1099 vs W-2, Water Balance, and Pool Industry Realities

Insurance Interlude: 1099 vs W-2, Water Balance, and Pool Industry Realities

In this episode of Thursdays with Wayne & Steve, the show opens with a quick look at the winter weather hitting the Northeast before diving into two important conversations affecting pool professionals: employee classification in the service industry and the importance of water balance and documentation in pool care.

Joining Steve for the Insurance Interlude is Pat Grignon from the California Pool Association, where they explore the ongoing debate between 1099 independent contractors and W-2 employees in the pool service industry.

1099 vs W-2: What Pool Companies Need to Know

Steve and Pat discuss the legal and operational differences between hiring technicians as independent contractors (1099) versus employees (W-2). While some companies successfully operate with contractors who maintain their own businesses, problems arise when contractors function essentially as employees.

The conversation highlights a real-world case where a company classified dozens of workers as independent contractors, even though they only worked for that company. The result was a state investigation and a $750,000 fine, demonstrating how seriously regulators view employee misclassification.

Pat explains that legitimate 1099 relationships typically require:

• Workers operating their own independent business
• Maintaining their own insurance
• Working for multiple clients
• Using their own equipment

Later in the episode, Wayne shares a call from a listener in Port Orange, Florida dealing with corrosion around brass light fittings in two stainless steel pools.

After discussing the issue, it becomes clear that the root cause was not high total dissolved solids (TDS), but severely unbalanced water chemistry.

The technician had been lowering the pH to 6.8, which is far below recommended swimming pool levels. Combined with low alkalinity readings around 40–50 ppm, the water had become extremely corrosive.

Wayne walks through the fundamentals of restoring proper balance:

• Maintain pH between 7.4–7.6
• Keep alkalinity between 80–120 ppm
• Maintain calcium hardness above 150 ppm
• Monitor TDS relative to source water

The example serves as a reminder that water balance is critical, especially when dealing with metal components or unusual pool construction materials.

Why Documentation Protects Service Companies

The episode closes with a discussion about the importance of record keeping when servicing pools, particularly after renovations or plaster work.

If problems arise after a pool build or resurfacing, contractors may ask for detailed chemistry logs to determine whether improper water chemistry caused the issue.

Maintaining records from systems like:

• Skimmer
• Pool Brain
• PayThePoolMan

can provide service companies with data-backed proof that proper chemistry was maintained.

Without documentation, pool companies may struggle to defend themselves when blame is assigned for plaster defects or equipment failures.

If your question is fea

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:53

Yeah, it just kind of depends. Because if I W2 someone whose aspirations are to, you know, in 18 months go start their own thing, you know, like so are they that now I'm now now I'm making you sign something that you're not going, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 1:07

Like, cause then I would feel like I just I laid out tens of thousands of dollars for you, you know, over the course of two years and you're gonna leave. Like I I want some more time, I want some more time than that. But like even I mean to be honest, like if you come on with me like at a year and a half, like you're still you're still going to classes and stuff. So like you're still not even really, you know. So but I that's what I want to know because it's like uh you know, we 1099 here and it's hard to 1099, and we we really do 1099, but like uh at what point do you think about going to this W-2?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

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SPEAKER_08 3:18

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the insurance interlude with your host, Steve Sherwood from Talking Pools Podcast, and our guest, Pat Grignon from California Pool Association. So, Pat, uh, thanks so much for coming on. We always love having you here, and uh the topics they just they keep rolling, man. I thought, like after doing this for a while, that like we would actually be running out of topics. And like I said, like a snowball rolls downhill, uh, it just gets bigger and bigger, and there's just more and more stuff that we can talk about, right?

SPEAKER_06 3:47

Yeah, never a dull moment. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me on. Yep, of no problems.

SPEAKER_08 3:52

I we talk a lot about the difference between 1099 and W-2, and we've had whole shows dedicated to like the difference between the two, right? So I wanted to talk a little bit about um, because I 1099 my guys and I I 1099 them, and they have their own pools and they have their own liability insurance with you. We're named as additionally unsured on each other's policies and stuff. But you know, I and I it's the age-old argument. Like, I see people going back and forth on the Facebook groups that, like, no, like you have to W-2, and like W-2 is the way to go. So some people like make me feel bad about following the law the way that I'm supposed to. Because like, I feel like the government, of course, they're gonna want me to W-2, you know, your employees if if you could and do payroll taxes, right? But if you're legitimately 1099, and people, you know, there's no issue with that. But is there a point like I don't have that many employees? You know what I mean? Like it's Jen and I, and then we have a few guys doing pools and they also do pools on their own. But like, at what point does it become kind of like you got 15 employees that you're 1099? And I know guys in LA that 1099, 15 different guys or 30 guys, you know? But like, at what point, you know, would the state of California or whatever state you're in kind of be like, what are you doing? And like, why are you doing this? Like, this isn't the real, this isn't what this is actually supposed to be like or be for.

SPEAKER_06 5:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I we actually we worked with uh a company uh out in the valley in the LA area. This is years ago, that ended up, I think there was 35 or 40 1099 independent contractors, but they like literally they didn't have any other jobs, they only worked for this company. They didn't care about the city.

SPEAKER_08 5:40

He's got like three service managers doing 40 hours a week.

SPEAKER_06 5:43

Yeah, yeah. So that was really like that was pretty easy for the state to come in. I think they they dropped a$750,000 fine on him, and he ended up we ended up insuring all of them, and they all got you know their own either sole proprietorship or corp or whatever established. And you know, we ended up getting them insured um, you know, individually.

SPEAKER_08 6:00

They fined him$750,000.

