I’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.
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”.
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?
Perhaps it’s because they prefer that the public thinks their “essential minerals” in their Mineral Springs program 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.
You can achieve much the same results of a bag of Mineral Springs Beginnings 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.
If you use the median percentages for a bag of Renew 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?
Here’s excerpts from an e-mail from a lady whose had quite enough of the whole Mineral Springs program:
“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.
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.....
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.”
$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.
I’ve talked about all this before. Click on the Label Getting Screwed Buying Salt. It’s all there. And the BioGuard links have been Renewed, for a lot less than $30 a week.
Showing posts with label Debunking Salt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Debunking Salt. Show all posts
Monday, May 12, 2008
Sunday, February 04, 2007
KILROY WAS HERE
I’ll be the first to admit it; I’m contentious. I would have never made it as a diplomat. Just not in me. Not part of my DNA. Sorry about that. All I can say in my defense is when I choose to be contentious it’s about things that I not only believe in, but things I’ve seen with my own eyes.
For instance, like most Americans, I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald probably didn’t act alone. But I wasn’t in Dealey Plaza that day, and all the pictures of the grassy knoll are pretty grainy, - not to mention that I’ve been up behind that picket fence as recently as 2003 when my best buddy came to town, and we kicked around for spent cartridges back there, and I can say conclusively that there was no evidence then that anyone fired any shots from the Grassy Knoll. So, after that, I’ve pretty much decided not to invest a big chunk of my life trying to prove the unproveable.
Another example; I believe there is intelligent life on other planets. I think it’s just narrow and conceited of us to think that we’re the only life forms among all those stars. Though I doubt they’re as good looking as we are. Do I think that the US government is hiding a space ship crash site in Area 51? Probably not. Now, if I had seen a space ship flying around somewhere out near Roswell, I’d have a different opinion. And a different blog.
Lately, my friends in the pool business have been telling me that the folks who sell salt say some pretty nasty things about me. They say I’m spreading lies and half truths. And what’s so funny is I thought that shoe was on the other foot; their foot.
Let’s look at some of the things I’ve talked about in this blog. Let’s look for the lies and half truths.
1. First and easiest is the Level of Taste. They all say it’s somewhere around 3,500 ppm sodium chloride. You can find that statement on nearly every salt system marketing brochure and website. But the United States Government Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water says it’s 250 ppm. But “well below the level of taste!” sells a lot more salt systems than “fourteen times higher than the level of taste!”
An interesting side note here is that I was conversing via e-mail with a Salt Rep and I mentioned the EPA standard, and he came back with, “I have to admit and thank you though, as you are causing me to reflect on what I present in my seminars, and am forcing me to research more of the "facts" related to salt levels, such as: EPA standards for the taste threshold for chloride is 250 ppm (I never knew this).”
Now, the article I pointed this out in is titled Lying Liars (11/19/06). I called it that because I honestly couldn't believe that salt system manufacturers, who make their living by putting salt into water, didn't know something as rudimentary as the level of taste as set forth by the government of the country where they are selling their products. Now I know differently.
Kind of gives you a whole different perspective on how well informed even their best informed folks are about their own technology. I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s not even intentional. I think it’s more the Sales & Marketing Effect, where a bunch of people repeat the same lies - pardon me for being blunt, but when you don't tell the truth, it's a lie, even if you don't know it's a lie - until they become the prevalent "facts" surrounding a technology. The EPA has been saying 250 ppm just forever. But they don't spend as much money as salt guys do on advertising, so the 3,500 ppm myth becomes prevalent.
2. Next easiest is green hair. Chlorine doesn’t cause green hair. Copper in the water causes green hair. I was talking via e-mail with another Salt Rep and I pointed out, after looking at their website, that the first lie I spotted was the one about “No more Green Hair!” And the Rep wrote back; “Thanks for pointing out about the green hair thing. I agree. It is a tired old tale that just unconsciously spews from any type of salt-water pool marketing material or rep.”
3. But those two examples are just the cosmetic lies. The biggest one, in my mind, is the denial of Salt Attack on stone and concrete. Once again, a Salt Rep wrote to me and posited, “...back to damage as a result of salt, this is a moot point as most sodium hypochlorite pools will have salt levels above 250 ppm in short order, and no one ever complains about corrosion or deck damage. Remember, when the water evaporates, the salt in a bleach pool still increases in concentration just as it would as a salt pool. Therefore wouldn't the damage be the same?”
So, you can see that while they never mention Salt Attack in their marketing information, they know about it. In fact, they know enough about it to come up with handy answers for why these types of issues are really non-issues. And this Rep is right. All chlorine dissolved in water results in chloride residual in the water. On a tri-chlor tab pool with really old water, it’s as much as 500 ppm. On a salt pool, from day one it’s at least 3,000 ppm, nominally 3,500 ppm.
I wrote back and said; “if I spill 3,500 ppm sodium chloride solution on limestone and it evaporates, it'll get me to crystallization [which is the point at which salt starts to damage stone & concrete] 7 times faster than 500 ppm water. If salt damage is showing up on salt pools with limestone in 2 years, then it's going to show up on tabs pools in 14 years. Which pool would you rather own? The pool that needs recoping every two years, or every 14 years?’
And that’s really being short on the estimate about tri-chlor tab pools. First, you need really old water to have that 500 ppm chloride residual. Then, you’d have to keep that same water for fourteen years. Nobody keeps the same pool water for fourteen years. That’s why the damage, which even salt system reps are starting to admit occurs, is pretty much a phenomenon related only to salt pools.
These days, they’re amending their story and saying that you should hose down all your decks and hardscape every time you use your pool, and that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to seal all your stone and concrete and reapply at least twice a year - some say every three months. I bet you wish they’d told you that before you bought.
4. Galvanic corrosion. I’ve written several blog pieces about galvanic corrosion. I’ve cited numerous references for everything I’ve said, and yet the salt system manufacturers keep denying that it exists, or if it does, it’s because of improper installation, improper bonding, or improper grounding. But the truth is it’s because of the Electrolysis Process. That, and these installation, bonding and grounding issues. Together, they cause the rapid destruction of the other metals in your pool. A salt system is the only device that can cause any corrosion damage to metals outside of it’s own box simply because you turn your pool water into an electrolyte by adding salt and you’re running an electrical device whose function is to perform the process of electrolysis. Take salt out of your pool and the water is no longer an electrolyte. One of the first definitions of Galvanic Corrosion that I cited in this blog states, “Galvanic Corrosion, often misnamed ‘electrolysis’...”, because they are such similar processes.
5. Explosion Danger. I’ve written two pieces about explosion danger with salt systems, because the electrolysis process produces hydrogen gas, which is flammable and explosive. A very smart guy who I correspond with wrote to me after my second piece on exploding chlorinators. He was concerned that the video I referenced of the 15 year old kid making the flammable hydrogen gas with a mockup salt cell was giving salt pool owners the wrong impression. His e-mail precisely described the chemistry behind his reasoning why the video was an inappropriate example by stating that salt system manufacturers only needed about 1.4 volts to create chlorine without the byproduct oxygen that would make the hydrogen explode. The kid in the video was using a 12 volt battery. He summarized as follows; “So what is the bottom line of all this? If the salt cell were driven with too high a voltage, then oxygen will be produced in addition to chlorine. A properly designed and functioning SWG unit will produce little or no oxygen unless there is either a malfunction or if the SWG manufacturer is intentionally trying to produce more chlorine faster and creating an overvoltage to do so — which would begin to produce oxygen in addition to chlorine.”
