty much walked away from all the liability. As easy as that was, you’ll probably all sign up to sell ionizers next. And get away with that, too, I suspect.<br /><br />No, I’m talking to that vast middle right now. There’s an e-mail I got the other day that I want you to read:<br /><br /><em>“Pool Guy:<br /><br />Just got finished reading your blog postings concerning SWG’s and wow, you the man! We switched to a salt system two years ago and have noticed corrosion of our Texas flagstone over the last year. I keep seeing light pink dust/sandy particles and blamed my sons for NOT cleaning the pool good enough. The tile line is also flagstone, and it is gritty/dusty. Our pool is ten years old, and am getting estimates to resurface. Wanna know something interesting, more pathetic now that I have read your blogs, only one acknowledge a problem w/SWG and flagstone and suggested I seal it before replastering. Can’t guarantee the sealer though and I wonder why!<br />Others are clueless. I still have the normal chlorinator intact, so will make a switch FAST.<br /><br />So, Pool Guy, before I invest more $$ into this, can you advise me please on this remodel? I did not read anything on your blog about ‘what to do if you have corrosion’. Know any reputable pool renovators and pool service companies in the Houston area? Needless to say, I am frustrated with this whole issue and want to start from scratch. So for a $1500 salt water system, I am estimating am now going to have shell out close to $10,000 to renovate this 25,000 gallon pool! Maybe less if can get the flagstone back to normal. You are right, one born everyday; two years ago was my day, and don’t plan to have another one any time in the near future! </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><em><br />Thanks for your input and being so forthcoming. It was refreshing to read your articles.”</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><em><br /></em>And this is exactly what I’ve been talking about for the last fourteen months. Here’s a pool owner who bought into THE INDUSTRY HYPE just two short years ago and went with salt. Now, she’s seeing her stone deteriorate and when she asks The Remodel Contractors Who Are Supposed To Know About These Things, Especially Since We As An Industry Have Been Talking About It In Earnest For The Last Year, all but one of them say they haven’t heard anything about it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />But it’s really not that they haven’t heard about it. The truth is that everybody’s still afraid to say, “Yeah, whoever sold you that salt system ought to be on the hook for all this salt damaged stone. And hey, didn’t the Owner’s Manual or the Installation Instructions have any warnings about salt maybe not being compatible with certain types of stone? Well, maybe you should talk to your salt system manufacturer about their liability in all of this. Of course, you’ll want to take a shower after you get off the phone…”<br /><br />Now, if you turn about six pages into your most recent issue of Pool & Spa News, you’ll see that Deck O Seal, the name we’ve all known and trusted since we first started driving around with a pole sticking out of the back of our truck now has a product called Deck O Shield, and their ad asks, “Is your deck too salty for your taste?” Further down, they say, “protects against salt and stains by limiting salt penetration.”<br /><br />Then, on page 140, there’s a big ad from SR Smith introducing their salt friendly rails and slides and diving boards, with a really cool “Salt Pool Approved” logo. Go to </span><a href="http://www.saltfriendly.com/"><span style="font-family:arial;">www.saltfriendly.com</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> for more information.</span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />So, if a guy who’s Remodeling Pools For A Living – you know, Feeding His Family With The Proceeds Of His Work In The Pool Industry – if he took, say, thirty minutes a month to thumb through a magazine, then he would know what we’re talking about… Wouldn’t You Say?<br /><br />Otherwise, you’d just have to assume he knows about it and is such a gutless turd that he doesn’t want to “throw the other guy under the bus”, which as I’ve said before is the same as holding the door open for the bank robbers so that they’ll like you later.<br /><br />And this customer in Houston is stuck with thousands of dollars of stone damage because we, as an industry, didn’t know enough about what we were selling to warn her that this would happen, and since we’ve all admitted that, hell, yes, this is happening, nobody-I-mean-nobody is stepping up and doing the John Wayne thing and saying, “Hu-yeah, that’s our fault. We’ll make good on that for ya, little lady.”<br /><br />Multiply her damages times every pool with a salt system and any of the myriad items that it’s incompatible with and tell me how many million dollars this Industry Wide Black Eye is going to cost our customers.<br /><br />Just ask yourself, how many thousand copper heaters are failing in silence?<br /><br />So, how did we make the leap from rumblings out in the field about salt issues to a few articles about how bad salt was with certain types of stone to a shift in the industry where we openly sell products to prevent damage from salt and products guaranteed to be salt resistant? What happened to the Go Back And Clean Up The Mess We Made And Are Still Making On All Those Pools That Are Falling Apart Around Their Salt System?<br /><br />I mean, how do you advertise cupro nickel heat exchangers as being the answer to the problem of salt eating up copper heat exchangers and not at least send a one paragraph letter to folks with copper heaters and salt systems and warn them that their heaters are at risk?<br /><br />How do you talk about the benefits of cupro nickel, which implies the unsuitability of copper, and not at least put a note in your installation instructions not to install a salt system on copper plumbed pools?<br /><br />Seriously, I want to know. How does a guy who’s rep’ing for one of the larger full line companies stand at a showbooth and talk about salt resistant materials in his heater and then deny that those same materials are necessary when he turns around and tries to talk someone into backfitting all of his service pools with salt?<br /><br />Or, how, when more and more of The Entire World is concerned with the viability of our drinking water do you use the words “all natural and environmentally friendly” when you’re talking about adding a pollutant to water?