Bob Lowry Explains Why Borates Are a Game-Changer

0:00This episode is brought to you by Hasa. Liquid is clearly better. Liquid chlorine is the highest purity, works immediately, has no added signaric acid or calcium, and it will leave your pool safe, clean, and clear. And by the bottom feeder professional grade battery-powered vacuum system, it sucks to clean pools, so cleaning pools sucks less. Get $100 off with code DVB100. This episode is brought to you by Schimmer, the number one pool service software in North America. With Schimmer, you can streamline your schedule, grow your revenue, and keep your customers coming back with five-star service. Whether you're a one-person operation or an established team, Schimmer is your partner in success. Visit getschimmer.com slash pool guy to try Schimmer for free for 30 days. And welcome to the Pool Game Podcast show. It is best to Bob Lowry. I'm going to talk to Bob

1:08about borrades, and if you haven't heard about adding borrades to a pool, the 50 parts per million, this is definitely a podcast for you. And Bob Lowry goes over the benefits of borrades, and a lot of other aspects. I'm using borrade on your pool route. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. For me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. So let's jump right in here and talk about borrades now. I'm a big fan of borrades. I've been using borrades now. I've been testing them thoroughly and different. My pool has been my test pool. I let my pool run for three weeks without chlorine, with a borrade level of 31 or 32 parts per million. It was pretty low. I kept it low for the test. And after two weeks, I got a little bit of algae on one step, and then after three weeks with no

2:13chlorine, this was in April when it was warming up. The water was about in the 70s. I had the pools that are turning cloudy on me. So with borrades, it took three weeks for the pool to turn cloudy, with no chlorine for three weeks. I don't tell my wife I left it with no chlorine for three weeks, by the way. So let's talk about borrades. You want to give the listeners an introduction of what adding borrades will actually do. What does it mean that borrades to your pool? Okay. Well, first of all, borrades are a one-time thing. So it's not something you need to check every week and make adjustments to anything. You add it once, and you only need to check it maybe once a month, even every two months. And if the level drops down a little bit, raise it back up. The recommended level is 50 parts per million. And so at least that gets us over that part of it. But borrades do two things in water. One is they help prevent the pH from going up as fast or as high. So it is a pH buffer to prevent the pH from going up. And they work really great

3:20with chlorine generators. Pools that have always had the pH going up. It's a good thing to do, especially with pools that have any kind of aeration, waterfalls, spillovers, negative edge, those types of things, all of those things create aeration and turbulence, and that raises the pH. So if you've got pools that are all the time the pH is going up, first thing you do is lower alkalinity, puts some borrades in the pool. So borrades will prevent the pH from going up. And the other thing they do, as you just said, is they prevent algae. They do not kill it. So it is technically an algae step, but it's not an algae side. It doesn't actually have any algae side of properties until you go to about 200 parts per million in the pool. But I would not recommend putting two parts per million in the pool. But borrades is you can buy it in three varieties. The one that

4:24I recommend the most is called boric acid. And the reason I like, and regardless of which chemical you buy, once you put it in the water, it is all exactly the same thing. So the type that you buy doesn't matter. But the amount of chloriner, I'm in the amount of chemical you'll need to add, and the adjustment you'll have to make afterward varies. But boric acid, when you put it in, you can push it around with your brush and dissolve it. Some guys have actually used like a hammerhead without the basket on or without the bag on. And that dissolves it in a second. But at any rate using boric acid, it lowers the pH of the pool by 0.2. And it raises, it lowers alkalinity by five parts per million. So essentially it does nothing. You know, lowering the pH in your pool by

5:250.2 is not a big deal. You probably wouldn't even adjust for it. So you put it in and you're done. The other chemicals are sodium tetraborate, ton of hydrate, and sodium tetraborate, decahydrate. And both of those will need more chemical. But in addition, they have a pH of about nine. So when you put 50 parts per million on the pool, it's going to raise the pH of your pool to nine. It's also going to raise your alkalinity by 115 parts per million. And in order to offset that, you will then need to have about 2.5 gallons of myriad of gases to 10,000 gallons to get it back to where you started. So you end up having to make adjustments to pH in alkalinity after you add it. Once it's in the water, they all do the same thing. But you'll just need more chemical and you have to buy myriad of gases and come back and add that. So it just seems easier

6:30to have borca acid if you can find it. Borca, you can usually find it if you can't find it at your wholesale distributor or swimming pool or some distributor. You can sometimes find it at landscape and nursery places because they also sell it for you to use in your lawn, in your in your landscaping or gardening to prevent bugs. So it's a good thing and put it in the water and forget about it. It'll keep your pH from going up so high. Then you can use cinderic acid and your alkalinity to keep the pH from going low. And we talked in the first one about about making the pool stable. And the idea is we make the pH in alkalinity stable by using cinderic acid and alkalinity to keep it from going low. And then we use borca to keep it from going high. And then we use a chlorine that doesn't change the pH. So that makes that whole thing stable.