SPEAKER_06 6:03

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it it uh I can't remember if it totally bankrupt him or or like got him really close, but it was it was it no one really got it.

SPEAKER_08 6:12

At most that they'll go see you later, short. Hello, hello Steve, hello Steve's pool service. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 6:18

Yeah, like 750k, man. Like I just I just shit a brick. Did he he gave him like he gave him like wrapped trucks and like company phones and stuff like it? It was pretty obvious. He's running like a full drug operation. Like it was the 60s, man. Like, yeah, they're hit to that scene these days. So yeah, no, it was very blatantly like he was only doing that to to avoid paying payroll taxes and whatnot. But listen, you've got your business structure, you got it structured the right way. They're not just doing pulls for you, they're doing, you know, they're doing pulls, you know, on their own and and they've got their own insurance and their own business entity and the whole ball of wax. You know, out of all the states, certainly, you know, California's up there with the most stringent, you know, regulations for what qualifies for 1099 versus a W-2 and what you have to do. But you know, you can structure your business, whatever makes it fit the best. Now, I think ultimately, if you have what what's nice is that if you have W-2, um, you know, you can structure a company benefits plan that maybe, you know, whatever your employees, maybe you got one, just one, or maybe you have two, and you don't offer it to them, but then you can elect for company or employee benefits for the company.

SPEAKER_08 7:33

Uh does does the insurance does the health insurance suck less for W-2s than it does for 1099?

SPEAKER_06 7:39

For the business for sure.

SPEAKER_08 7:40

Yeah, if you have a business, for 1099, it's 10 for 1099 is tough. And you guys are the ones that get it for me. You know what I mean? It's not coming through you, you're the ones that are looking for it. Yeah, but like you'll come back, and I just you know your agents who are great, um, they'll come back sometimes and be like, uh, here's what you can choose from. And I'm like, where's the rest of the second one? You know, yeah, like literally, like, where's where's the third one? Because there's only two here. And they're like, Oh, yeah, no, in California, like that's your choice. And I'm like, This doesn't feel like a choice. It's this feels this feels like a stick-up. Yeah, you know what I mean? And that's that's that's honestly what it feels like. So with W-2, does would that open up the the range more to for more policies to it? Would okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 8:21

You'd be able to qualify for you know for group versus individual health, even if it's just a group of one or two employees. And so there's a component there, it's worth having a discussion. Obviously, there's an additional cost, you know.

SPEAKER_08 8:33

No, of course, and then I guess as a W-2, like what we understand as a 1099, what constitutes an employee, because I am literally like beholden to that to make sure that I'm following the laws in California. Um, and like you said, it's one of the most stringent ones in all of the country. If you're gonna 1099, like they want your guys to have their own liability insurance and have their own name and their own DBA and all that stuff. But what constitutes an employee on the other end as a W2? And the reason I say this is my dad, God bless his soul, um, he's gonna be retiring this year at 81, right? So he was doing bus driving, you know, for the last couple years and he finally is gonna retire. And like he does some light work, you know, for for like for for other stuff, you know, like what like what if like he like when does that become a thing? You know what I mean? Like when can you say, oh, he works for me, or you know, like you know, I don't employ my dad, but like what if I wanted to get my dad health insurance? Like what what becomes and I'm just I'm giving I'm doing this theoretically just because like there's a lot of people out there where like maybe you're maybe your mom has a job, but she doesn't have health insurance. And you guys have W-2, your whole company, and it makes sense for you to give your mom insurance, right? Like, that's a pretty common that's I would think that's a pretty common thing that a family member needs insurance and you can cover them. So, what do they actually have to do for the company to be a W-2? And like what what does that all look like?

SPEAKER_06 10:04

So, you know, that would be the the main play. I mean, normally, you know, anyone who's gonna be up over 65 is gonna get you know Medicare for their primary, but but all but the supplementals and dental and vision and yada yada yada, like that those are but there's a lot of other stuff. Yeah, let's forget about parents.

SPEAKER_08 10:19

Let's talk about kids. So your kid, he graduated college, he doesn't fall under you're divorced, he doesn't fall under your wife's policy anymore or whatever. Like, you know, he's not getting child support, he's an adult. Yeah, and I I you own a company and you have this kid and he comes and he's not working for you, you know, he's doing something else, but he doesn't get health insurance, you know? Yep. Yeah, do I can I insure this kid or what what happens?

SPEAKER_06 10:45

Yeah, and so it's gonna depend on what your group benefits program allows for. So it mainly boils down to part-time or full-time work, right? Some policies are gonna have like only full-time, 35 hours or more or more are gonna be eligible for your plan. Now, you normally have some flexibility on how you want to set it up. Like ours, ours allows for a version of coverage for like part-time employees, and that could be five hours a week or five hours a month, you know, like so our plan for as an example has flexibility there. So you can create one that you can have a W-2 on a part-time basis, and and you can get get coverage for them and add them on. That's a really good example. You know, I think you know, when you look at, because I always have when I have these conversations, and again, I'm I'm an insurance guy, not a not a business guy, but generally, you know, if you look at the cost, like all right, I'm paying this person 50 grand a year is 1099. All right, well, you know, we call it the load, right? So your load, your payroll taxes, you know, Social Security, Medicare, that's normally 10% of your annual wages. You know, for pull service companies, your work comp cost is normally somewhere between four and six percent of your annual payroll, right?

SPEAKER_08 11:56

So, you know, if if you're looking at growth or gross or gross payroll?