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccl/ccl1.html">The EPA’s Drinking Water Candidate Contaminant List.</a></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Or, has anybody read the recent articles that now have a second federal agency, the FDA, gunning for salt?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_49/b4061072.htm?">Business Week's Take On It</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/business/13salt.html?_r=1&n=Top/News/Business/Companies/General%20Mills,%20Inc.&oref=slogin">The NY Times Take On It</a><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Or, how about the fact that salt systems still explode. Like this:<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1vtHE8geEZL6uMai3-zUtkiCDgGa7c1oBnCCAFMFnRH3pEx7DE9wRCwt-jYvYP05jD_HTBGZVEq6E2K8ZDgtqEdYhAI6GwpIBX_05sP1YZ2CWEEuUjZ3jmriW0N-A9BV9exxT/s1600-r/dsc02210.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139836937532227634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ClS7PPvVwgmqMqzy1KtIsNs5NSvKPCMJUkLBYfrbNxOW-ROzljeEkPfQUALHpXNByyFKUZnGYLzo6Yva0KjlSxgE8RJfaKM4ONXzLY-kg1QeOdVJvw0Rui6CioTwUKKq0XAq/s400/dsc02210.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />This is from a recent explosion in France. It’s documented on a <a href="http://www.eauplaisir.com/annuaire/forums/ftopic_piscine18294.html">POOL FORUM HERE</a><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Unless you speak French, you’ll need to cut and paste the text <a href="http://www.google.com/translate_t">HERE (Google Translate)</a> to get an approximate translation. What I find just hilarious in this whole thread about the exploding chlorinator is that everybody in the thread seems quite content because the E Bay seller stood good on the warranty for a new salt cell. Think about it. These folks probably had a hydrogen gas explosion in their back yard, scattering shards of plastic everywhere, like shrapnel from a grenade, and everybody’s happy because they have a new salt cell for free that, hopefully, won’t blow up like the last one.<br /><br />Huh?<br /><br />But the funniest part of these last fourteen months to me, and what should be the most instructive to you, is that nobody’s ever done anything to try to make me Cease and Desist. And while I blog anonymously as The Pool Guy, it’s pretty much an open secret who I am to those who took the time to find out. And yet, nothing earth shattering has happened to me. And believe it or not, none of my customers have held it against me for telling them the truth. Which is exactly why no one’s done anything to stop me; because I’m not lying<br /><br />So, the next time you’re faced with some new bullshit gadget that Our Industry wants you to ram down the throats of your customers, Just Say No.<br /><br />Then go blog about it.<br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span></p>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-12570710782451772542007-10-28T09:36:00.000-07:002008-01-04T10:25:09.279-08:00<span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">The Tower Of Google<br /></span></strong><br /><br />I got this Site Meter. It tells me how many people come to the blog each day. It tells me how long they stay. It tells me how many pages they view, and how long they view those pages. It’s a neat little gadget, and if I was a really savvy internet whiz, I’d figure some way to crunch all those numbers and squeeze some bucks out of it. Or, if I worked for the government, I’d figure out how to use the info to better surveil you.<br /><br />Pretty much, all I use it for is to see how many people read the blog this week and to see where they’re from. Where they’re from in broad, general terms, mind you. It doesn’t tell me much beyond what city someone is from. And actually, not even that. It tells me what city their internet provider is from. But that’s usually pretty close to home, so I get a good idea of where most of the hits are coming from.<br /><br />Like I said, it’s a neat gadget, and I like fiddling with it. One thing I really hate about it, though, is that if a visitor never clicks off the main page to any other pages in my blog, it records their visit length as 0:00. In other words, it doesn’t start counting the time of your visit until you look at something besides the main page. So, I never know if a 0:00 visit was someone who just opened and closed the page, or someone who sat and read all the way down to the bottom of the displayed blog, which right now goes all the way back to the first part of August. That part is frustrating.<br /><br />The one thing I love about the Site Meter is that same Visit Length column. Especially when I open up the Recent Visits by Visit Details and see that of the twenty most recent visits, four or five people spent anywhere from ten to thirty minutes reading my blog. I gotta confess, that feels good. That makes it all worthwhile. That makes every Sunday morning with my wife standing over my shoulder stamping her foot and waiting for me to take her to brunch while I polish just one more sentence before clicking Publish New Entry worth the risk of enduring the Wrath of Khan over omelets and coffee. I do, of curse, smell the coffee before drinking it. Arsenic smells like garlic, right?<br /><br />I tend to dwell on those Visit Details where someone spent so much time reading my blog. Like, I want to know, did they really spend all that time reading my blog, or did they just open the window and then get distracted and end up mowing the lawn or something. And I can tell by the Visitor Path whether they did or not. Like if they spent 32 minutes & 33 seconds at the blog (1,953 seconds) and they spent all 1,953 of them on one of the pictures they clicked on, then I pretty much know they got distracted and didn’t really read much. Maybe his wife was stamping her foot, too.<br /><br />But if the Visitor Path shows that they spent 1224 seconds on one page and 535 on another and 194 on another and then exited to one of the links on the Honor Roll, then I know that they really did read my stuff.<br /><br />And that makes it all worthwhile.<br /><br />For example, of the last twenty visits, 6 people made it off the main page, and those six people spent a total of 75 minutes and 45 seconds reading the blog. That’s like 12 and a half minutes each. You know, I have subscriptions to pool industry magazines that I read in less than 12 and a half minutes each month.<br /><br />In the last 40 visits, one visitor spent an hour and 14 minutes and 14 seconds and viewed 33 pages of my blog. Seeing things like that make what I do here worth every minute that I spend doing it.