By the way, SWG means Salt Water Generator. SWG is the shorthand they use in all the on line forums and chats about salt. Why they call it that I don’t know. It doesn’t generate salt water. It generates chlorine. Anyway...
I wrote back and said that I was pretty sure every salt system manufacturer out there was using way more than 1.4 volts and he should look it up. He did, and wrote back; “Well, a cursory check of several different salt chlorinators shows that they tend to operate at 6 to 9 volts. Some units, including AquaRite by Goldline Controls, use 22-27 Volts. My hunch is that designs that use the higher voltage will produce more oxygen than designs that operate at lower voltages... So it would appear that no one operates in the region where no oxygen will be generated at all.”
Now, this guy is smart. Very smart. And so when he crunched the numbers and came up with 1.4 volts, he assumed that the salt manufacturers would, for obvious safety reasons, use that number, too. I think he was taken aback to realize that the way these systems are designed is more like a bunch of guys fiddling around until they get something that works and then creating a production model and putting it out for sale, and a lot less like a project team observing rigorous engineering practices based on scientific research.
Next week I’ll be posting pictures of an exploded salt cell, along with pictures of the plumbing installation and electrical connections. Stay tuned.
6. Environmental Issues: Salt reps are always crowing about how Australia is such a fine example of a whole country that uses salt in their pools. Australia is also a continent that is at the tipping point ecologically because they are out of water. They are looking at spending billions and billions of dollars on their aquifer systems. Many of the pools in Australia use sand filters and those filters require frequent backwashing. How much, over more than twenty years, has that salty discharge contributed to their current crisis?
I read an article recently about an acclaimed Aussie scientist who is refusing to drink recycled water;
“ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA - The scientist who set Australian drinking water standards is speaking out against the recent plan to use recycled water to boost supplies, saying, "This is one bloke who isn't going to drink it... You can turn anything wet into drinking water if you have enough money... The risk is orders of magnitude higher than when dealing with conventional sources.”
Is this where we’re heading? Drinking our own waste? Coupled with the undeniable fact that Global Warming is creating droughts around the globe, it would seem that we are. So, why, oh, why would we intentionally create 20,000 gallon reservoirs of salt water that will end up being waste water every time the pool has to be dumped, ending up adding to our reclamation costs to desalinate that water? So that salt system manufacturer’s stock can go up?
You know, they call the area for several hundred yards on either side of the roads where they use salt for de-icing the “Salt Kill Zone”. Salt resistant foliage along roadways is a big item in northern climates. Even here in Texas, Lake Lavon, just north and east of Dallas is looking to plant more salt resistant foliage around the lake - it was down by as much as 18 feet in the last year - because the water that trickles in to refill it is increasingly saline. Do you think that your pool’s salty water might have something to do with that?
Where does your water go when you backwash your pool here in Texas? If your pool is built to code, it’s going into the sewer for waste treatment. It costs a lot of money to get salt out of water. It’s called desalinization, and the cost of it is the reason why we haven’t turned every desert into farm land by desalinating the oceans.
Where does all that rain water that falls on your pool go? It overfills your pool and most likely runs out your tile line drain and either soaks into the ground, increasing the salinity of the ground water, or runs down the curb, into a storm drain, then to a creek, and then the local reservoir, where your drinking water comes from.
Everything is cumulative. Carbon dioxide wasn’t an issue until the last 50 years. Now we talk about it and read about it every day.
But there is already writing on the wall about salt in this country, and it is this; the Santa Clarita Water District prohibited salt pools, not because they're tree huggers, but because they have a 100 ppm chloride limit for the Santa Clara River which irrigates their strawberry and avocado crops. Higher chloride levels will lower crop yields and cause leaf burn. The Governor, a pro business Republican, just signed a water softener buy back program into law for that water district. Water softeners soften the water by exchanging the calicum and magnesium in the water for sodium chloride. They are also outlawed in the Santa Clarita Water District.
But salt systems continue to be sold there because they can only prohibit salt systems on pools hooked up to the sewer system, and in California it's not a code requirement to plumb backwash lines to the sewer. So, our pool guys and salt system owners keep spewing their salty water onto the ground, which percolates down to the water table, or it goes into a storm drain and, you guessed it, makes it's way into the Santa Clarita River anyway.
So, why don't the salt system manufacturers do the right thing for the environment and the economy around the Santa Clarita Water District and have an industry moratorium on selling salt systems there?
Because dollar for dollar, salt systems are the most profitable item that any pool equipment manufacturer sells. It’s just a power supply circuit board, a small and simple electronic control board, a salt cell - usually made in China - a painted sheet metal enclosure and about five dollars worth of plastic and PVC. It is a simple system to build - just look at how many different brands there are - and easy to sell. Especially when you tell people they’ll never have to buy chlorine again - another lie, by the way. The fact that it’s a lie was pointed out by yet another Salt Rep in last week’s blog post.
So, to all you Salt Reps out there; I’m sorry you’re stuck selling these Trojan Horses to unsuspecting consumers. And I understand it’s your job to pitch the company’s whole product line, and that often includes salt systems along with the filters and heaters and pumps. And I know that everybody’s paycheck will get smaller if salt systems go away. But the problem here is bigger than you and me. It’s about the consumer, and protecting them from products that will cause thousands of dollars of damage to their pools, it's about the reputation of the industry that we work in and it’s about the world that we live in. And I’m not going to cave in and shut up when I have seen with my own eyes that these things are true. And as far as you all being upset about how unabashedly rude I’ve been in getting my point across, let me just ask you; would anybody have listened to me if I’d taken the EPA approach of just stating the level of taste and leaving it at that?
Unfortunately, there’s hundreds of you and only one Pool Guy. So far, that is.
Hey! I know how we can have some fun. If you’re a pool guy and you’re seeing the same things that I am on the salt pools you visit, make copies of this blog entry and stuff them in your invoices when you do your billing. Or keep a stack of copies in your truck to hand out to customer’s who ask you if they ought to switch over to salt.
And if someone handed you a copy of this and you want to read more, just go to http://thepoolbiz.blogspot.com
But you want to have some real fun? Google any salt system’s manufacturer and product name and the word blog. Depending on the system, this blog shows up either third or fourth spot on the first page. At last count, 16% of the folks who visit this blog got here off the results of a Google search. And it’s not even swimming season yet.
Kilroy Was Here.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Lying Liars
There is so much going on, it’s hard to know where to start.
How about this? A really, really big pool builder here in the Great State of Texas has stopped selling salt systems. Now, this falls under the category of gossip, because I’m not a journalist. I’m a pool cleaner and a blogger. But I heard this stuff from four different stalwarts in the local industry hereabouts, and so I believe it.
But before we talk about that, listen to this:
I was roaming around the internet and I happened upon this little tidbit from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services:
“Both Na+ and Cl- cause a taste in water. EPA has identified a concentration of over 250 mg/L of either Na+ & Cl- as a concentration which can be expected to impart a ‘salt’ taste to drinking water.” Read it HERE New Hampshire Govt.Website
Just to review, 1 mg/L equals 1part per million (ppm).
That reminded me of something I read recently from a manufacturer of salt systems where they were going on and on about how the amount of salt you put in your pool - three to four thousand parts per million, depending on the system - is “below the level of taste”. I couldn’t remember where I read it, so I Googled “below the level of taste” and “chlorine generator” and this is a sampling of what I got:
http://www.waynesolar.com/pdf/aquarite.pdf
http://www.bestbuypoolsupply.com/chlorinators.htm
http://www.solarblue.org/aqualogic.html
http://hayward.swimmingpool.com/chlorinegenerator
http://hayward.swimmingpool.com/logiccontrols
http://www.haywardnet.com/inground/products/controls/Aqua_Logic_Pool_Spa_Automation.cfm
http://www.h2opoolproducts.com/product_info.php?products_id=24
http://www.premierpoolsupplies.com/automaticcontrols_Hayward.html
Every one of these websites say that the amount of salt needed is “below the level of taste”.