7:33And that's that's the goal. That's the idea. Yeah. And then there's also some manufactured borate products out there too that are premixed so that they don't race the pH and they can buy those readily online or into supplier too. Yes, they are compensated so you just pour them in. And they may be a little more expensive and they may have to use a little more than the other types that there are I think two or three brands now that are our pH compensated. And you mentioned some of the benefits already of adding borates that keeps the pH from going too high. It also prevents algae growth. Also there's a sparkle to the waters in there. I noticed right away. You know, I try to stick to things that you can prove can we make a move in the laboratory. But they definitely I have I've even made a video at one time of putting some borate in a pool and leaving the camera on. And when you put the borate in a

8:35pool, you can watch the pool change. And it actually changes in sparkles when you first point it in the pool. And also some people claim that it makes the water a little bluer. And it makes it sparkle. And some people claim they can even feel the feel of the water different. But those are hard things to judge and allow. Yeah, for sure. And so the accessible acceptable borate level, you mentioned 50 parts per million. I know that bioguard is now recommending 35 parts per million. Is there a big difference because I've tested my pool at 28 parts per million. And then I raised it to 48 50 parts per million. I didn't really notice a huge difference in the levels but is there, you know, is there a big difference between 35 and 50? Probably not. The advantage, of course, is that it is acting as a buffer and analogist at. So raising it gives you more of both of those. So there isn't an advantage if you have a problem

9:38with a pool that always gets algae or, you know, has the pH going up all the time and so on. So there is an advantage to having a little more buffer in the pool. I know the reason that BiOLAM uses 35 and it's not, it probably isn't for what you think it is. But EPA, first of all, came out and said that the maximum level for borate should be 35. And so BiOLAM came out at 35. But subsequently that was revisited and some additional information came out and they said that 50 would be okay. And I actually have some people running pools at 70 parts per million of borate. But the claim is that it gets to be toxic. And frankly, the toxicity of borate is about the same as it is for table salt. So it's not as dangerous as that would maybe have you believe.

10:43But the toxicity is that you need to fork to be toxic. Probably deathly, you would need to consume five grams of pure borate, which is a lot. And in order to do that, just to do a little bit of mental math on it, five grams is 5,000 milligrams. So a part per million is the same thing as a milligram per liter. So in order to get, if you had 50 milligrams per liter and you needed to get to 5,000, you would need to consume 100 liters of pool water to get to five grams. And 100 liters is about 26 gallons of water. So you would need to consume 26 gallons of water and that would all

11:47have to be before you let any water out. Because borate doesn't bio accumulate in any mammals. So you would have to keep drinking it until you consume 26 gallons. So which is obviously impossible. Dogs that claim that four times are four times more susceptible. But I think that's probably because of size, you know, an average animal is 50 or an average, you know, big guy these days is about 200. So, you know, his four times more susceptible. But even at that, even if you divide that by four, a dog would have to drink six gallons of water without being to have a problem. And it doesn't bio-humanize so it resets to zero tomorrow. So it's just, I don't think a dog can get to him enough to have a problem from the pool. But nonetheless, there is a toxicity for it. But

12:49there also is a toxicity for salt. There's also a maximum level for the cider acid of 100 parts per million. And look how many pools there are at two or three or four hundred parts per million a cider acid. So we go over those limits all the time anyway. So I think bio lab is just covering themselves in case there was any kind of a legal action ever taken that they could say, no, we followed what EPA said. Got it. And then, you know, also, you can explain that parts per million is just a small measurement in 10,000 gallons of water. So right there is also another thing that focus on, too, is not 50 parts per million in 10,000 gallons of water is not a lot of the product in there. Well, yeah, put it this way. We think that one part for one percent is small, correct? Yeah. One percent would be small. It takes 10,000 parts per million to eat for one percent. Okay. So, so we're talking about, you know, a far per million is the same as one inch in 16 miles.