<br /><br />So, where do all these people come from, anyway? What surprises me is that 76% of you don’t come from search engines. You got here through word of mouth or you’re a regular. And even of the 24% of you who got here from a search engine, the biggest chunk of you Googlers were Googling The Pool Guy, or The Pool Biz, or The Pool Guy Blog, or something like that. So, still, word of mouth.<br /><br />Of the 20% of you who were looking for something else – most probably information about salt systems – the next most frequent search term was Lectronator. So, I’m glad I could help you there. After that, it’s Swimpure, then Intex, then Goldline, Aquarite, Zodiac, in that order. Then the search terms start being more specific to problems, like; Stone Coping Salt Damage, or Travertine Coping Salt, or Stray Current In Salt Pool. Then there’s my absolute favorite: Why Does My Salt Swimming Pool Shock Me When I Touch the Handrail? I think it’s neat that people ask Google questions in complete sentences, like it was some kind of Oracle or something.<br /><br />The things that you folks are searching for has been the biggest indicator that what I’m doing here has value. I mean, when I see that there’s lots of folks looking for information about why their limestone or travertine coping and deck is dissolving under their feet, then I know I’m on the right track by shining a light on a pretty sleazy corner of our industry. Even still, when you go to any of the manufacturer’s websites, you won’t find a single word about the problems that people are encountering with salt systems. It’s left up to people like me to try to get the information out there. Because if you take a hard look at it, the pool industry has been horribly lax in self governing the problems with salt systems out of existence. Everybody’s afraid of stepping on the other guy’s toes. Afraid of making an enemy. To me, it’s sort of like holding the door for the bank robbers when they’re fleeing the scene because you want them to like you later.<br /><br />But hey, I’m a Pessimist, right? And all of my rants are just a bunch of Hyperbole. Isn’t that what a lot of you say? And the Glass is really Half Full and Not Half Empty like I always say. Right? Sure, there’s some truth to what The Pool Guy says, but it’s really not as bad as all that. Right? I mean, these Salt Guys, they didn’t screw the Pool Owning Public on purpose. If Only They Had Known… Right?<br /><br />Okay, fine. Then Get a Load of This:<br /><br /></span><a href="http://bodyfatindex.org/2007/10/25/straight-talk-about-safe-swimming-pools/"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://bodyfatindex.org/2007/10/25/straight-talk-about-safe-swimming-pools/</span></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><em>“Straight Talk About Safe Swimming Pools</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><em>As a fund diligence expert of some existence I am constantly amazed at the misinformation and outright fraud perpetrated by inventors, manufacturers and cheat artists on fund owners. tidy fund water is an absolute requisite for any fund and promoting pseudo-smurder under the outfit of shelter or ecological concerns is no pretext for bad and potentially damaging information.”</em><br /><br />That came off a Google Blog Alert for “Chlorine Generator”<br /><br />You see, the term chlorine generator is buried further down in this gobble-de-goop of text, so that it pops up on a Google Blog Alert Search, thereby diluting the effectiveness of being able to set an Alert and keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s being said about Chlorine Generators, whether you’re a Hyperbolist like me, or a Consumer looking for the opinion of other’s before making a purchasing decision, or a Salt Pool Owner looking for help with any of the myriad problems that come along with owning one of these Albatrosses.<br /><br /> Oh? You think this is just more hyperbole?<br /><br />Then Go Here to this Google Blog Search Results for Chlorine Generator:<br /><br /></span><a href="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&tab=wb&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=chlorine+generator&btnG=Search+Blogs"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&tab=wb&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=chlorine+generator&btnG=Search+Blogs</span></a><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Look at all of those pages and pages of bogus returns. Read the excerpted text:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><em>“... generator briggs and stratton stand by generator gnerator spa king ozone generator baldor generators stepped-tone generator <strong>salt chlorine generator</strong> swimming pool list old wartsila generator sets d&d name generator military generator …”</em><br /><br /><em>“…<strong>Aqua Rite® Chlorine Generator</strong> - <strong>Cheap Pool Products chlorine generator</strong>,<strong>pool chlorine generator,electronic chlorine generator,swimming pool chlorinator,aquarite chlorine … Also check out the Aqua Logic ®</strong> … Click for Installation Manual. ...”</em><br /><br /><em>“…There it breathes a lot of knowledge on <strong>Haywards Aquarite Electronic Pool Chlorine Generator</strong> in the large resource. This is a homepage with synthetic link on raw exposure gas. If you next change from <strong>Haywards Aquarite Electronic Pool</strong> ...”</em><br /><br /><em>“... parts <strong>intex chlorinator intex chlorine intex chlorine generator intex chlorine generator and filter pump combo intex chlorine generator chlorinator intex chlorine generator</strong> information <strong>intex chlorine generator stltwaterpool system</strong> ...”</em><br /><br />When you click on any of those blogs, you find that Google has locked them up for violations of the Terms of Service, as well they should. But the Search Engine is still affected. They still show up in the Search Results and dilute your effort to get at The Truth.<br /><br />But then, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? This, ladies and gentlemen, is The Other Side of The Argument. They couldn’t dispute what people like me were saying, so they just started throwing crap on the walls, seeing what the Search Engines will let stick.<br /><br />They’ve even found a way to get around the blogs being locked up for the violation of the Terms of Service. If you scroll to page 7 of those Blog Search Results, you’ll see this:<br /><br />By: atlantis chlorine generator<br />Nice site. Thanks. Chlorine generator handbook.