So, um, uh... that’s a lie. It’s above the EPA identified level of taste by a factor of 12, to be precise.
Each of these websites, and plenty more, keep repeating the same lie over and over again until it becomes fact. That is the secret of Sales and Marketing. You tell a lie. You tell that lie for money. You get others to repeat that lie for the same reason; money. You rely on the fact that the average consumer and the average reseller aren’t going to question your lie, because there’s no profit in proving that it’s a lie. There’s no money in it, so why would anybody in their right mind set out to disprove the lie if, at the end of the day, it doesn’t make them any richer?
Because it’s a lie.
There are other, more subtle ways of pumping up a product without technically telling a lie. Like the same vendor’s claim:
“You'll never again have to worry about red irritated eyes, dry itchy skin, bleached bathing suits or green hair!”
http://www.goldlinecontrols.com/AquaRite.aspx
Green hair? Hmm... Green hair doesn’t come from other types of chlorine, which, if you follow the sleight of hand there, is implied but not said . Once again, Smoke and Mirrors, Sales and Marketing.
Green hair is caused by copper in the water.
http://www.10news.com/lorensfieldnotes/173301/detail.html
http://www.southshoregunitepools.com/resources/pdfs/green_hair.pdf
http://www.pg.com/science/haircare/hair_twh_97.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7233585
http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/greenhair.htm
How about bleached bathing suits?
“Experts disagree widely about a maximum level for free chlorine, if any. AQUA TIPS interviewed swimmers who had been bathing in 5, then 10, and on up to 25 ppm free chlorine. In the files we found the story of a junior high school pool that was mistakenly carried at 60 ppm free chlorine for about a week's time. We interviewed one individual who had been swimming in 200 ppm free chlorine for 30 minutes. In each of these cases, pH and other water chemistry factors were almost perfectly balanced. Complaints in the above cases were of bleached bathing suits, dry skin, and mild eyeburn.”
http://www.stranco-leisure.co.uk/pdf/Back_to_Basics.pdf
There are several other websites with the same information. Just Google bleached bathing suits. Too, there are several websites that will tell you that chloramines cause red irritated eyes and dry, itchy skin. But bleached bathing suits? I’m sorry. That’s from too high a level of free available chlorine, and you’re just as likely to have it with a chlorine generator set too high as you are with a feeder stuffed with too many tabs.
So, why is this important? Because this is the small stuff. If they’re willing to lie and misdirect on the small stuff, what about the big stuff? Big stuff like galvanic corrosion, or ruined coping, or environmental issues. It begs the question, what else are they not telling you?
They’re not telling you things like this:
“Sodium and chloride are costly to remove from water... Normally the best method to control sodium and chloride in drinking water is to prevent or better manage those activities that dispose of salt near the water supply source”. (Whatcom County, WA Health Department, Sodium in Water)
That’s a link to the Whatcom County, Washington Health Department website. “...prevent or better manage” the disposal of salt. Just a crazy thought, but how about not putting salt in your pool in the first place?
Think about it. If you’re trying to maintain a level of less than 250 ppm in your water supply, then dumping a 20,000 gallon pool of 3,000 ppm salt water just brought 240,000 gallons of pure water right up to the level of taste. If it’s 4,000 ppm, then it’s 320,000 gallons.
How about a water park that uses salt chlorination? If you dump a 700,000 gallon Lazy River at the end of the season, that dilutes to as much as 11,200,000 gallons of 250 ppm water. And that’s if the dilute had 0 ppm salt to begin with. Not to mention that the Lazy River’s just one ride in the water park.
But it gets worse. The Salt Institute, a group that represents 36 foreign and domestic salt producers, admits you can taste salt at levels even lower than 250 ppm.
“The secondary drinking water standard for chloride is determined for taste and established at 250 mg/L. If 100% of the chloride in a particular drinking water were in the form of sodium chloride, water containing 250 mg/L chloride would contain 160 mg/L sodium. Thus, 160 mg/L would be the appropriate level where people would notice the taste of sodium chloride.”
http://www.saltinstitute.org/pubstat/ccl8-02.html - Update 03/09/09; this link is dead. It is no longer anywhere on the Salt Institute's website. It's no longer anywhere on the internet except here. I guess they no longer wanted to own that opinion, seeing as how it's been so effectively used to prove just the reverse of what they intended for it to do.
Remember, this is from the Salt Institute, the lobbying arm of the salt industry. So, that means that the folks selling salt systems to you just made up the idea that 3,000 to 4,000 ppm is below the level of taste and then put it in their Sales and Marketing brochures.
Are you insulted yet?
Every place I go in the real world - by real world, I mean things like water treatment info, or drinking water data, or environmental studies, or architectural information, or infrastructure impact studies - I read nothing but the negative impacts of salt.
Well, that’s not completely true. I did recently read how “salting, especially of meat, is an ancient preservation technique. The salt draws out moisture and creates an environment inhospitable to bacteria.”
http://home.howstuffworks.com/food-preservation5.htm
But starting around 1876, when Karl Paul Gottfried von Linder invented the first practical refrigeration unit, salting meat has been kind of tapering off.
So, there’s all this real world data about the negative impacts of salt.
And then there’s the world of Sales and Marketing, where salt is portrayed as a beautiful, naturally occurring substance that has revolutionized swimming pools and is protecting all those poor little rich folk from the horrible, unmentionable side effects of chlorine.
Be honest. How many homeowners have you talked to who had that exact impression when they contacted you about a salt system? And even when you tried to explain to them that, “chlorine’s chlorine, whether it comes from a tab or from an electronic box”, they give you that, “Yes, but salt’s better, right? More natural, right?”
The deliberate misinformation surrounding the introduction of salt systems is still startling to me, even after all these weeks of reading and writing about it. So, wake up, Also a Pool Guy. It’s not just a swimming pool. It is a conspiracy. A conspiracy to say whatever needs to be said to create and maintain a market for salt systems, whether they’re good for your business or not.
Which is a nice segue into the Big News this week. The Big News goes something like this:
Big Texas Builder came to the conclusion that salt systems, instead of being a profit center, are costing money and slowing production. The unrelenting damage caused by salt created tons of go-backs (doncha just love them free go-backs) to replace diving board stands, rip out ruined limestone, etc., tying up crews that otherwise would have been laying coping and mastic and such on new pools instead of pools under warranty. Not only was it costing a lot to redo the work, but it was costing a lot by slowing new production.
You have to wonder, too, if part of their reason wasn’t the lost referrals that always come with that kind of mess. It reminds me of a recent conversation I had with another builder. He’s a small custom builder, who lives and dies by the referral, and by way of telling me that he, too, had stopped selling salt systems, (that’s two; one Big Builder, one Small Builder) he told me the story of how he lost a whole town to a spate of heater problems a couple of years back. Gosh, I wonder which heater that was?
He’d been going great guns in this small community here in the Metroplex - for all you people not lucky enough to be from Texas, that’s what we call the Dallas/Fort Worth area - all from one customer telling a friend, and that friend telling a friend, (repeat until rich) what a great job he’d done for them. Then, the heaters stopped working. They wouldn’t fire during start up. The local reps were swamped with calls from everybody, so even herculean efforts on their part weren’t keeping up with the trouble calls. (Yes. Mark your calender. I just said something nice about reps. Technical Reps, that is.) Then, a week after the heaters were fixed, they’d fail again, creating an even more upset customer. And then another trouble call, and another, and yet another...