13:57Yeah, that's a part per million. So pretty incredible. It's really is. It's very small. And the Pool Bay podcast show is teamed up with UPA to bring you affordable, reliable, liability insurance starting at just $64 a month, get up to $2 million in coverage, and the members of my coaching group get an even lower rate, protect your business and your piece of mind. Sign up with UPA today by clicking the link in the podcast description. So I've heard this before, you know, using boroughs in a residential pool, Florida and in particular, I've heard this mention. I don't think there's too many boroughs in their NSF approved them. I'm not sure I haven't researched it, but they are EPA approved. And so can you use boroughs, you know, if you're looking at the law just legally in a residential or a commercial pool. Well, residential, there are no, there are no rules, regulations, guides,

14:59health codes. There's nothing but residential pools. So you can put whatever you want in a residential and most health codes do not say that you can't use boroughs. They don't specifically say you can't use it. And until there is a guideline for it, then you can use it. And there are no health problems with doing it. Many pools in a lot of areas in the country, you can use it. And whether or not you want a product needs to be NSF approved, that goes state-by-state and almost health code by ask code. So you can, in general, say that you can't use it. Why do you think that so many distributors and poolsters don't even stock a boray product? Well, borayed has only gotten popular in the last two or three years. And part of it has to do largely with me and me pushing my books and people getting my books to

16:00take care of their pools and stuff and realizing that boroughs is a good thing. The boroughs have been the first patent on using boroughs in swimming pool was in 1984 by John Gerber. The John Gerber company was actually John Gerber. And they had a patent on it from 1984 until 2001. And then they let the patent go and the Gerber company wasn't around anymore. But they sold a product that was borayed and gloryed together. It was a mixed variety for you. But nonetheless, it was a a great product. It does a great thing in pools. Boric acid and boroughs have been used for 150 years to do laundry. Boric acid is used in eye drops. Boric acid is used in foot powder. Borax is used in foot powder. It's used on humans and around places all the time. You can put it in your garden and then eat your tomatoes. So it's not a problem.

17:06And the problem is that it just hasn't been popular. And distributors are, you know, supply and demand. You know, if there's something out there that everybody wants, they're going to cover, they're going to handle it. And if not, there are plenty of places that you can buy this material from. It's not difficult to get. It's a little bit more expensive. But you can actually buy borax at the grocery store. You can buy it in the laundry section to do your laundry. And a box is about five pounds of borax. So you can go buy a bunch of boxes at the grocery store and throw it at any pool. But then you have to adjust the pH in that particular one. But you still need to adjust, you will need to adjust your pH back now. But many guys told me once I start calling landscaping places and home depots and lows and stuff, saying, you know, can I talk to the garden department? Not the pool department. Can I talk to the garden department? You support acid for my garden? Oh, sure. Got a 50 pound bag. Yeah, we sell it that way.

18:12So you may find out that it's available from other distributors and it's maybe a little cheaper than a pool distributor. But some of the pool corpse in California, for instance, they have it. And I don't know whether it's going to SKU yet, but I know that they do have it. And service guys, you know, some of these service guys decide to switch all of their pools and they want to go buy a pallet of it to switch all their pools. So great. Yeah, good information on borax there. I think people that don't know about it are going to really open their eyes to something that is relatively new, I guess, talked about. And I think it's something that people need to actually know that's available on the market and all the benefits that we talked about. So let's talk personally. We think it's a good thing. I've written about it. I've ruined it. I've got on my website, there are five technical bulletins that you can read online for free

19:15on my website or you can download them as a PDF. And one of the borax technical bulletins is nine pages long. And borax are a chapter in the pool chemistry for residential pools book. And if you're looking for other podcasts, you can go to my website to me poollearning.com, where I have over a 1900 podcast for you to download and listen to. And of course, I have a lot of podcasts with Bob Lowry as well. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Hey, grocery a week. God bless. This episode is brought to you by Hasa providing products that deliver clean, healthy water for every aspect of every day life. The bottom feeder battery powered vacuum system, portable, powerful and only waste 12 pounds. And skimmer gets skimmer America's number one pool service software. Podcast listeners can try skimmer for free at get skimmer.com. Backslash pool guy.