<br />Patrick.net comments – </span><a href="http://patrick.net/wp"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://patrick.net/wp</span></a><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What they did there was to go out and find blogs with unrestricted Comments Sections and place a little “chlorine generator” flag. You see, that way the WordBots will still tag this entry as applicable to any searches for chlorine generators, even though Patrick.net is a guy’s blog, a guy who rails against many of the injustices of the world, one of which is that most advertising is spam.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />It makes you wonder who pays for all that. Doesn’t it? I mean, the flow of all this garbage into the Blogosphere has to be coming from someone, or some group of someone’s, for some reason. There must be a buck in it somehow. It would be interesting to know whose buck it was in the beginning.<br /><br />Could it have been yours? You know, from the bank robbery… I mean, from the purchase of your salt system.<br /><br />Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that salt manufacturers are the only people scummy enough to have sunk this low as to flood the internet with false information to hide their misdeeds. This is probably just the Tip of the Iceberg. Which reminds me. I have to get another expression for that because soon enough people will respond by asking, “What’s an Iceberg?” But the Good News is that when all the Icebergs are Gone, the Glass won’t be Half Empty anymore. It will be Overfilled.<br /><br />It sure would be nice, though, to know who’s destroying your ability to find The Truth and replacing Google with another Tower of Babble.</span><br /></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-31119118210182404742007-10-06T12:20:00.000-07:002008-01-29T07:17:53.755-08:00<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:180%;"><strong>There Is No Free Lunch</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I received an e-mail this week. I thought I would share it and my response with you. I changed his name for reasons of privacy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><p><br /><em>You seem extremely knowledgeable and have extensive experience with pools. I’m building a pool here in Austin (bad soils – I’m nuts!) and I’d like to talk to you for 5 minutes if you could please make the time. I’ve narrowed my selection to two bids. One with Salt Water and one with Ozone (Delzone) and chlorine. I’d like to discuss your experience with salt water and get some feedback on Sand Versus Cartridge filters. I have a lot of trees in my yard and I’ll be hammered with leaves and debris. I love the idea of cartridge but everyone says I need DE or sand. Thoughts…</em></p><p><em>FYI: I’ve owned a pool before, I hate DE, I love the salt water concept but I keep hearing the horror stories, the salt water guy has installed 30+ salt water pools and swears that by selecting the right materials (no limestone) and properly sealing those materials I should be fine (His customers love him – hard to argue) and I have no idea which filter I should choose. I think I love Jandy but I’m not sure. I’ve owned a Polaris but this Hayward Phantom looks interesting. Is it any good? Trying to decide the Jandy PDA is worth the expense…</em></p><p><em>Sorry to ramble but I’ve spent the past 6 hours researching pool stuff and I’m about to have a brain freeze. I found it interesting that your blog had more data than any of the previous 50+ sites I visited before I reached yours. NICE! At the end of the day, NO ONE knows more about stuff than the people who service and maintain that stuff.</em></p><p><em>Lastly I’d like to get some feedback on what you think about the expansive soils in Dallas. I’m building in the same crappy Del Rio clay that you guys suffer in North and Central Dallas. Do you have any advice? Pray…</em></p><p><em>Would you be open to a quick phone call?</em></p><p><em>Thanks in advance for ANY and ALL help!!!!!!!! Your website alone is a great service!!!!</em></p><p><br /><em>John from Austin!<br /></em></p><p><br />John,</p><p>Thanks for the Kudos. I like you already. Your e-mail touched on so many of my favorite subjects, I couldn’t wait to sit down and write back to you.</p><p>First and foremost, I’d like to point out that a guy who’s installed “30+” salt pools isn’t a guy who’s installed A LOT of salt pools. Granted, one is too many, but with the average custom builder building anywhere from 30 to 150 pools a year and still being able to work out of his home – if he prefers – and given that salt’s been selling like hotcakes for the last five or so years, then this guy’s only selling about six salt pools a year, or he’s only been building pools for a couple of years. Neither situation is a rousing endorsement for salt. Either he’s not really seeing enough salt pools (six a year) for his phone to be ringing off the hook with disgruntled customers complaining about their pool deterioration issues in the harsh salt environment, or if it’s the latter and he’s only been out there on his own for a few years, then it hasn’t been long enough for his customers to be calling with the salt related complaints that start about midway through year two. You see, he’s avoiding the use of limestone and he probably learned not to sell diving boards with his salt pools, so the complaints typical of the first six months to a year aren’t happening to him. You need to factor in, too, that those customers he’s introduced you to who “just love him” may not represent 100% of his customer base. I know of builders who pay people to call their customers, pretending to be a prospective client, to hear what kind of referrals his customers give. The Good Ones go on the Referral List. The Not So Good Ones never see the light of day. It is, after all, Sales & Marketing.</p><p>But the point about the salt is that it will eventually damage all stone and concrete. Sooner or later. It’s just science. Higher chloride levels in the water result in supersaturation of the stone or cementious material and eventually the re-crystallization of the salt inside the stone will cause accelerated deterioration. People who argue that that’s not true are just Fast Buck Artists who want to ignore science so they can screw you out of the money you’re going to spend on their salt system. You can get into the loop of sealing and resealing your stone and concrete to try to prevent this from occurring, but why spend that money?