Pretty soon, what his customers out there were telling their friends changed from, “He’s so great and everything works so well”, to “I’m so mad at that guy. He sold me a spa I never get to use because he sold me a broken heater to go along with it.” And he hasn’t had a referral in that town in the three years since.
So there’s that.
And then, in closing, I wanted to thank Also A Pool Guy for his comments. And I wanted to clarify, like Another Pool Guy already pointed out, that 7.6 isn’t neutral pH. 7.0 is neutral pH. Further, the difference between 7.6 and 7.7 isn’t “slightly basic”. The difference between 7.6 and 7.7 is that 7.7 is 20% more base than 7.6. The pH scale is a logarithmic scale, where the number to the right of the decimal - the mantissa - is the logarithmic representation of the actual number. The number to the left of the decimal - the characteristic - represents the power of 10 the number is to be raised to. So, 7.6 represents -40,000,000 and 7.7 represents
-50,000,000. With that kind of progression, the difference between, say, 7.2 and 8.2 is -30,000,000 and -300,000,000, respectively. So, 8.2 is ten times more base than 7.2. The pH scale has fourteen orders of magnitude (0.0 to 14.0), expressed in this logarithmic notation, pH being the negative logarithm of the concentration of hydrogen ions. Kind of like 7.6 pH is 40,000,000 hydrogen ions per liter... not.
Phew! I wanted to spit all that out to illustrate what a bad idea it is to throw even a tenth of a point on the pH scale around so casually. And I realize that it’s open season on the above paragraph from all you chemists out there. So, go ahead. Take your best shot.
Also a Pool Guy has started his own blog here on Blogspot. He calls it Another Look at ThePoolBusiness. You can access it by clicking on his name at the bottom of his comment. He hasn’t posted anything, though. Perhaps he’s busy studying up on the pH scale.
Yes. I know. That was mean. I am ashamed. But I’m not stupid. And that brings up an interesting point about this blog. Usually the guys who will tell you the truth about anything aren’t nice guys. They’re rock throwers looking for a plate glass window. And they don’t have solutions. They have questions. If you think about it, they’re not supposed to have solutions. Because they didn’t build and sell the problem. They just point out that the problem exists.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
There is so much going on, it’s hard to know where to start.
How about this? A really, really big pool builder here in the Great State of Texas has stopped selling salt systems. Now, this falls under the category of gossip, because I’m not a journalist. I’m a pool cleaner and a blogger. But I heard this stuff from four different stalwarts in the local industry hereabouts, and so I believe it.
But before we talk about that, listen to this:
I was roaming around the internet and I happened upon this little tidbit from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services:
“Both Na+ and Cl- cause a taste in water. EPA has identified a concentration of over 250 mg/L of either Na+ & Cl- as a concentration which can be expected to impart a ‘salt’ taste to drinking water.” Read it HERE New Hampshire Govt.Website
Just to review, 1 mg/L equals 1part per million (ppm).
That reminded me of something I read recently from a manufacturer of salt systems where they were going on and on about how the amount of salt you put in your pool - three to four thousand parts per million, depending on the system - is “below the level of taste”. I couldn’t remember where I read it, so I Googled “below the level of taste” and “chlorine generator” and this is a sampling of what I got:
http://www.waynesolar.com/pdf/aquarite.pdf
http://www.bestbuypoolsupply.com/chlorinators.htm
http://www.solarblue.org/aqualogic.html
http://hayward.swimmingpool.com/chlorinegenerator
http://hayward.swimmingpool.com/logiccontrols
http://www.haywardnet.com/inground/products/controls/Aqua_Logic_Pool_Spa_Automation.cfm
http://www.h2opoolproducts.com/product_info.php?products_id=24
http://www.premierpoolsupplies.com/automaticcontrols_Hayward.html
Every one of these websites say that the amount of salt needed is “below the level of taste”.
So, um, uh... that’s a lie. It’s above the EPA identified level of taste by a factor of 12, to be precise.
Each of these websites, and plenty more, keep repeating the same lie over and over again until it becomes fact. That is the secret of Sales and Marketing. You tell a lie. You tell that lie for money. You get others to repeat that lie for the same reason; money. You rely on the fact that the average consumer and the average reseller aren’t going to question your lie, because there’s no profit in proving that it’s a lie. There’s no money in it, so why would anybody in their right mind set out to disprove the lie if, at the end of the day, it doesn’t make them any richer?
Because it’s a lie.
There are other, more subtle ways of pumping up a product without technically telling a lie. Like the same vendor’s claim:
“You'll never again have to worry about red irritated eyes, dry itchy skin, bleached bathing suits or green hair!”
http://www.goldlinecontrols.com/AquaRite.aspx
Green hair? Hmm... Green hair doesn’t come from other types of chlorine, which, if you follow the sleight of hand there, is implied but not said . Once again, Smoke and Mirrors, Sales and Marketing.
Green hair is caused by copper in the water.
http://www.10news.com/lorensfieldnotes/173301/detail.html
http://www.southshoregunitepools.com/resources/pdfs/green_hair.pdf
http://www.pg.com/science/haircare/hair_twh_97.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7233585
http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/greenhair.htm
How about bleached bathing suits?
“Experts disagree widely about a maximum level for free chlorine, if any. AQUA TIPS interviewed swimmers who had been bathing in 5, then 10, and on up to 25 ppm free chlorine. In the files we found the story of a junior high school pool that was mistakenly carried at 60 ppm free chlorine for about a week's time. We interviewed one individual who had been swimming in 200 ppm free chlorine for 30 minutes. In each of these cases, pH and other water chemistry factors were almost perfectly balanced. Complaints in the above cases were of bleached bathing suits, dry skin, and mild eyeburn.”
http://www.stranco-leisure.co.uk/pdf/Back_to_Basics.pdf
There are several other websites with the same information. Just Google bleached bathing suits. Too, there are several websites that will tell you that chloramines cause red irritated eyes and dry, itchy skin. But bleached bathing suits? I’m sorry. That’s from too high a level of free available chlorine, and you’re just as likely to have it with a chlorine generator set too high as you are with a feeder stuffed with too many tabs.
So, why is this important? Because this is the small stuff. If they’re willing to lie and misdirect on the small stuff, what about the big stuff? Big stuff like galvanic corrosion, or ruined coping, or environmental issues. It begs the question, what else are they not telling you?
They’re not telling you things like this:
“Sodium and chloride are costly to remove from water... Normally the best method to control sodium and chloride in drinking water is to prevent or better manage those activities that dispose of salt near the water supply source”. (Whatcom County, WA Health Department, Sodium in Water)
That’s a link to the Whatcom County, Washington Health Department website. “...prevent or better manage” the disposal of salt. Just a crazy thought, but how about not putting salt in your pool in the first place?
Think about it. If you’re trying to maintain a level of less than 250 ppm in your water supply, then dumping a 20,000 gallon pool of 3,000 ppm salt water just brought 240,000 gallons of pure water right up to the level of taste. If it’s 4,000 ppm, then it’s 320,000 gallons.
How about a water park that uses salt chlorination? If you dump a 700,000 gallon Lazy River at the end of the season, that dilutes to as much as 11,200,000 gallons of 250 ppm water. And that’s if the dilute had 0 ppm salt to begin with. Not to mention that the Lazy River’s just one ride in the water park.
But it gets worse. The Salt Institute, a group that represents 36 foreign and domestic salt producers, admits you can taste salt at levels even lower than 250 ppm.