SPEAKER_06 12:02

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so if you're if you look, if you're like, hey, I'm in a spot where I'm thinking about doing this, you know, you take your 50,000 and let's just call it 16, you're gonna be paying 8,000 on top of the 50,000 for that person, and then they're paying taxes and making less take home, the whole ball of wax. So and and a lot of guys too, you know, if if you know if I'm thinking about maybe I want to do sidework and maybe a 1099, and that's okay with you as the business owner, right? You own the service company, you know, you have a 1099 that does work on the side, but they they aren't using your truck and your equipment because you wouldn't be cool with like moonlighting with your own stuff if it was a W-2, right?

SPEAKER_08 12:43

And so the ultimate goal for me with my guys is that they would come with me for a few years and that they would go do their own thing.

SPEAKER_06 12:51

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_08 12:52

It just so happens that like the partnership has worked out out so well with most of them that they just they stay, you know what I mean? Like they they're like, no, like we like these commercial pools in the morning. Like this gives us something to this gives us something to do. You know, like a lot of the a lot of what we do is that like um, you know, I'm doing the training for a lot of these commercial facilities. The these commercial facilities come on and then you know, my guys do the commercials in the morning and then they go do their residentials.

SPEAKER_06 13:16

Yep. Yeah, no, look, and then you set your business up that, you know, really from what I've seen over all the years, like if it can be meeting the kind of the goals of everyone involved, you know, then then that's awesome. You're gonna have a team that sticks around with you long term, they can do their thing, they work hard for for for and ultimately, you know, like everyone's happy because of it. So if ideally, if you can structure the business to meet everyone's goals, then you're gonna have a pretty successful business and folks that are really rowing the boat together. So, you know, it just kind of depends. Because if I W-2 someone whose aspirations are to, you know, in 18 months go start their own thing, you know, like so are they that now I'm now now I'm making you sign something that you're not going, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 14:01

Like, cause then I would feel like I just I laid out tens of thousands of dollars for you, you know, over the course of two years and you're gonna leave. Like, I I want some more time, I want some more time than that. But like, even I mean, to be honest, like if you come on with me like uh at a year and a half, like you're still you're still going to classes and stuff, so like you're still not even really, you know. So, but I that's why I want to know because it's like uh you know, we 1099 here and it's hard to 1099, and we we really do 1099, but like uh at at what point do you think about going to this W-2? And in some of the states, it's easy, man. Like in some of the states it's uh it's a no-brainer, like you want to be a 1099 or they don't charge you that much for W 2, so like just make everybody W 2. In California, it's expensive, and we've we've crossed this uh bridge a few times where we've we've come to it, and I'm like, how much is the W-2? and you give it back to me, and I'm like, okay, like we'll we'll check in later about this. You know what I mean? Like, we're not trying to throw away money either here. Like, I'm running a business, so I want to run my business as efficient as I can. So as long as you're running it within the rules and regulations, you know, because there are a lot of them in California, um, you know, it makes for a happy, like you said, like everybody's rolling the boat and uh, you know, a happy partnership. So, Pat, thanks so much for set shedding some light on the difference between 1099 and W2 and when to move, you know, when to move back and forth with both of those. Um, and I think that those are some questions that like people have, but you don't want to ask, and like uh nobody wants to ask about you know putting their steps on insurance, you know what I mean, when he doesn't really work for the company. And is that is that legal? Is it not legal? So I like where all these insurance interludes go because we talk about the the black and white and we talk about the gray. And uh, you know, we're really just hoping that we can shine some light on what you guys are doing out there and making your jobs and lives a little bit easier in this uh this pool industry that's kind of hard to navigate. So Pat, thank you for being here for me, and also thank you being for being here for the uh for the listeners because I think it helps out a lot. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 16:00

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_08 16:01

If you guys want to look into insurance, California Pool Association will give you one month off if you do an annual subscription with them for your liability insurance. Um so you get one month free, which is amazing. And as always, if you have any questions, reach out to us at talkingpools at gmail.com and uh we'll answer all your questions live on the show. So, guys, thanks for tuning in and we will be chatting at you next week. Thanks, bye.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

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SPEAKER_03 16:55

Happy Thursday, everybody, and welcome to the Talking Pools Podcast. Thursdays with Steve and Wayne. Uh, hope everybody's had a good and a safe week. Sorry for our friends up in the New England area, uh, because uh New York and Boston, particularly Boston, got blasted. I have a friend who lives in Rhode Island and they showed me some pictures of like almost two feet of snow that they're trying to dig through. Um yeah, it was real bad up there, so they're probably still digging through. I wouldn't be surprised. But um, yeah, down here in the mid-Atlantic area, it's uh bright and sunny and like right now 44 degrees. Steven, you're in California, so it's always sunny in California.

SPEAKER_08 17:35

A little early in the day, so it's still 65, but it'll it'll go uh it'll go up. It'll go up to probably 75. But yeah, my parents are in New Jersey and they and this show is probably coming out a few weeks after this has happened already, but they definitely had like over two feet, and that's just like really uh really uncommon nowadays. Yeah. In that area, in like the New York City area. And if they get like one, two, if they had like four snowstorms throughout a winter, that would be pretty a lot. So I think like right now we're at like two or three where you know my dad's had like off of school and different things like that.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

So yeah, it's it's um it is rare, a very rare, and of late. I remember the late uh god, how many years ago the kids were young, sometime in the in the late nineties we had what we what we call back-to-back blizzards. We had a blizzard that dropped about 94. 94. I could be right, yeah. Uh um, what maybe three feet of snow, and then a week later another three feet is something something ridiculous like that. That was not a happy time. I still have the figures of the side.