</p><p>You also have all the metals to think about. Every metal in your pool that touches the electrolyte that you’ve turned your pool water into will deteriorate faster than it would if the salt weren’t present. Once again, it’s just science. To argue otherwise is just to argue for the sake of making a sale. Your heater, the metal parts of your auto cleaner – which should be a Polaris, by the way. The only thing intriguing about the Phantom is that there are still people who buy it - are all going to deteriorate on a much faster track than if your water had much, much lower choride levels (i.e., no salt). Period. It’s not a topic that needs further discussion. It Is Simply The Way Things Are.</p><p>You see, what you have to do is take a step back from the whole situation and take another perspective. And here is that perspective that’s vitally important that you see. About five or so years ago, the Manufacturer Reps came to the builders and told them, “I’ve got a New Gadget for your Sales Wheel. It’s going to put anywhere from $500 to an extra $1,000 in your pocket – that’s net, mind you, on the $1,500 to $2,000 Salt System sale – on every pool you build. And that’s going to boost your annual sales with us and you’re going to get even more money back at the end of the year because you spent an extra $1,000 with us on each pool you built. You’re going to love it.”</p><p>And they did, until the complaints started rolling in. So, now, they’re backing away from salt because they’re tired of paying for all that stone and concrete work. But they got used to that extra spot on the Sales Wheel, and without Salt, it’s empty. So, up jumps Ozone to fill the void. Why? Because the builders got used to the extra $1,000 a pool. If a guy’s doing a hundred pools a year, that’s a lot of profit to just walk away from.</p><p>So now, everybody’s selling Ozone. One little problem. In the Friday, September 28th issue of the Los Angeles Times, Section B, page B1, there was this little headline that read, “State bans home Ozone air purifiers”. The first paragraph of the article says, “The California Air Resources Board on Thursday banned popular in-home ozone air-purifiers, saying studies have found that they can worsen conditions such as asthma that marketers claim they help to prevent.”</p><p>Now, when I read that, it occurred to me how many times I’ve had my breath taken away when I popped the lid off a portable spa that was on and filtering and had an ozone generator – usually a UV ozonator. I had always attributed it to the chlorine or bromine. But California’s action here in dealing a blow to the Air Purifier industry makes me wonder if Ozonators for pools and especially for spas isn’t going to be next. I bring this up to point out that if you’re building a pool/spa combo, you’re going to be sitting in your spa with the ozonator running at max output, breathing the ozone (O3) that bubbles to the surface of the water. Don’t get me wrong; ozone is a great sanitizer. It is also an air pollutant. With the in-home air purifiers that California is banning, there “are reports of ozone being generated in someone’s living room… at levels equivalent to having a stage one smog alert right in your own house” (from the LA Times article) How is the ozone that bubbles up and is concentrated at the surface of your spa any different?</p><p>Google ozone and asthma and see how many and what quality of hits you get.</p><p>Like this: </span></p><a href="http://www.epa.gov/03healthtraining/effects.html"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.epa.gov/03healthtraining/effects.html</span></a><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Or this: </span><a href="http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/asthma/AN00443"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/asthma/AN00443</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, those links represent the EPA and the Mayo Clinic, who both say that ozone exacerbates asthma, but I’m sure your pool builder will tell you “don’t worry, I’m sure they’re wrong”. That’s what they said about salt.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The bottom line is they were just looking for something to plug into the sales wheel where salt used to be, and ozone was standing there looking harmless and without any of the damaging structural side effects of salt, and so they’ve started selling it. They would no more take five minutes to Google any potential health risks associated with ozone exposure than they would fly to the moon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">So, once you’ve ungadgetized their bids, what you have left is running your pool on chlorine. Which will be just fine. We’ve been doing it for centuries. And granted, even chlorine comes with baggage. Google trihalomethanes and read up on their now proven link to cancer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Like this: </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trihalomethane"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trihalomethane</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Read the definition and then click on “3 Water Pollutants” in the Contents box.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><p><br />Moving On… You should love DE. It’s the best filter media. But if you’re not willing to give DE another shot, then go with the cartridge filter. Get a big one, over 500 square feet. You’ll be cleaning it less often. And the cartridges are probably down around 20 microns, although they claim that they’ll filter down to 10 microns. For comparison, a DE is as low as 5 microns when properly coated. A sand filter is a waste of money. A properly laid sand bed is about a 30 to 50 micron filter. Algae particles can be a lot smaller than that and blow right through a sand filter.</p><p>Another problem with sand; to keep up with summer water temps and debris here in Texas, you pretty much have to run a sand filter 24 hours a day. Cartridges and DE, about half that much time or even less. That's at least a 50% energy savings on running that filter pump, which if it's a single speed, high horsepower pump to filter the water AND run those spa jets, is probably costing you about $120.00 a month with DE or cartridge filters. Double that for sand. Every month. Forever. If you bring this up with your builder, he'll take that opportunity to sell you on the new variable speed pumps that are out. They're brand new. The only thing I know after twenty-five years in the Pool Biz is; Never Be The Guinea Pig. You buy it, you own it, whether it works out or not. </p><p>All of the current crop of cartridge filters have their drawbacks. Jandy is famous for cracked manifolds and flaky, special order – read expensive - air relief assemblies. Lots of Haywards blow through the little equalization screen attached to the manifold and blow debris back into the pool. And you need to wear long sleeves when dealing with a Pentair tank after the first couple of years. It seems to decompose a bit and flake off fiberglass – or whatever it is – all over you. And their drain plugs tend to crack and weep, too.