“The secondary drinking water standard for chloride is determined for taste and established at 250 mg/L. If 100% of the chloride in a particular drinking water were in the form of sodium chloride, water containing 250 mg/L chloride would contain 160 mg/L sodium. Thus, 160 mg/L would be the appropriate level where people would notice the taste of sodium chloride.”
http://www.saltinstitute.org/pubstat/ccl8-02.html - Update 03/09/09; this link is dead. It is no longer anywhere on the Salt Institute's website. It's no longer anywhere on the internet except here. I guess they no longer wanted to own that opinion, seeing as how it's been so effectively used to prove just the reverse of what they intended for it to do.
Remember, this is from the Salt Institute, the lobbying arm of the salt industry. So, that means that the folks selling salt systems to you just made up the idea that 3,000 to 4,000 ppm is below the level of taste and then put it in their Sales and Marketing brochures.
Are you insulted yet?
Every place I go in the real world - by real world, I mean things like water treatment info, or drinking water data, or environmental studies, or architectural information, or infrastructure impact studies - I read nothing but the negative impacts of salt.
Well, that’s not completely true. I did recently read how “salting, especially of meat, is an ancient preservation technique. The salt draws out moisture and creates an environment inhospitable to bacteria.”
http://home.howstuffworks.com/food-preservation5.htm
But starting around 1876, when Karl Paul Gottfried von Linder invented the first practical refrigeration unit, salting meat has been kind of tapering off.
So, there’s all this real world data about the negative impacts of salt.
And then there’s the world of Sales and Marketing, where salt is portrayed as a beautiful, naturally occurring substance that has revolutionized swimming pools and is protecting all those poor little rich folk from the horrible, unmentionable side effects of chlorine.
Be honest. How many homeowners have you talked to who had that exact impression when they contacted you about a salt system? And even when you tried to explain to them that, “chlorine’s chlorine, whether it comes from a tab or from an electronic box”, they give you that, “Yes, but salt’s better, right? More natural, right?”
The deliberate misinformation surrounding the introduction of salt systems is still startling to me, even after all these weeks of reading and writing about it. So, wake up, Also a Pool Guy. It’s not just a swimming pool. It is a conspiracy. A conspiracy to say whatever needs to be said to create and maintain a market for salt systems, whether they’re good for your business or not.
Which is a nice segue into the Big News this week. The Big News goes something like this:
Big Texas Builder came to the conclusion that salt systems, instead of being a profit center, are costing money and slowing production. The unrelenting damage caused by salt created tons of go-backs (doncha just love them free go-backs) to replace diving board stands, rip out ruined limestone, etc., tying up crews that otherwise would have been laying coping and mastic and such on new pools instead of pools under warranty. Not only was it costing a lot to redo the work, but it was costing a lot by slowing new production.
You have to wonder, too, if part of their reason wasn’t the lost referrals that always come with that kind of mess. It reminds me of a recent conversation I had with another builder. He’s a small custom builder, who lives and dies by the referral, and by way of telling me that he, too, had stopped selling salt systems, (that’s two; one Big Builder, one Small Builder) he told me the story of how he lost a whole town to a spate of heater problems a couple of years back. Gosh, I wonder which heater that was?
He’d been going great guns in this small community here in the Metroplex - for all you people not lucky enough to be from Texas, that’s what we call the Dallas/Fort Worth area - all from one customer telling a friend, and that friend telling a friend, (repeat until rich) what a great job he’d done for them. Then, the heaters stopped working. They wouldn’t fire during start up. The local reps were swamped with calls from everybody, so even herculean efforts on their part weren’t keeping up with the trouble calls. (Yes. Mark your calender. I just said something nice about reps. Technical Reps, that is.) Then, a week after the heaters were fixed, they’d fail again, creating an even more upset customer. And then another trouble call, and another, and yet another...
Pretty soon, what his customers out there were telling their friends changed from, “He’s so great and everything works so well”, to “I’m so mad at that guy. He sold me a spa I never get to use because he sold me a broken heater to go along with it.” And he hasn’t had a referral in that town in the three years since.
So there’s that.
And then, in closing, I wanted to thank Also A Pool Guy for his comments. And I wanted to clarify, like Another Pool Guy already pointed out, that 7.6 isn’t neutral pH. 7.0 is neutral pH. Further, the difference between 7.6 and 7.7 isn’t “slightly basic”. The difference between 7.6 and 7.7 is that 7.7 is 20% more base than 7.6. The pH scale is a logarithmic scale, where the number to the right of the decimal - the mantissa - is the logarithmic representation of the actual number. The number to the left of the decimal - the characteristic - represents the power of 10 the number is to be raised to. So, 7.6 represents -40,000,000 and 7.7 represents
-50,000,000. With that kind of progression, the difference between, say, 7.2 and 8.2 is -30,000,000 and -300,000,000, respectively. So, 8.2 is ten times more base than 7.2. The pH scale has fourteen orders of magnitude (0.0 to 14.0), expressed in this logarithmic notation, pH being the negative logarithm of the concentration of hydrogen ions. Kind of like 7.6 pH is 40,000,000 hydrogen ions per liter... not.
Phew! I wanted to spit all that out to illustrate what a bad idea it is to throw even a tenth of a point on the pH scale around so casually. And I realize that it’s open season on the above paragraph from all you chemists out there. So, go ahead. Take your best shot.
Also a Pool Guy has started his own blog here on Blogspot. He calls it Another Look at ThePoolBusiness. You can access it by clicking on his name at the bottom of his comment. He hasn’t posted anything, though. Perhaps he’s busy studying up on the pH scale.
Yes. I know. That was mean. I am ashamed. But I’m not stupid. And that brings up an interesting point about this blog. Usually the guys who will tell you the truth about anything aren’t nice guys. They’re rock throwers looking for a plate glass window. And they don’t have solutions. They have questions. If you think about it, they’re not supposed to have solutions. Because they didn’t build and sell the problem. They just point out that the problem exists.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Welcome to The Caveat Emptorium
Funny, huh? You know, Caveat Emptor, Let The Buyer Beware... I know. Never explain jokes. But doesn’t it just conjure up images of a big box store, replete with lights and calliope music and chock full of dubious gadgets and services being hocked by those same carny barkers that run the midway at the state fair?
I can see it now. There’s the Gypsy greeter who meets you at the door with a smile and a wave and then tries to pick your pocket when you walk by. Next up is his wife, Desdemona; Pet Psychic. There’s a booth that sells waterless cookware for drought stricken countries. Another guy sells flood insurance that doesn’t cover wind driven water or storm insurance that doesn’t cover floods, choose one and only one please. Then there’s the guy in the gray flannel suit selling shares of Enron stock. "Ten shares for a penny!" he cries. "You never know when it might come roaring back!"
You can drop your children off at Caveat Emptorium’s Free Day Care, where they can bob for apples in the piranha tank, play Russian Roulette with a single shot pistol, or sign up for swimming lessons at the shark tank.
And, yes folks, you guessed it, no need to worry about the kiddies having those red, runny eyes after cheating death and learning the backstroke because... wait for it... we’re using salt water.
I thought this week we ought to try to look on the bright side of salt systems. Let’s start with the manufacturer’s claims.
"Enjoy sparkling clean water, naturally and automatically. Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again. No more red eyes or itchy skin. No chemical smell. Just pure, clear water for day after day of fun in the sun."
That’s a quote off a marketing brochure. Let’s talk about that statement.
The Way Salt Works:
I bought this book a while ago, called Pool Chlorination Facts, by Robert W. Lowery. I love this book. If you don’t have it, and you have anything to do with taking care of the water quality of pools, you ought to get it. He’s a really smart guy who writes like a regular person. You may have already read his stuff without knowing it. If you ever took the IPSSA water chemistry exam and read those three handbooks they give out to prep for it, then you’ve read his work.