SPEAKER_08 18:39

The town the town that I grew up in in New Jersey is called Cliffside Park, and it's only a square mile. And for some reason, like our DPW was just awesome. And I probably had growing up less than like four or five days off of school where if you drove outside of town, it would you would go from like zero snow on the street to like four feet of snow on the street.

SPEAKER_06 19:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_08 19:06

So I you know, and I grew up in an era where now you now you uh can just see it right online, right? You don't have to look and see now, you know, before you had to like get a call in the morning, you had to like wait. So it was always like this waiting game of like uh oh we're gonna you know we're gonna have school tomorrow and then you find out later on that you that you don't.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

That's right. Yeah. Well the same way with me back in the sixties and that kind of thing. But yeah, it's it gets a little it gets a little wonky sometimes. We we lucked out the really bad part of the blizzard that that hit New York and Boston and all. Uh we didn't get. We only got about maybe two and a half inches here. That that that was it. That's I mean, we didn't even have to shovel the sidewalks. They were pretty much melting because it was fifty the day before. So go figure. Okay, I'm gonna start off today with a friendly little conversation I had with one of our listeners, and I'm picking up his info here so we can give him appropriate appropriate uh kudos. His name is Sean Lane, and uh Sean actually called me yesterday morning, left a message, he said, I got a problem down here in Florida. Can you help me? And so I I gave him a call back. First of all, he thought I was still working for for the test kit company that begins with a T. Shout out to Lamont, thank you. But uh he lives in Port Orange, Florida, and Port Orange is not it's inland from Daytona Beach, but a little south, so southwest of Daytona Beach on the Atlantic side. And what he had was something odd. He's got two customers that he's had for a long, long time. Both of the customers have a stainless steel shell pool, which is not terribly common in and of itself, but that's what he's got. And so they've been around for, like I said, 30 years. Uh they've been operating fine. Both pools are on salt to generate their chlorine. But he said that recently the brass fittings around the lights were beginning to corrode. And he wanted to know what could be the possible reasons. And his first question was to me, is it high TDS? Because they they have high TDS even though they they drain the water frequently. I won't say, you know, monthly or anything like that, but but every couple of years or so they drain, partially drain a refill. So their source mortar must have high TDS. And so I said, well.

SPEAKER_05 21:22

Before we move on, I want to circle back to something from last week's episode when we talked about calculating pool gallonage chemically. Steve mentioned that he learned that formula from one of Bob Lowry's books, and that's absolutely true. A lot of people in this industry have have learned an in an incredible amount from Bob over the years. But we also want to make sure the proper credit gets mentioned here. The chemical gallonage formula itself was actually developed by the team over at OnBalance, specifically Hugh Hales, Kim Skinner, and Doug Latta. Bob did what Bob does so well, which is helped bring important information to the broader industry through his books and teaching. But the original work on that method came from the OnBalance group. And if you're not familiar with On Balance, you really should be. Their organization has spent years focusing on three major things research into swimming pool water chemistry and plaster behavior, teaching the industry about that research at trade shows and association meetings, and providing consulting and expert witness services when complicated plaster or water chemistry issues arise. These folks have contributed a tremendous amount to the understanding of pool chemistry and plaster science in our industry. So we just wanted to make sure we gave credit where credit is due.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

Horse motor must have high TDS. And so I said, Well, high TDS could contribute to to the corrosion. I said, It's it's not the cause, okay, but it's it's not helping the situation. And then he said, Well, because they're on assault, you know, pH tends to rise, or not tends to rise, does rise when you're dealing with assault systems. So it's a constant struggle for them to to control their pH. I asked him, well, how do you do that? And he said, Well, we add acid. I said, Okay, well, that's appropriate. He said, Yeah, we add acid to bring the pH down to 6.8. Ding ding ding ding. 6.8.

SPEAKER_08 23:27

So that's really, really low.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

That is real, and and I told him that. I said, You don't want to have your, you know, if you're doing a pH adjustment and you're your own salt system, you never want to take it below 7.2 if you can help. But I said I told him I said seven would be stretching it, but 6.8, remember everything's exponential too. Yeah, so pH.

SPEAKER_08 23:49

So even at seven, even at Yeah, even at 7.2, it's not, it's not the people that are in the pool are not gonna have an enjoyable swimming experience at that point.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Exactly, exactly. And and because of that, the alkalinity is low.

SPEAKER_08 24:00

He said they hardly have, I hope he's in I hope he doesn't include the chemicals.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

Yeah, I I don't know. That would be an issue. That's a whole nother whole nother brook podcast. But um he said, Is alkalinity is always low? I said, Well, yeah, because you're adding acid. I asked him how low, and he said like 40 to 50, and I said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Ideal alkalinity, 80 to 120, acceptable, 60 to 180. He said, You gotta bring that up. And then I asked him, Well, what about calcium hardness? And he said, Calcium hardness is really low, it's a silk shell. And I said, Okay, well, yeah, I get it. You don't have to terribly high levels. I said, but still, the whole key here is water balance. And he said, Water balance. He said, I know what that is, but we really don't do anything about it down there. And I said, Well, maybe you need to. Because when you start plugging in numbers into the LSI, I mean, he they've got horribly corrosive water. And I said, Has this has this ever happened before in these pools? And he said, Yeah, it happened a couple of years ago, but I don't remember what we did to to correct it. And I said, Well, let's go over what you do. Okay, so you know what do we always tell people when when you're dealing with water balance? Always look at alkalinity first, because alkalinity kind of controls the situation.