</p><p>I don’t know a lot about the Jandy PDA’s. I like wireless better than wired, but I don’t see the installation savings in not having to wire all the way from the equipment pad to the house and to the spa side being passed on to the homeowner. They just tend to charge more for the wireless systems, which honestly cost more, but they make even more with the reduced installation costs.</p><p>As far as the soil… Just try to keep the ground around your pool irrigated so that it doesn’t have a chance to dry out and contract away from the structure. Water more often during droughts and less often when it rains, and choose a builder who guarantees his structure against leaking for as long as you own the pool. That’s pretty standard stuff.</p><p>As far as the Horns, most of my friends are Horns fans, so I’m happy to see them happy when the Horns win. But me, I'm an NFL guy. A Raider Fan lost in Cowboy Country. It's a vile habit I picked up when I lived Out West, harder to kick than black tar heroin, but RIGHT NOW and until the end of the day Sunday, the Raiders are in first place in their Division, which is so NOT what all the experts predicted just a few short weeks ago, now is it? If you remember, it was supposed to be the Chargers. Objectively speaking, the Chargers had a good team and they had Marty Schottenheimer, who has very few shortcomings and was getting them closer and closer. But they fired him and hired Norv Turner, who is 59 and 85 as a head coach. He's had four winning seasons in his 9 going on 10 years of coaching, and 3 of those 4 were nothing more than one or two games above .500 ball. His worst seasons have been split equally among the Redskins and the Raiders, posting records like 3 & 13 and 4 & 12. And the guy the Chargers fired, Marty, was 14 & 2 last year with a 200 & 126 lifetime coaching record. Hell, even Art Shell has a better record than Norv Turner (56 & 52).God-That-Was-Such-A-Stupid-Move-I-Cant-Believe-It...<br /><br />But what’s that got to do with pools, huh? Last but not least, if after all my heartfelt advise to STAY AWAY FROM SALT, you choose it anyway, make sure you bank every penny you’re supposedly saving on chlorine, because three years of running your pump like you’re going to run it to keep up with all those leaves and debris, you’re going to be popping for a new Salt Cell, which can cost as much as $600.</p><p>Because no matter what They say, There Is No Free Lunch.</p><p>Good Luck With Your Pool.<br /></span></p>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-73939340802481199292007-09-09T08:10:00.000-07:002008-01-29T07:21:06.053-08:00<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>The Tide Has Turned</strong></span></span><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"></p></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I was in two backyards these last few weeks, bidding weekly cleaning service for brand new pools, and in both instances the owners asked me whatever happened to salt systems? Said they were surprised when they found out that the builders they got bids from weren’t offering it any more, and when they asked around the office, they were surprised to find that they had tapped into a real vein of anger from folks they knew who had salt systems and last year were talking about how great they were and this year were beginning to suffer the consequences that are normal with a salt pool a couple of years down the road. They felt lucky they had dodged the bullet and wanted to know what I thought of salt.<br /><br />Try to guess what I told them.<br /><br />Then, I ran into another relatively new pool owner – her pool is four months old. I was there to bid weekly cleaning service because she was ready to fire her present pool service company. The reason she was upset is that she’d watched her beautiful dark green plaster turn to chalky white all across the bottom of her pool in the four months since startup. The pool service company owner is telling her that’s “normal mottling”. I call it scaling. She showed me one of the cards they left after the last cleaning service. It detailed what they’d done to clean the pool, the water conditions they’d observed and the chemicals they’d used to balance the pool. Right there on the card, it said that the pH was 7.8, and that they’d added 3 lbs. of cal hypo to shock her pool. They added no acid to balance the pH or counteract the effect of 3 lbs. of 11.8 pH cal hypo. Do that every other week for four months on a salt pool with new plaster and tell me what you get.<br /><br />There was a symmetry to her initial selection of the pool service company that she was about to fire. They came recommended by the pool builder. Now, this builder sold her about 110 feet of beautiful travertine coping, a diving board with a metal stand, and a salt system to go with all that. And, before you ask; no, he’s not retarded. The proof is he didn’t sell her a stainless steel filter tank. But that’s the only proof I could find.<br /><br />The oddest thing is this builder recently went out on his own after many years as a project manager for a very large area builder. That very large area builder had even stopped selling salt for awhile, and only went back to selling it on those jobs where they couldn’t talk the customer out of it and only after the customer signed a damage waiver. So, it’s not like this guys could have missed the memo.<br /><br />The diving board stand has been replaced once already. The second one is already beginning to rust. The travertine coping around the spa is already starting to pit from the bubbler water feature in the center of the spa creating the standard circular splash zone around the edges.