Pool Service Knowledge Every Tech Should Know – Vol 2

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Welcome to the pool game podcast show. This episode is called the Pool Text Knowledge Guy

Volume 2, and this is where I go over certain aspects of pool service that you may not really

know about and learn when you're being trained or if you're buying a pool route or if you're

thinking of your backyard pool, these are things that you kind of get by being out there,

and these little bits of knowledge I'm going to share with you today in this podcast.

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Again, these are things that you kind of learn while you're out there, the troubleshoot,

and sometimes you really can't find the answer without experiencing things. I remember when I first

started service, there were no cell phones, of course, and there was no Google really, and so I had

to take off my first motor and replace it, and without any instructions, I kind of had to just use

my logic skills to figure out how this thing worked, and it's not super difficult, actually,

but if you've never done it before, it can be challenging, and I was able to do it. It took me

a lot longer than it does now, but I was able to work my way through it. So this is just to

impart sort of knowledge to you so that you don't have to kind of struggle through things.

The first one I'll start with is if you have a rainbow offline chlorinator, that's the chlorinator

with the black two-bings, it's the rainbow 300, they have different variations of that one as well,

but you'll see this white chlorinator and it's four three-inch tablets and these black tubes.

Now there's a couple things about this all-cover here. The main thing I wanted to cover is if the

tablet are not melting in there, and I recently did a podcast on toxic chemicals and fumes, and so

if the tablet's not melting in here, it is sitting in there in the chamber, and it's basically

there's no water really in there. When you open it up, you're going to get a really toxic

plume of gas, and it may knock you down for sure and make you gag and cough. So be careful

whenever you get to a new account, or an account where the chlorine level is struggling

that has a chlorinator. The first thought I always have when I'm at a pool with the offline

chlorinator, and the chlorine level is near zero, and I know there's tablets in there,

as the tablets aren't dissolving, and that's why it's at zero, and so I open that carefully,

and make sure that I don't stand over it when I open it, and so sure enough, in most cases,

as the tablets aren't dissolving, there is a little check valve on the bottom, and if you turn

over the chlorinator, you're going to see a little elbow, and inside that elbow, there's like a little

BB, basically, and unscrew it, take the, turn the pool off, unscrew the black tubing, take

that elbow off, and shake it by your ear, and you should hear the little BB going back and forth.

If you don't hear it, that means there's a clogged up with gunk, basically, from the trincler

tablet. You just simply replace them, so what I do, and I'll paint there so you can clean them.

I've there been able to successfully do this. I just replace them. I carry a bunch of them

in my truck. They're like six or seven bucks, and just replace it, and that will get the tablets

to dissolve in the chlorinator guaranteed, that that's the problem, why the tablets aren't dissolving.

It's that little check valve elbow that's clogged up. Changing that, the tablets will start

dissolving, but use caution again, with the end dissolved tablets in there. A couple more things,

with the chlorinator, I was going to say just one more thing, but I'll just say two things.

Now, black tubing is exposed to the sunlight, and it can't get brittle and cracked, so you want

to test it ever so often. Maybe every few months kind of bend it a little bit with your hand to

see if it's cracking, because if that tubing cracks, and this has happened to me more than one occasion,

it'll drain the pool down significantly, especially if the skimmer has a float diverter valve,

it'll just drain it down, pass the skimmer, and continue to drain it down until the pool is

virtually empty, until it gets to the main drain, basically at that point. So be careful with

the black tubing, check it off, and make sure it's not cracked or brittle, because if that cracks,

it's going to of course cause the pool to leak water. I would order some black tubing

carrying your truck, this, this out in six foot sections, their coil depth, so they're easy to

store, and having a couple of these on your truck is really helpful with these chlorinators.

The last thing is if you can't get the lid off these things, and this is problematic out there,

when the lids get stuck on there. Now some guys use a 2x4, I like using my large channel locks.