SPEAKER_07 25:14

Okay, it's a buffer, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

It's a buffer, right? So alkalinity and pH work together hand in hand. I always call pH the little puppy following alkalinity all over the place. So if you're raising up your alkalinity, your pH is going to follow to a degree. So that's why you always retest the other when you're testing or when you're treating pH, you retest for alkalinity. When you're treating alkalinity, you retest for pH. Okay. Calcium partners, you got to get it to at least 150 to 200 in his situation. Normally, idea hardness is 200 to 400. I remember it's got a stainless steel pool.

SPEAKER_08 25:45

Yeah, but and even though I mean I get that it's it doesn't matter, but at the same time, like if you're looking at of course it matters, and if you're if you're taking it down to one number, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Yeah. So so you know, on the low end of that is probably okay for him. So I told him 150 200 to 400 is ideal, 150 up is acceptable because you know, most of the time you don't have any control over your hardness reading. Temperature really doesn't play into this. We know it's gonna be they're both warm pools, he said, but they but they don't have heaters. Neither of them have heaters. I said, Well, okay. And TDS, I said, you know, have you ever tested your source water TDS? And he told me no. And I said, Oh, that's one of the first things you do is test your source water TDS so you know what you're working with.

SPEAKER_08 26:35

You gotta know where your start line, you gotta know where your baseline is first, right? Where you're gonna start up.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

And I'm thinking to myself, also, this guy's an instructor. Okay, you should know these things. Maybe I'm just refreshing his memory. And I said, with TDS, remember you don't want to keep it much above 1,500 parts per million above your incoming TDS. So if your incoming TDS is 500 plus 1500 or 2000, anything above 2000, you need to consider partially trading and things like that. So, you know, I talked him through a couple different scenarios and and he's gonna give me a call back in a couple of days, but uh that that just brought into the the the into my muddled mind, you know, the whole water balance uh issue. I know we've talked about water balance on LSI before, and I'm not gonna beat it to death right now, but an example that that Sean gave, a perfect scenario of why calculating water balance is critical, why water balance is so important. And I know that that Rudy's talked about it, you know, a couple of the other hosts on talking pools we've talked about it too, even Shane over in in Australia and all of them. Now they talk about it too. So it's important. Each remember, each pool is completely different. You could have two pools, same source water, you know, neighboring homes, and the chemistry and water mouths be completely different. Completely different. That's why it's critical. New bills. Hey, hey, look who's here. We got a visitor, we got a third co-host. Hi, sweetie. It's it's just critical and critical. And here's the other thing, somebody is reminding me of this, is that we're, you know, I'm part of the CPO task force, uh manual task force, and we're charged with, you know, looking at the manual and things like that and making any changes. And somebody wants to add some one of our people want to add a section about having animals and pools, things like dogs and and and whatnot, mostly dogs, obviously, and how that affects overall chemistry. Well, it affects the animal more than chemistry most of the time, because with with dogs, remember one average size dog is equal to about five people, five humans is that's it?

SPEAKER_08 28:36

I thought it was like 20 or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

No, no, no. Uh wait a minute. Am I mixing up my numbers? Yeah, no, it's 25. I'm sorry, you're right. It's 25. 25 people organic load-wise. And and you know, you got you know, a whole bunch of like I see these dogs uh jump into these golden retrievers with the long hair jumping into a pool, you know, like the end of the season kind of deal. And I'm going, oh geez, all that organic load in there. But it affects the the animal's skin mostly. People forget they have to rinse off the dog if they're gonna let him go in the pool because that chlorine can actually dry out their skin, cause itching, can cause rashes, skin deterioration, that kind of thing. So you gotta be really careful with dogs.

SPEAKER_08 29:15

I'm gonna be honest, Wayne. Like, I don't like swimming in pools. And and I've owned a swimming pool company for 10 years, and I've been in the pool industry for 20 years, and and I'm not a huge fan of swimming in pools. Obvious for I mean, number one, for the obvious of you know, they're a you know, if you have a small body of water, like a spa or something like that.

unknown 29:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 29:33

We know too much. Right. That's knowing too much. But you know, a big pool is fine, but I've I've always felt like my skin was really dry when it came out. And I actually, while you were talking, I just looked up the organic load and it says anywhere from three to fifty people, depending on the size of the dog, the fur type, and the clen and how clean you keep the dog, right? So it could be up to 50, they're saying, which is that's crazy. And I I've always had clients that I could tell when their dog was in the pool, because when I went to go clean the filter, the filter would just be absolutely mangled with dog hair. And of course, I would ask the client, I would be like, you know, are you letting your dog swim in the pool? And they're like, Oh no, like he never goes in the pool.

SPEAKER_07 30:16

Yeah, sure. Right. Yeah. So it's kind of one of those things where you know, your clients aren't always gonna tell you they're not always gonna tell you the full story, right?