<br /><br />What’s happened to that pool is a travesty. I gave her the number of a pool inspector I know and told her she needs to get a written report with photos of the damage thus far. I hate to rat out fellow Pool Guys, but when their answer to the problem of rapid scaling is that its “normal mottling”, and the diving board issue will go away once the one year warranty expires (the workman they sent to replace the stand actually said that to the customer), and the travertine will get through the same warranty period before it really starts to resemble the surface of the moon… well, they need to be ratted out. And maybe when they’ve had to pay for new coping and at least an acid wash on a few pools, they’ll stop listening to the sales hype and start considering what even the salt system manufacturers are reluctantly admitting; that you need to THINK before you install a salt system about the environment you’re placing it in. All materials are NOT compatible with salt. Further, you need to QUESTION whether you’re going to have personnel sufficiently trained in water chemistry to maintain these pools without turning the pools into basket cases in four months.<br /><br />Oh, and last but not least, they put a DE filter on this pool, which made it nearly as environmentally unfriendly as possible, since they’ll be backwashing 3500 ppm brackish water into the sewer system, as required by code. The only way it could have been any more environmentally unfriendly is if they’d put a sand filter on it. Then, you’d be backwashing nearly every week instead of every six to eight weeks.<br /><br />But the moral of this story is that The Tide Has Turned. Two years ago, chances are all three of those brand new pools would have been salt pools. Last year, probably two of them would have been. Now, we’re down to one in three, and four months in, the one is already crying Uncle on salt.<br /><br />And the underlying moral of this story is that the Salt Manufacturers and the Salt Reps have done this to themselves. Their irresponsible introduction of these systems without any guidelines or restrictions, their lack of support for their dealers and their builders when the problems started to surface, their now transparent efforts to delay and obfuscate when it all started going south, and their lack of accountability for the damages their ill-introduced gadget has caused is YET ANOTHER Black Eye for an industry sorely in need of a moral compass to begin with. I mean, it’s hard enough to lace up my flip flops and go into backyards and say, “Yes, I know there’s better than a 90% chance that you’ve had a bad experience with somebody in the pool business… but trust me.”<br /><br />It’s like the old joke, “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help.” That’s it. That’s the joke.<br /><br />Of course, the Salt Guy’s Spinmeisters will blame the demise of salt on Guys Like Me. They’ll accuse us of being the Nattering Nabobs of Negatism that destroyed a Great, Yet Sadly Misunderstood Product. You know, Spiro Agnew was the first to use the Nattering Nabobs line, and he repeated it often, until we trundled him out of Washington and banished him to some nameless golf course in Maryland for taking cash bribes across his desk in the office of The Vice President of the United States.<br /><br />But the truth is that it’s hardly Guys Like Me who did it. Salt did it. The damage finally arrived. The Bill finally came and it was marked Past Due. I mean, it is such a stretch to think that this blog did anything more than report a phenomena as it grew and then collapsed. To date, I’ve had a total of 13,000 visitors in nearly a year. And about 12,000 of those were probably PoolSean. So, let’s face it; real world experiences and word of mouth are what killed the Goose that Laid those Golden – albeit Salty – Eggs.<br /><br />And That’s That.<br /></span></span></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34083187.post-2583558928995772592007-08-26T07:53:00.000-07:002008-01-04T10:32:46.050-08:00<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>This Is Your Polaris Pool Cleaner On Salt</strong> </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><br /></span><br />I got an e-mail another Pool Guy the other day. He said, “Hey Pool Guy. What’s the story? You haven’t bashed salt in over two weeks. But my salt pools are still falling apart at warp speed. Case in point:” and he attached a zip file with these photos in it.<br /><br />This first one shows the remains of the brass inserts that are pressed into the plastic frame of the Polaris 280 so that you can mount your axles onto the frame via stainless steel screws.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLH5nHHC5rS_-mqSMz7nxeJh6INVsffkuQfU8BT5usogx3uJ3im3sK6DGNld3KVZBYVyEtvueDss4xwym-SP2ypBPTg5HL7_BFwd57A2aYPJhdyAENnPTmmvpE1sATOsxv_sBG/s1600-h/Inserts.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103024381143653074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLH5nHHC5rS_-mqSMz7nxeJh6INVsffkuQfU8BT5usogx3uJ3im3sK6DGNld3KVZBYVyEtvueDss4xwym-SP2ypBPTg5HL7_BFwd57A2aYPJhdyAENnPTmmvpE1sATOsxv_sBG/s400/Inserts.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />The next one shows the Polaris cleaner frame that these brass inserts pulled out of.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhowwhOv6dUbeYEopP5vHZs8zX-xrSjet534QCd3YVKV_FVEo_4GhvBxPsvFCGZZNsiIALFzpjHWfGkA1YUsm57h84eOcSO3m3BulOZbzwGjCwoChBpDuCSMkEapbo9Z6A2U96/s1600-h/frame+axle.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103024741920905954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhowwhOv6dUbeYEopP5vHZs8zX-xrSjet534QCd3YVKV_FVEo_4GhvBxPsvFCGZZNsiIALFzpjHWfGkA1YUsm57h84eOcSO3m3BulOZbzwGjCwoChBpDuCSMkEapbo9Z6A2U96/s400/frame+axle.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />This next one shows what one of the axle frame mounts that hadn’t corroded away yet looks like for contrast.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4E8BJxu1dfL79RFVmJX_y1XJEnDcnc4puMnxHLbTI9cjhWoLdrka4-ylsWXottGwC6W8-JovbX5YNuHjwTSNYS34wDJxdNg4xigyy4orgVu2rtklzP-PB9PlndYaUQRtB1IK/s1600-h/frame+axle+good.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103025072633387762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4E8BJxu1dfL79RFVmJX_y1XJEnDcnc4puMnxHLbTI9cjhWoLdrka4-ylsWXottGwC6W8-JovbX5YNuHjwTSNYS34wDJxdNg4xigyy4orgVu2rtklzP-PB9PlndYaUQRtB1IK/s400/frame+axle+good.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />You can see on the first picture that there are remnants of the brass inserts remaining in the holes, and it’s depth matches right up with what you’re seeing on what’s left of those brass inserts in the first picture.<br /><br />This photo here shows what I think is most interesting. It’s the picture of the two screws and the frame to axle reinforcement plate.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlUQwFcQTPvNAr28ViPHDvO8-bJEJx1qf_MJqITI1vzgBxJv38UAKCXFKE2-dmH-ug9rg6bmiMWSmqVDtvAmX9hr0ZNS2DKTvk9cK9gxyXkQ-08OrPMj8cnxiJ9pmAlsbh9sg/s1600-h/screws+2.