I carry these large blue channel locks, you should have them there. Let me get you actually

the product, so you can kind of get visualize what it is. You can look this up on Home Depot,

it's the 16 and a half inch tongue and groove slip joint plier. I call them channel locks,

and it's by channel locks, so that's why I call them channel locks, but I guess they're

actually called tongue and groove slip joint plier. You start pretty gigantic channel locks,

I'll just take the blue part of the handle and set it inside the top of the chlorinator,

and then I'll put my weight on it and turn it off, and the reason why those lids get stiff and

get stuck on there, there's an o-ring in there that after exposure to the trichlor and the gases

in there expands and gets really fat, and it expands to like you know 10 times this normal size,

believe it or not, you'll see when you take it off, look at the o-ring, it'll be like gigantic in

there, and just replace it with an o-ring, so carry some of those o-rings for the pinter chlorinators

on your truck, and you can put them in there and change them often, so that's the only reason why

the lids get stuck on there, that o-ring expands out, and it kind of causes like a seal basically,

and change it o-ring, though there's going to be so easy to get off going forward at that point,

but it's something to note that there can be a lot of problems with these chlorinators,

and unless you've worked on them, for the first time you're going to be kind of

clueless of why it's not kind of dissolving in there, you know why the lids not coming off,

and I hope this helps solve the mystery there for you, this one here is for those of you who

service pools in a D filter with a backwash, sometimes you get to the pool and the filter pressures

at 30 psi, but it may be on a day where you really can't clean that filter, and it's something that

you want to just kind of bring the psi down a little bit without doing much, and you may not even

have DE on your truck, and I've had the situation before where I forget to bring DE with me,

and the pool psi is at 30, you can do something called a quick backwash, and I've done this successfully,

it's not in the manual anywhere, it's probably not recommended by the manufacturer, they would want

you to do a two minute backwash and then recharge it with DE, but I found a quick backwash really

works in more than one situation, of course the primary situation I work in is if you're at 30 psi

and you want to just get the pool down a little bit until the next week, and then you can of course

clean the filter or fully backwash it, it's also a great way to check if there's something wrong with

the pool, I think the quick backwash also offsets some problems with priming and things like that,

so if you see that the water is not filling up, the pump pot or wet end, you look in the lid and

it's like half full of water, and it's kind of churning and struggling, that's because it just needs

one of these quick backwashes, maybe the automatic cleaner is not moving or the sposs spillway is

just trickling over when it should be flowing well, so turn the pool off, and then you want to backwash

for about 25 seconds, 30 seconds, and then put it back in the pool mode, and you'll see the PSI

drop down, maybe the 20 or 22, and that's enough to get you through the week in most cases,

it's also enough to get the water flowing in the pump basket, and it doesn't really

expel a lot of diatomaceous earth, and that's something that is effective with DE filters,

now let me cover a couple backwash points since I'm talking about this, if you

open up the backwash valve and put it in the backwash mode, I should say, and nothing but clear

water comes out, don't worry about that, it's because probably the diatomaceous earth is really

clay-like and covering the grid, so what you want to do when that happens is turn the pool off,

put it back in filter mode, turn the pool on for 30 seconds, turn the pool off, put it back in

backwash, turn the pool on, and I can guarantee you that putting it in backwash, clear water comes out,

turning it off, putting it back in filter mode for 20 seconds, or so, and then putting it back

in backwash mode, you normally would get a lot of the DE to come off at that point, because you're

kind of like shocking the system by quickly going to backwash, back to filter, and then backwash

again, and that kind of loosens up the DE and gets it to come out, so that's how you solve that

problem, if you aren't getting any dirty water coming out when you first initially backwash the

filter, and last, if you do backwash the filter for one and a half minutes or two minutes for a full

backwash, the question always is, well, how much diatomaceous earth do I put back in, do I put,

and it depends on the scooper if you're using the true one-pound scooper, which is the large

orange scooper, or if you're using the half-pound scooper, which is like the blue or light blue scooper,

actually there's like a large light blue scooper now, so basically diatomaceous earth when it's dry,

the dry weight is different than the wet weight, it's kind of confusing, but a true one-pound scoop

of DE is one-pound, it's a larger scoop, and the regular scoop is actually half a pound of

dry DE, so you have to put two scoops, but let's just say you're using the large true one-pound

scooper, how much DE put back in, this is very debatable, and it's one of those things where

there's no concrete answer, the manufacturer I think says put half the DE back in, that you normally

would put in the filter cleaning, so if you have a 48 square foot DE filter, you're going to put

like three pounds back in, 60 square foot, you're going to put four pounds, but I really think it's

one of those things where you don't really need a ton of DE back in there, I would say I always put

about two pounds of diatomaceous earth back into a 40 square foot filter, and maybe three pounds

of a 60 square foot filter, you're kind of judges out on your route, how much DE to add back in,

there's no true scientific amount, because you don't know how much diatomaceous earth came off

the grids in the back wash to begin with, and you don't want to over recharge it, I think putting

half the DE back in is too much, in my opinion, so I always err on putting a little bit less DE back in,