SPEAKER_08 30:28

So sometimes you gotta kind of figure this out on your own. So that's why it's so important to have the readings. And what we've gotten in the habit of doing is at the beginning, especially if we're renovating a pool and we're we're gonna be the ones that are starting up the pool, and then we're gonna be the ones that are taking care of the pool. I've I've been in situations before where we started up the pool and we took care of the pool, but we didn't renovate the pool. And then it becomes a problem because like I've gone back later on and said, like, hey, there's a problem with the plaster, it's like modeling here, or there's like, you know, calcium coming through the cement that you could see, and it's it's pretty obvious that it's a botched, you know, resurface job. And I've had them come back and be like, okay, like show us the LSI. So if you are renovating pools and if you are starting up pools, and if you are taking care of pools, this is super, super important that for the first six months, every time that you're at this pool, that you are doing a full panel test, including TDS and temperature, so you can figure out the LSI. Now, Wayne, honestly, I we don't do LSI much. And the reason being is because most of our pools don't have their heaters on. So it's not like we're 100 degrees. We have commercial pools that are, but they're a different they're in a different category. So it's always anywhere between 55 degrees and 75, 80 degrees, you know, depending on the time of the year. So, really what it comes down to is we just have to make sure that we're covering our ass. So if we have to go back to this builder and say, hey, there's a problem, it will actually be willing to help. Because I don't, I I assume that they do this on purpose, but like the reason that they say is because, oh, we we only build pools, so we don't start up pools or take care of the pools. So my guy here, my guy here, Mr. Joe Schmoe pool company is gonna start up the pool for you. And then, oh, it's another gonna be, it's gonna be, you know, Joe Blow pool company that's gonna service your pool. And I always feel like they've done that on purpose a little bit, just to kind of like distance themselves to kind of come back and say, oh, there's something wrong with the chemistry. But the number one thing is if they come back, like they're gonna wanna, they're gonna do a full panel test. And if all of those read, even if it was just for the day, you know, if they came and they found that your pH was 6.8, are you fucking kidding me? They would be they would laugh at you and be like, dude, there's no way that we're fixing this for you. But if you come back and you can show them that you have skimmer or pool brain or pay the pool man and you have all of this stuff recorded, you could be like, no, no, no. Like we we did all this already and we've been taking care of the pool because I've gotten blamed before and we were the service company. And you know, they're sitting here telling me, well, like, you know, you're not here every day, you're only here once a week. So, like, and I'm like, of course I'm only here once a week, but every time we're here that one day, we're bringing everything back into the ideal ranges. So that means 7.4 to 7.6 for the pH, which is, I mean, people don't understand how small it's 7.4, 7.5, or 7.6. That's it. Right. Like, there is no, you know, it should, and I always tell everybody if you need to be on on either side, I would rather you be a little bit on the higher side rather than on the lower side, just for the simple fact that the people that are in the pool aren't going to not enjoy it. And that's the the worst thing that you could have happen is that a bunch of people come to your pool and they leave feeling like their skin isn't good and that their eyes are burning and stuff. So it's it's a ruthless business out there in you know, in this blame game. I always had so many clients over the years that were either my clients or they weren't my client and they called and they were like, Hey, you know, you're a pool expert. I looked you up. Um, I want you to come out and something's wrong with my pool. They messed up the plaster. They did it a few months ago and it's not looking right. And I'm brutally honest with them. I tell them, look, like, I would love to take your money and I would love to come up there and and get this job. But honestly, like, have you who's taking care of the pool? And do they have the readings for the last three months or four months? Because if you can't, if you can't go back to them with the raw data of this is what the pool was on these certain days, there is zero chance that they're going to resurface this pool for you. And we're not talking about a thousand dollar job. Usually we're not even talking about a five thousand dollar job. Usually, even if you get the smallest pools renovated and you're getting like a mini pebble surface, it's at least ten thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

So you said something earlier that that kind of I do in the classes I teach, you said that you know you don't always do LSI.

SPEAKER_08 35:04

No, I do it in class, but I actually I tell them in class, like there's certain things like chemical adjustment. If you are putting, are you the one testing the water and you're the one putting in chemicals? You might do this every day for the rest of your life. Right, right, exactly. Where you call me in the office and you say, Hey, we're having a problem, you just ask that guy, Sean, right, five different questions before you said, Let's do the LSI. LSI is like kind of further down the list. And that was just my point that like it's not right, you're not doing you're not doing it every, every single time you're at the pool.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Right. And and I tell I tell the people in my classes, you know, if you don't do LSI calculations every time, that's okay because as long as your individual parameters, and this is Wayne talking, as long as your individual parameters are within the ideal range and even the acceptable ranges, is that generally speaking, your water's in balance. It might lean a little towards being aggressive or lean a little towards being scaling, but it's going to be in balance. No, if you keep your pH between 7, 4 and 7, 6, alkalinity between 18 and 120, hardness 200, 400 temperature, you don't have any control over TDS, no more than 1500 over your startup TDS, you're good to go. Okay. You've you created a a water balance situation. But like we talked about, if one of those parameters are completely out of whack, then I'd go ahead and say, do your water balance calculation, do your LSI. But you know, if you're within ideal ranges, there's you're already there. Right.