He talks about three types of chlorine generators; the brine system - or the portable bomb as I like to call it, the in-line system, and the in-pool system. Most everything we see in the field these days is the in-line system.
What I got from reading his description of in-line systems is that as the salty water passes through the cell, DC current is applied to it, and that causes three things to be formed; chlorine gas, caustic soda and hydrogen gas.
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 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.
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. You ask the reps why and they shrug their shoulders and tell you that your meds must need tweaking because "our system only produces pH neutral chlorine. It has be something you’re doing wrong because we’re your friends and we would never lie to you."
So, you add gallons and gallons of acid trying to neutralize this skyrocketing pH, which if you read your handbook, Guide to pH, Alkalinity, Water Testing & Water Balance, you know that all that acid is burning off your Total Alkalinity. So, then you start adding DE scoops of baking soda - oh, excuse me, let me put my sales and marketing hat on... ahem... I mean Total Alkalinity Control, $18.99 a twelve pound box - and you’re stuck in this vicious loop of trying to maintain the 80 to 120 ppm Total Alkalinity that our industry preaches to you. But the pH of the baking soda you’re adding is 8.3, or eight times more base than the proper pH of pool water. So, again, you’re raising the pH. So, you pour more acid...
Hmmm... What’s wrong with this picture?
If your calcium hardness is 300 ppm and your water temperature is 88 (pretty common in August around here) and you know your pH is going to be 8.0 before you get back next week, then use your watergram and tell me where your Total Alkalinity ought to be. It lines up at about 22 ppm. Now, you’re going to adjust the water to 7.5 while you’re there. So, what’s the Total Alkalinity supposed to be for 7.5? 70 ppm.
You need to add a few points to it because I don’t think they took 3,500 ppm TDS (salt plus everything else) into account when they built your watergram.
Same example except now it’s dead of winter and the water temp is 45. The watergram lines up at 50 ppm Total Alkalinity at 8.0 and 155 ppm at 7.5
Plug in your own calcium hardness and your own high and low water temps for your region and do the math.
But wait. This can’t be right. Go to the inside door of the salt system controller. Right there it says to keep Total Alkalinity between 80 and 120 ppm and the manufacturer’s rep already told you that they’re your friends and they would never lie to you. So, we’re back to adjusting your meds.
You see, in the textbook world of The Way Salt Works, pH isn’t increased when the chlorine is made, because the hydrogen gas didn’t gas off. So the manufacturers didn’t have to put any money toward research that would promulgate new and unique guidelines for salt pools. Because it wouldn’t have sounded nearly as good saying "Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again", if they’d had to tack on, "But, boy, are you ever gonna need a buttload of acid and baking soda and a way more sophisticated test kit than that measly little two-way tester you got away with when you were using tablets. Now you have to learn about calcium levels because if you don’t, that pH swing inherent in our system is going to rip right through that pretty plaster of yours. If we don’t scale it with high pH and high Total Alkalinity when you try to follow current water chemistry guidelines, then we’ll burn holes in it with low pH and low Total Alkalinity when you only do half the job and just adjust pH, because at the lower Total Alkalinities, there won’t be as much buffer and so when you do your acid demand test and read off the table how much acid to add, it’ll have a more drastic effect on the pH than you anticipated because the table was computed with industry standard 80 to 120 Total Alkalinity in mind ...".
Sorry. I got carried away. My point is that salt pools are a different animal than tablet pools. Standing there and saying that they’re not, when even the pool cleaners know that they are, just gives guys like me more ammunition to point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes and he’s a liar to boot.
So where else was this rambling screed going? Oh, yes. I was supposed to enumerate the good things about salt systems...
Oh, yeah! Here’s one.
You know how some of the manufacturers call the mode that forces the system to maximum output for 24 hours Super Chlorinate? Well, that’s a lie. But the good news is, it’s only half a lie. Or some part of a lie. How much of a lie depends on how much Combined Chlorine is in your pool and where the salt system output is when you turn on Super Chlorinate.
For example, if you’re running your system at 100% output and you flick on Super Chlorinate, the system will produce at 100%. Hmmm... That’s not going to work.
But, if you’re running your system at 20%, and with water temp and swimmer load and debris load and every other load, that 20% setting produces 2 ppm Free Available Chlorine for you, but your Total Chlorine is 2.5 ppm, which means that 0.5 is Combined Chlorine and you need 7 to 10 times the level of Combined Chlorine to get to Breakpoint and burn it out, then going to Super Chlorinate for 24 hours, in this example, will create 8 ppm more Free Available Chlorine. Somewhere around 5 ppm Free Available Chlorine, you’ll hit Breakpoint and burn out that 0.5 Combined Chlorine, leaving you with 5 ppm Free Available Chlorine. Maybe. As you can see, this is an exact science.
So, how do they get away with labeling the switch Super Chlorinate? Because it’s just an industry term. It has no definition beyond what the user gives it. It may mean something to you as a pool professional. But that doesn’t mean they can’t redefine it to mean "produce at 100% capacity for 24 hours".
That way, they can say, "Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again" Which is way easier than saying, "Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again... as long as you never have to run your salt system at a level that precludes achieving an output 7 to 10 times your level of Combined Chlorine".
And that is a look on the bright side of salt systems. Caveat Emptor.
Funny, huh? You know, Caveat Emptor, Let The Buyer Beware... I know. Never explain jokes. But doesn’t it just conjure up images of a big box store, replete with lights and calliope music and chock full of dubious gadgets and services being hocked by those same carny barkers that run the midway at the state fair?
I can see it now. There’s the Gypsy greeter who meets you at the door with a smile and a wave and then tries to pick your pocket when you walk by. Next up is his wife, Desdemona; Pet Psychic. There’s a booth that sells waterless cookware for drought stricken countries. Another guy sells flood insurance that doesn’t cover wind driven water or storm insurance that doesn’t cover floods, choose one and only one please. Then there’s the guy in the gray flannel suit selling shares of Enron stock. "Ten shares for a penny!" he cries. "You never know when it might come roaring back!"
You can drop your children off at Caveat Emptorium’s Free Day Care, where they can bob for apples in the piranha tank, play Russian Roulette with a single shot pistol, or sign up for swimming lessons at the shark tank.
And, yes folks, you guessed it, no need to worry about the kiddies having those red, runny eyes after cheating death and learning the backstroke because... wait for it... we’re using salt water.
I thought this week we ought to try to look on the bright side of salt systems. Let’s start with the manufacturer’s claims.
"Enjoy sparkling clean water, naturally and automatically. Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again. No more red eyes or itchy skin. No chemical smell. Just pure, clear water for day after day of fun in the sun."
That’s a quote off a marketing brochure. Let’s talk about that statement.
The Way Salt Works:
I bought this book a while ago, called Pool Chlorination Facts, by Robert W. Lowery. I love this book. If you don’t have it, and you have anything to do with taking care of the water quality of pools, you ought to get it. He’s a really smart guy who writes like a regular person. You may have already read his stuff without knowing it. If you ever took the IPSSA water chemistry exam and read those three handbooks they give out to prep for it, then you’ve read his work.
He talks about three types of chlorine generators; the brine system - or the portable bomb as I like to call it, the in-line system, and the in-pool system. Most everything we see in the field these days is the in-line system.
What I got from reading his description of in-line systems is that as the salty water passes through the cell, DC current is applied to it, and that causes three things to be formed; chlorine gas, caustic soda and hydrogen gas.
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 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.