and it seems to work out perfectly for me, not overloading the filter with diatomaceous earth,

and I never put half the amount back in to a filter after back washing it,

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let me change gears a little bit and talk about automatic cleaners and pools, and I think

as a pool professional, all your accounts should have an automatic cleaner in the pool,

it really helps speed up your day, it also helps keep the pools clean all week long, and it's a

necessary tool to have in a lot of areas, especially my area of Los Angeles County, where it's really

dusty when the wind blows, and it keeps the dirt on the pool, now the question is, what's the most

effective way to sell these cleaners to customers that are reluctant to buy them, because a lot of

customers like them have them already in the pool and you think over the account, not a problem,

but there are a segment out there that just don't want them in the pool, don't think about it,

some of them may say, well, I hired you to clean the pool and that's why I don't want one,

I want you to clean the pool and vacuum it every week, that's fine, but there is a pretty easy way

to sell these to the customer, and I find that there's two effective ways, one of course is to put

a demo cleaner in the pool, now pick this carefully, because you don't want the demo cleaner to fail,

and the customer is going to be like, yeah, I told you they don't work, so pick your demo cleaner

carefully, I think there are a couple of default demo cleaners that you can drop in the pool and not

worry about, I would say the Hayward Aquinot pool cleaner is probably one of the best demo cleaners,

works in just about every pool, now of course fiberglass and vinyl pools, you would want a demo

something like the zodiac ranger, but for the plaster pools and pebble tech, I like the Hayward Aquinot,

you can also demo the Polaris Max or Atlas cleaner, these are also pretty bulletproof in those pools,

so make sure you set it up for the pool, if it's a VS pump, get the RPM set, you should know how to

set these up pretty good at this point, so setting it up is critical so that it's actually working

in the pool, and these two are pretty effective in keeping the pool clean during those weeks, I'll

leave it in for two or three weeks, then I'll tell the customer if you want to buy it, I'll sell

you one at cost for my supplier, and sometimes they can order one and get a rebate as well,

or you can get the rebate for them, and it's a great idea to demo them first, and the pool

looks so good during the week, that they're going to just love having the cleaner in there,

so I usually sell about, sell these to about 80% of the ones I demo in with no problem,

but there's a small segment, let's say 20% that are like, well I don't really have the money

in my budget right now for one, so I'll think about it, so with those customers, I'll just put one

on my spare cleaners and the pool, and just let it ride it out until they feel comfortable with

buying a cleaner, so I have a lot of Hayward navigators, there was one point where I had like

20 of them in my garage, I had way too many of them, so I had one of my delivery drivers take them,

and he resold them themselves, but these are the ones that I pull out of pools all the time,

any cleaner that you can pull out of a pool, if you have a use Hayward Aquanaut, you can use that,

or even at MX-8, I like using these, and most of the pools, if you can get an MX-8, rebuild it,

one of the guys here in my area uses MX-6s all the time, it just puts them in customers' pools,

and doesn't even worry about charging them, I mean you can do that as well, but I just like using

a spare cleaner, an older one, so I'll tell the customer, I understand you are not ready to buy a

cleaner, I do have a spare cleaner that I can put in the pool, and I'll put it in next week for you,

and just leave it in there until you're ready, and that way you'll get the same benefit of having

the cleaner, and eventually I know you're going to purchase one, but for now leave the spare cleaner,

and sometimes you'll leave it in there for a year, and it's one of those things where eventually

they will actually buy one, hopefully, if not you can leave the spare cleaner indefinitely,

it doesn't really cost you anything to have the spare cleaner in there, and it does save you time,

and this is one way to actually have a cleaner in the pool, where the customer is reluctant to buy one,

I just like having cleaners in all the pools, because it makes again your job easier,

you can do more pools, and you're not spending so much time maddening your vacuuming the pools

with getting the dirt out, it just frees you up to do other things, and if you have spare cleaners,

utilize them, don't leave them in your garage, if you put into a cleaner in the customer's pool,

pull the old cleaner out, and refurbish it, and use it as a spare cleaner, but definitely demo

those cleaners in the pool, when you demo a suction cleaner, the customer more than likely

will eventually purchase the cleaner, so I hope you found these tips helpful, and if you're looking

for other podcasts, you can find them on my website, swimmingfullearning.com, click on the podcast

banner, there'll be a drop down menu of over 1800 podcasts for you there as well,

and if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer you can learn more at pulgaycoaching.com,

thanks for listening to this podcast, I guess you're weak, God bless.

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