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103025433410640658" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOlUQwFcQTPvNAr28ViPHDvO8-bJEJx1qf_MJqITI1vzgBxJv38UAKCXFKE2-dmH-ug9rg6bmiMWSmqVDtvAmX9hr0ZNS2DKTvk9cK9gxyXkQ-08OrPMj8cnxiJ9pmAlsbh9sg/s400/screws+2.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Take a close look at the screw on the left. See how the threads appear to have a brass colored look to them? That’s because they’re coated with brass. Not in that cross-thread, softer metal looses sort of way. In that four years of Galvanic Corrosion sucking off brass electrons and plating the stainless steel with them sort of way. Because this is The Textbook Example of Galvanic Corrosion.<br /><br />Here’s what Dr. Stephen C. Dexter, Professor of Applied Science and Marine Biology said in an article from the University Delaware Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service <a href="http://www.ocean.udel.edu/seagrant/publications/corrosion.html">MAS NOTES</a>:<br /><br />“Galvanic corrosion, often misnamed ‘electrolysis,’ is one common form of corrosion in marine environments. It occurs when two (or more) dissimilar metals are brought into electrical contact under water. When a galvanic couple forms, one of the metals in the couple becomes the anode and corrodes faster than it would all by itself, while the other becomes the cathode and corrodes slower than it would alone. Either (or both) metal in the couple may or may not corrode by itself (themselves) in seawater. When contact with a dissimilar metal is made, however, the self-corrosion rates will change: corrosion of the anode will accelerate; corrosion of the cathode will decelerate or even stop."<br /><br />MAS Notes is a Marine Advisory Service program sponsored by the University of Delaware and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the United States Government.<br /><br />So, you have a tough decisions to make. Who you gonna believe? The scientists, funded by our government to spend their whole lives studying these types of corrosion mechanisms? Or, your Local Salt Sales Rep?<br /><br />If you chose B, well, thank you for playing. On your way out, please sign up for our next reality based program called “If I Only Had a Brain”.<br /><br />And believe me, if it hadn’t coated that stainless screw like that, then when that Whacky Salt Rep who likes to call me names writes in, he’d be able to give me the old, “very interesting, Pool Guy, we’ll need to see the water chemistry records for that pool and for every pool everywhere for the last thirty-five years to make sure that blah, blah, blah, blah….” [read, “so we don’t have to admit any liability for our ever more failing technology.”]<br /><br />And speaking of Failing Technology, that reminds me to say that I was contacted by the Canadian Broadcasting Company this week. Seems they’re working on a story about why the Wave Pool in Calgary is closed until February and wanted to know what I thought were the reasons. I told them what I thought was going on behind those closed doors with Canadian taxpayer’s dollars, and made sure they knew whose salt system it was that’s installed there so they could get a comment from the manufacturer on why their salt system had done two million six hundred thousand dollars – Yes. That’s right. $2,600,000.00 – worth of damage to the Wave Pool in 2 years and 8 months – Yes. That’s right. Thirty-two months.<br /><br />But I’m getting off the subject. What afflicts the Wave Pool is just plain old fashioned salt spray corrosion. The kind that’s not supposed to happen in 3,500 parts per million (ppm) salt water because it’s “less than the salinity of a tear” and “ten times lower than the level of salt in seawater”, and a whole bunch of other nonsensical things I could say if I were trying to sell these things instead of reveal the truth about them.<br /><br />What we’re talking about today is Galvanic Corrosion. Now, don’t confuse that with Stray Current Corrosion. That’s another whole different kind of corrosion that salt water brings to your pool and that kind afflicts those metal things that are tied to the pool’s bonding grid – which is pretty much everything except these automatic cleaners and stainless steel filter tanks and the stainless through rods that hold your DE filters together. Pay close attention the next time you’re cleaning a salt pool’s DE filter that uses those knurled brass screws on the stainless through rods. I bet the screws will be Missing In Action, or on their way to being gone. But on the up side, as Dr. Dexter pointed out, the stainless steel is now actually stronger. Here’s a table that shows how that works:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLwCOan1dH3BZSNjn_0BL3erX7bpG3lQR5EmhkZtisrTIALqDUHOmTLh4QSGMds0_7KvnpYQAcilKIq_-4LMM8KgEkudPfhu-NcLPx5jHRnc7Z18ZMsOICv-GXmyfSNu4rikr/s1600-h/Table1.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103026343943707426" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoLwCOan1dH3BZSNjn_0BL3erX7bpG3lQR5EmhkZtisrTIALqDUHOmTLh4QSGMds0_7KvnpYQAcilKIq_-4LMM8KgEkudPfhu-NcLPx5jHRnc7Z18ZMsOICv-GXmyfSNu4rikr/s400/Table1.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />The Anodic end is the end that deteriorates. Look down the list and find brass. Then look further down the list, toward the Cathodic or Noble end and look for stainless steel. See? First, it lists 300 series and then way down, it lists 400 series stainless steel. In fact, all stainless steels are more Cathodic, or more Noble than brass.<br /><br />The only comfort in the whole situation is that the Polaris frame has something like a 5 year warranty. So, if you’re lucky, your wheels will fall off before the five years is up. This customer’s did.<br /><br />But, you know how it is. You start taking a Polaris apart to ship the frame back for exchange, and this is true for any of the Return Side Cleaners, and unless the wheel bearings are pretty new, they’re going to disintegrate in your hands. Then, when you get into the guts of it, you’re probably going to notice that the salt has eaten up the teeth of the driveshaft, like I showed you <a href="http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com/2007/04/this-is-your-polaris-280-drive-shaft.html">HERE</a>, and that the driveshaft bearings are welded by corrosion to the driveshaft splines. And, of course, you might as well put on new tires and wheels while you’re into it…<br /><br />What’s a Mother to do?<br /><br />Stay away from salt. That’s my advise.<span style="font-size:0;"></span></span>The Pool Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12904496518630518958noreply@blogger.com0