SPEAKER_08 36:35

And that's exactly what I and that's and that's exactly what I tell people. The example that I use is that LSI is literally your God, like looking, you're the universe, looking at a snow globe, and that snow globe is the pool, and you shake it up and you take all the readings and you bring it down to one number. And that one number is telling you we're good, we're corrosive, or we're scale forming. Yeah, and that's really what it that's really all it comes down to is you're breaking down all of these parameters into one number, but I do it is something that we do do. It's just not something that like uh it's like we're going into fourth, fifth level stuff where we can't figure everything seems to be okay, but but it's not, you know, and I I've had weird situations where like I have some clients here in Los Angeles, they keep their pool at 95 all the time. And I actually got fired from one of my clients because we he had a pool. And if I had a pool, it would be this pool. It was it was 6,500 gallons, it was like 11 by 8, and it was a glorious glorified big spa, is really what it wants. And he heated it to 95 degrees, and I didn't care because we cleaned his salt cell every other week for you know X amount of dollars or whatever it is. There was no problem. Like we went through a few different heaters, but we were getting him like ASME heaters, and he's a residential client. We're getting him like commercial brass Cooper Nickelheader ones and stuff, you know. So he moved to a proper, and he was kind of like not near the beach, but it was cooler there where he was. And then he moved to the valley. He moved up in like uh inland, like more above Beverly Hills and like the canyons there and stuff. And now his pool was a 25,000 gallon pool that had a lot of surface area, and not only did it have a big surface area, it also had like a not a vanishing edge, but it had like an overflow that it went into, and there was a trough at the bottom, and that trough actually was where the level lore was and would say, Hey, is there enough water in here? So, what was happening is because he can't he was like, I'll just keep this at 95 all the time, just like I did with my other one. And what was happening is he would start to lose massive amounts of water at night through evaporation, just because convection, the heat was just coming off like a steaming hot cup of coffee, and the wind just number one whisps the heat away, right? And now it's just evaporating a shit ton of water. So the level or would go on and it would continue to stay on for 45 minutes. And if anybody that works with levelores knows that after 45 minutes, it actually says to itself, like, hey, something's wrong that I've been on for 45 minutes, and it actually overrides itself and cuts itself off. And it won't, it won't like fix itself or reset itself until you go and like turn the power off and turn it back on. So we were running into this constant thing where he would like, I'd wake up in the morning to videos and like he was the type of client that would like send me a video and be like, Look at this fucking water, you know what I mean? It just like like I'd be like, Oh my god. But what was crazy is like he also had a wife that he had lived with, they got divorced, and she was also our client now. She lived in a different house, she was also our client. So like it just became so much that actually I at one point was kind of just like, let's just let's just break here, let's just break amicably. And I said one of the not worse things. It was just I just wasn't thinking, and it's kind of funny because it's like an ongoing running joke now, but he had asked me like why this was happening, and I had my leak guy come out and he pressure tested all the lines and did a bucket test and was like, bro, like this is just crazy evaporation because this guy has his pool on at 95 degrees all the time, like nobody does that. So I like went to him and I said, What I meant to say is like no one really does this, and how it came out of my mouth was like normal people don't heat their pool like this, and it was the worst thing that I could ever hear because he then proceeded for the next like few months to sign off on all of his emails. So like he shoved it in my face so fucking hard that like I was just like, oh my god, I can't believe I said that. But I didn't mean like I wasn't trying to be an asshole. You just on, I was saying, honestly, like this is not normally what people do. And it came out as like this isn't what normal people do. And uh I he took that once at the grave, which was pretty funny. But it was a it was a serious learning lesson for me. But like this, he was actually a guy that, like, at the beginning, like we would hang out, like not hang out, but he would be like, Hey, like, I'm having a party, stay over for like a drink, you know, and he'd like make me a tequila shot, and I'd be like, Oh, cool. And like, I'd have a shot at tequila before I went to my next pool. Uh, like he was that he was a cool dude, you know what I mean? And he ran a company where he made like a boatload of money. So he was one of those guys where he was a big Trump guy, so he was just like, you know, energy baby, like just keep the gas heated. I think he just kept the gas heater on all the time. But if you're gonna do that, I have another client who's like a movie producer or he and he lives in Australia half the year, and then here half the year, and like he this is the funniest thing about all of your clients, and this is why I always say, like, it doesn't matter if you have like doctors or you have lawyers or you know, uh if you have somebody on disability, like usually they don't know how to work the pool unless they really want to figure out how to use the pool. So my client loves to swim in the mornings. So we were putting on his pool every night from like midnight to like 6 a.m. And he was like, My bill is so expensive, you know, for and I'm like, what I'm like, we're putting on the heater every night in the middle of the night, like we're losing all of that heat like right away. Like, what of course? And then he'll be like, Can you turn the pool off? We're leaving, you know, can you turn the heater off? We're leaving for a few weeks. And then he would be like, Hey, we're back on Tuesday. Like, can you put the the heater back on? So we, you know, we come on Monday or whatever and we put the heater on. And every Tuesday he'd text me on the first Tuesday he gets back and he's like, pool's cold. Like, what's wrong here? And I had to actually call him and explain to him that like the pool is not 78 degrees anymore. It's not 82 degrees anymore. Like it fucking went down, went back down to 54 degrees. So the heater running for five hours overnight is only gonna take it from 55 to 62 or 65. Like it's not gonna bring it up, it's not gonna bring it up to what you want it to. Like you, so I had to actually explain to him like when you go home, you need to go on the handheld and turn the pump on and turn the heater on, and it will override itself and it will go on the whole first day, and then that next day, when you want to swim, it might be up to temperature for you. And I told him the ultimate thing that you should do is do this. He already has an automation system, he just doesn't want to do the upgrade for a couple thousand dollars. And the upgrade would get you the app on your phone. And now when he's in Australia, he could be like, I'm coming home on Tuesday and fucking turn the heater on. But like, and I don't mind doing it because literally this is my job for my company. Like, that's the stuff that I take care of. But it just makes me giggle a little bit inside that like this guy is like a really, really successful movie producer, and he just I don't think he ever like did much on his own. So like he's literally asking us every week to like do something with the heater for him. And I just want to be like, just go fucking, just go turn it on, you know? And like again, like I don't mind talking to people on the phone and and helping them out. Um, but it's also in like in the way that you deliver it too. And I had a I have a new rep for Hayward, this guy Sergio, and he's great. Um, so I want to shout out him because he's done a really good job and he's really responsive. And I had a situation we don't install, we install a ton of Hayward sand filters, but we don't install a lot of Hayward automation systems, and it's just kind of the way that things work out here. Hayward's a New Jersey company, so Pentair and and Fluidra are kind of king out here for the whole equipment pad, usually, right? So Hayward, they just a few years ago started making everything communicate, where if you put in a pentair pump, it'll communicate to the automation system. Like before, you couldn't even everything had to be Hayward or they didn't talk to each other. And I had a situation where I've told you this before, where I had someone that changed their pool over to spa mode and because Because they had a Jandy Aqualink system and a Hayward salt cell, the salt cell didn't kick back down to 5% or 10%. It just stayed at 100%. So now it was putting 100% full time into the spa. And I went and the spa was at 60 parts per million.