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. You ask the reps why and they shrug their shoulders and tell you that your meds must need tweaking because "our system only produces pH neutral chlorine. It has be something you’re doing wrong because we’re your friends and we would never lie to you."
So, you add gallons and gallons of acid trying to neutralize this skyrocketing pH, which if you read your handbook, Guide to pH, Alkalinity, Water Testing & Water Balance, you know that all that acid is burning off your Total Alkalinity. So, then you start adding DE scoops of baking soda - oh, excuse me, let me put my sales and marketing hat on... ahem... I mean Total Alkalinity Control, $18.99 a twelve pound box - and you’re stuck in this vicious loop of trying to maintain the 80 to 120 ppm Total Alkalinity that our industry preaches to you. But the pH of the baking soda you’re adding is 8.3, or eight times more base than the proper pH of pool water. So, again, you’re raising the pH. So, you pour more acid...
Hmmm... What’s wrong with this picture?
If your calcium hardness is 300 ppm and your water temperature is 88 (pretty common in August around here) and you know your pH is going to be 8.0 before you get back next week, then use your watergram and tell me where your Total Alkalinity ought to be. It lines up at about 22 ppm. Now, you’re going to adjust the water to 7.5 while you’re there. So, what’s the Total Alkalinity supposed to be for 7.5? 70 ppm.
You need to add a few points to it because I don’t think they took 3,500 ppm TDS (salt plus everything else) into account when they built your watergram.
Same example except now it’s dead of winter and the water temp is 45. The watergram lines up at 50 ppm Total Alkalinity at 8.0 and 155 ppm at 7.5
Plug in your own calcium hardness and your own high and low water temps for your region and do the math.
But wait. This can’t be right. Go to the inside door of the salt system controller. Right there it says to keep Total Alkalinity between 80 and 120 ppm and the manufacturer’s rep already told you that they’re your friends and they would never lie to you. So, we’re back to adjusting your meds.
You see, in the textbook world of The Way Salt Works, pH isn’t increased when the chlorine is made, because the hydrogen gas didn’t gas off. So the manufacturers didn’t have to put any money toward research that would promulgate new and unique guidelines for salt pools. Because it wouldn’t have sounded nearly as good saying "Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again", if they’d had to tack on, "But, boy, are you ever gonna need a buttload of acid and baking soda and a way more sophisticated test kit than that measly little two-way tester you got away with when you were using tablets. Now you have to learn about calcium levels because if you don’t, that pH swing inherent in our system is going to rip right through that pretty plaster of yours. If we don’t scale it with high pH and high Total Alkalinity when you try to follow current water chemistry guidelines, then we’ll burn holes in it with low pH and low Total Alkalinity when you only do half the job and just adjust pH, because at the lower Total Alkalinities, there won’t be as much buffer and so when you do your acid demand test and read off the table how much acid to add, it’ll have a more drastic effect on the pH than you anticipated because the table was computed with industry standard 80 to 120 Total Alkalinity in mind ...".
Sorry. I got carried away. My point is that salt pools are a different animal than tablet pools. Standing there and saying that they’re not, when even the pool cleaners know that they are, just gives guys like me more ammunition to point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes and he’s a liar to boot.
So where else was this rambling screed going? Oh, yes. I was supposed to enumerate the good things about salt systems...
Oh, yeah! Here’s one.
You know how some of the manufacturers call the mode that forces the system to maximum output for 24 hours Super Chlorinate? Well, that’s a lie. But the good news is, it’s only half a lie. Or some part of a lie. How much of a lie depends on how much Combined Chlorine is in your pool and where the salt system output is when you turn on Super Chlorinate.
For example, if you’re running your system at 100% output and you flick on Super Chlorinate, the system will produce at 100%. Hmmm... That’s not going to work.
But, if you’re running your system at 20%, and with water temp and swimmer load and debris load and every other load, that 20% setting produces 2 ppm Free Available Chlorine for you, but your Total Chlorine is 2.5 ppm, which means that 0.5 is Combined Chlorine and you need 7 to 10 times the level of Combined Chlorine to get to Breakpoint and burn it out, then going to Super Chlorinate for 24 hours, in this example, will create 8 ppm more Free Available Chlorine. Somewhere around 5 ppm Free Available Chlorine, you’ll hit Breakpoint and burn out that 0.5 Combined Chlorine, leaving you with 5 ppm Free Available Chlorine. Maybe. As you can see, this is an exact science.
So, how do they get away with labeling the switch Super Chlorinate? Because it’s just an industry term. It has no definition beyond what the user gives it. It may mean something to you as a pool professional. But that doesn’t mean they can’t redefine it to mean "produce at 100% capacity for 24 hours".
That way, they can say, "Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again" Which is way easier than saying, "Never buy, mix or measure chlorine again... as long as you never have to run your salt system at a level that precludes achieving an output 7 to 10 times your level of Combined Chlorine".
And that is a look on the bright side of salt systems. Caveat Emptor.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
BAD FOR THE GLASS...
When Mulwray’s Japanese gardener said that to Jake Gittes in the noir classic, Chinatown, Jake had no idea the gardener had just given him the key to unlock the secret of Mulwray’s death.
I had a similar experience this week, when someone sent me an e-mail telling me they had just attended a seminar where one of the Big Three manufacturer’s reps had let on that there might be this teensy weensy little issue called electrolysis (read galvanic corrosion) causing just the slightest amount of damage to everything metal that a salt system might touch. Everything except the titanium plates of the salt cell, of course. You see, it’s the fact that they use titanium - the fifth most cathodic metal in the galvanic series - that has set the whole galvanic corrosion ball rolling in our pools. Well, that’s not entirely fair. The titanium would be okay if it weren’t for the salt turning the otherwise harmless pool water into an electrolyte. In other words, you can install a salt cell in your pool’s plumbing. Just don’t put any salt in the water.
Anyway, the rep told the class to get some zinc balls and put them in the pump baskets. And, you know, he’s right.
Dr. Stephen C. Dexter, Professor of Applied Science and Marine Biology, says just that in an article titled Galvanic Corrosion:
“Suppose the steel member of a structure is being damaged by contact with silicon bronze. That galvanic corrosion can be stopped by connecting both metals to a third metal more anodic than either of them. According to our Galvanic Series, the third metal in this case could be magnesium, zinc, aluminum, or cadmium. In practice, and for reasons too complex to cover here, zinc works best... The zinc corrodes preferentially to both of the original members of the couple. The steel is now protected, and the zinc is called a sacrificial anode.”
http://www.ocean.udel.edu/seagrant/publications/corrosion.html
That reference also has a nice graph that shows where all the metals fall in the galvanic series. But getting back to the rep being right, for once.
It made me start remembering how most marine hulls have zincs attached to keep galvanic corrosion from occurring, and how maybe if we really did put those zinc balls into pump strainer baskets, we could put this whole galvanic corrosion thing to bed and we could all start feeling okay again about selling those salt systems. And then I could get on with complaining about the one hundred and one other things about the pool biz that just drive me up the wall.
Then it occurred to me how long they’ve been selling salt systems, and when problems first started showing up for me on my pool route. That 72 square foot stainless steel DE filter that I talked about, the one with pinhole leaks after ten months? It happened in 2001. That painted tank I talked about failing at the welds just happened last year. But that builder is an FNG, or New Guy, for those of you with delicate sensibilities, and I guess he missed a few memos from the BOHICA department.
So, then I was torn. I couldn’t decide if we ought to applaud the Big Three for finally bringing it out in the open, or lynch them for waiting so long to tell us. Because there’s only two takes you can have on it.
Either (a), they’re so thoroughly incompetent that they didn’t even Google the subject before they jumped in with both feet and started selling salt systems.
Or (b), they knew about this stuff all along.
If you chose (a), well... Thank you for playing. We have some nice parting gifts for you on your way out the door.
If you chose (b), now you’re talking. I can see you’ve got your sales and marketing hat on. Cha Ching, baby!
But I tried to push my inherent bias against snake oil peddlers out of my mind and just focus on the facts. Zinc balls might just be the answer, even if the idea was initially presented during a sales pitch. I mean, during a factory training seminar.
So, I called a good friend of mine and somewhat of a pool guru hereabouts, and ran the zinc balls idea by him.
And he said, “Great. So then all we have to worry about is damaged coping, ruined decks and the environmental issues. Right?”
It took a few seconds for the sting of his bitch slap to subside. But when it did, it was all clear to me. Mulwray didn’t accidentally drown in the ocean, like they tried to make us to believe. Mulwray was murdered in his own back yard, drowned in that damned salt pool.
Yeah... The salt is still bad for the glass, I mean grass... I knew it all along.
Those sales and marketing guys are really something. They throw us a bone like zinc balls and stand there and maybe they take a few minutes of heat from a few guys in the class who knew something was up all along. But then they expect us to roll over and be grateful for the bone and ignore the mountain of other issues left unaddressed.
Because after all, they are looking out for our best interests, right?
To quote Samuel L. Jackson, right before he blew enormous holes in Big Brain Brad, “Allow me to retort...”
Hayward cream colored DE filter tanks. First it was the tops. Then the bottoms.
Jandy first generation 90 degree turn backwash valves. O-rings? We don’t need no stinking O-rings!
Pentair Mini Max first generation Lo NOX heaters. Once a Cash Crop for every warranty man.
First generation Polaris 340's. On your mark! Get set! Go! (really fast and then stop and never move again)
Innumerable generations of Jandy temp sensors. Now they work. But how many revs did we go through before we got where we are today? That was the first time I heard the punch line, “That’s a problem. And we’re working on it.”
Jacuzzi Everything. Such a popular brand that Jacuzzi Earthworks DE filter grids are now special order from Canada.
Stop me when I tell a lie.
I hope some day I can crack wise about the fading memory of salt systems, too. Because as bad as these other problems were and as much profit as they eventually sucked out of the sale - even with warranty support from the manufacturer- they were each their own little self contained disaster.
On the other hand, salt screws up everything.
And BOHICA? It means Bend Over Here It Comes Again.
When Mulwray’s Japanese gardener said that to Jake Gittes in the noir classic, Chinatown, Jake had no idea the gardener had just given him the key to unlock the secret of Mulwray’s death.
I had a similar experience this week, when someone sent me an e-mail telling me they had just attended a seminar where one of the Big Three manufacturer’s reps had let on that there might be this teensy weensy little issue called electrolysis (read galvanic corrosion) causing just the slightest amount of damage to everything metal that a salt system might touch. Everything except the titanium plates of the salt cell, of course. You see, it’s the fact that they use titanium - the fifth most cathodic metal in the galvanic series - that has set the whole galvanic corrosion ball rolling in our pools. Well, that’s not entirely fair. The titanium would be okay if it weren’t for the salt turning the otherwise harmless pool water into an electrolyte. In other words, you can install a salt cell in your pool’s plumbing. Just don’t put any salt in the water.
Anyway, the rep told the class to get some zinc balls and put them in the pump baskets. And, you know, he’s right.
Dr. Stephen C. Dexter, Professor of Applied Science and Marine Biology, says just that in an article titled Galvanic Corrosion:
“Suppose the steel member of a structure is being damaged by contact with silicon bronze. That galvanic corrosion can be stopped by connecting both metals to a third metal more anodic than either of them. According to our Galvanic Series, the third metal in this case could be magnesium, zinc, aluminum, or cadmium. In practice, and for reasons too complex to cover here, zinc works best... The zinc corrodes preferentially to both of the original members of the couple. The steel is now protected, and the zinc is called a sacrificial anode.”
http://www.ocean.udel.edu/seagrant/publications/corrosion.html
That reference also has a nice graph that shows where all the metals fall in the galvanic series. But getting back to the rep being right, for once.
It made me start remembering how most marine hulls have zincs attached to keep galvanic corrosion from occurring, and how maybe if we really did put those zinc balls into pump strainer baskets, we could put this whole galvanic corrosion thing to bed and we could all start feeling okay again about selling those salt systems. And then I could get on with complaining about the one hundred and one other things about the pool biz that just drive me up the wall.
Then it occurred to me how long they’ve been selling salt systems, and when problems first started showing up for me on my pool route. That 72 square foot stainless steel DE filter that I talked about, the one with pinhole leaks after ten months? It happened in 2001. That painted tank I talked about failing at the welds just happened last year. But that builder is an FNG, or New Guy, for those of you with delicate sensibilities, and I guess he missed a few memos from the BOHICA department.
So, then I was torn. I couldn’t decide if we ought to applaud the Big Three for finally bringing it out in the open, or lynch them for waiting so long to tell us. Because there’s only two takes you can have on it.
Either (a), they’re so thoroughly incompetent that they didn’t even Google the subject before they jumped in with both feet and started selling salt systems.
Or (b), they knew about this stuff all along.
If you chose (a), well... Thank you for playing. We have some nice parting gifts for you on your way out the door.
If you chose (b), now you’re talking. I can see you’ve got your sales and marketing hat on. Cha Ching, baby!
But I tried to push my inherent bias against snake oil peddlers out of my mind and just focus on the facts. Zinc balls might just be the answer, even if the idea was initially presented during a sales pitch. I mean, during a factory training seminar.
So, I called a good friend of mine and somewhat of a pool guru hereabouts, and ran the zinc balls idea by him.
And he said, “Great. So then all we have to worry about is damaged coping, ruined decks and the environmental issues. Right?”
It took a few seconds for the sting of his bitch slap to subside. But when it did, it was all clear to me. Mulwray didn’t accidentally drown in the ocean, like they tried to make us to believe. Mulwray was murdered in his own back yard, drowned in that damned salt pool.
Yeah... The salt is still bad for the glass, I mean grass... I knew it all along.
Those sales and marketing guys are really something. They throw us a bone like zinc balls and stand there and maybe they take a few minutes of heat from a few guys in the class who knew something was up all along. But then they expect us to roll over and be grateful for the bone and ignore the mountain of other issues left unaddressed.
Because after all, they are looking out for our best interests, right?
To quote Samuel L. Jackson, right before he blew enormous holes in Big Brain Brad, “Allow me to retort...”
Hayward cream colored DE filter tanks. First it was the tops. Then the bottoms.
Jandy first generation 90 degree turn backwash valves. O-rings? We don’t need no stinking O-rings!
Pentair Mini Max first generation Lo NOX heaters. Once a Cash Crop for every warranty man.
First generation Polaris 340's. On your mark! Get set! Go! (really fast and then stop and never move again)
Innumerable generations of Jandy temp sensors. Now they work. But how many revs did we go through before we got where we are today? That was the first time I heard the punch line, “That’s a problem. And we’re working on it.”
Jacuzzi Everything. Such a popular brand that Jacuzzi Earthworks DE filter grids are now special order from Canada.
Stop me when I tell a lie.
I hope some day I can crack wise about the fading memory of salt systems, too. Because as bad as these other problems were and as much profit as they eventually sucked out of the sale - even with warranty support from the manufacturer- they were each their own little self contained disaster.
On the other hand, salt screws up everything.
And BOHICA? It means Bend Over Here It Comes Again.
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