SPEAKER_07 45:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_08 45:07

Okay. Like this lady, this my client was like, I'm getting boils. She's like, I need you to come out here. And I'm like, just don't touch anything. I'm like, let me, I'll be right there, 45 minutes. I'll be right there. And I get there and it was so yellow that I was like, there's either no chlorine in here, and this is algae or copper, or the chlorine is just through the roof. So that's why like I've kind of shied away from the Hayward stuff because I don't, I don't want to have to always, you know, I don't want to be locked into having to buy buy this or that, right? I want to be able to choose, and especially like uh, you know, with Penta with their pricing going crazy, like I I would opt to get a different pump because it's cheaper. You know what I mean? Like I'm still I'm in business, I'm trying to make money, but I want to do the right thing for the client. Anyway, Carlos went out, my service manager wired up the whole thing. It took us like four days. We had to do three lights, we did like a salt cell, we did an automation system, so we had to do the actuator valves and all that stuff, and then we put in a sand filter too. So, like reworking all of those manifolds takes a long time, right? And then we had to actually change all the the breakers for, and this is something that guys, like you should be checking this all the time, and it's not something that I really learned until later in my career. All of anything inside the panel, all of those breakers need to be GFCI read it rated breakers, and they will literally say on them GFCI. And if they don't, they are not up to code. And like if something were to happen where like someone got electrocuted or something, it's like on par with you not having your your you know number eight copper bonding and grounding wire on there. You know, they're gonna be like, This is like a waterproofing issue, like it didn't kick itself, it didn't kick itself off here, you know. So anyway, back to Sergio. I call Hayward Tech Support, and they are like, you should call like a send, you know, you should have a company for warranty come out. It sounds like something's wrong. So we have a company come out, and they were pretty good in that they got came out the next day, but the guy calls me and he's like, uh, hey, like you guys didn't wire it up properly. And I'm like, okay, I'm like, we're really good at that. So I'm like, uh, it's just because we probably don't don't deal with these that often. So I was like, can I loop in my service manager on the phone? You know, basically, can you tell him like how we could wire it up properly next time? Like he's really good and he'll understand this over the phone. And then the guy proceeded to tell us basically, like, uh, not that we didn't know what we were doing, but like um that next time we should call out Hayward and have a sales guy come out and meet us because he could talk to us until he's blue in the face on the phone, but it's really better to see it in person. And I was like, that's not what I fucking asked you. Like, I asked you to walk me through this on the phone of what you did. And he was like, and he did step by step, but like he was making it sound like these steps are like really easy and they're and they're not, you know, like all of the systems when you go to to you know to put it in, it's all kind of like DOS like computer systems where like you gotta like hit it and then you gotta hit like edit and you gotta hit save and you gotta hit it. I I'm not like a huge, you know, I I love the automation, but I think that like obviously the pool industry is like 10 or 15 years behind in technology, um, and from like some of like the tech industries and different things like that. Um, so it is kind of funny when you open up these brand new, you know, four thousand dollar things and it's like got a computer from like the 1980s in it. Well, anyway, I just you know, just the way that the guy kind of talked to us on the phone, and I didn't mind it. I just I understood where he was coming from, but he actually did say to us, he was like, guys, like in the future, like these aren't the warranty calls that we want to come out to. Like, we want to come out when it's an actual warranty thing. And then I had asked him as a favor, I was like, I this this client isn't my regular client, it's actually one of my buddies' brothers. Uh so I was like, I was doing him a favor, and I was like, he lives in Lahabra and I live in Long Beach, which is like a 45 minute drive. So I was like, we weren't planning on coming back out there, but can you walk him through just the app? Because he like he's pretty techie and he knows how to do that. He just wants to know how to use the app and like get it on his phone. And he was like, We I was like, we didn't get a chance to do that because we got stuck on the, you know, on our end, you know. And he was like, Yeah, he's like, I'll do that, but that isn't warranty, so I'm gonna charge you for that. And I was like, Okay. I'm like, I would never want someone to come out and not get compensated for their for their time, right? You know, but it was just like the whole way that he kind of went about it because he was up, he was like agitated that he had to come out and kind of like program it, and it was like it was programmable. Does that make sense? Yeah, so I went back to my to my Hayward rep and I said to him, I was like, to be honest with you, I'm like, we didn't want you guys to come out. I'm like, we called tech support, and tech support went through it with us and said, Hey, we think something is wrong. Have somebody come out. So that's what I'm and I in one of our in one of our other past episodes, I had just talked about the warranty and how it's different for every company now, and they want you to go through the proper channels. So I really want to always make sure that we are that they would never come back to us and be like, Oh, you're doing something that you're not supposed to be doing, we're not gonna warranty this for you. So just kind of one of those situations where Carlos was kind of like irritated a little bit. I didn't mind it, but like I, you know, I I I cleared it up and it was fine and everything was okay. But it was just one of those weird situations where it's like you're working for Hayward, like uh you're getting paid, you're getting paid from Hayward no matter what. Like, I don't know what we're complaining about.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

We gotta get Carlos on this podcast one time. I mean, you talk about it just about everyone, and I feel like he's my new best friend. Someday we'll do it. We'll do it someday.

SPEAKER_09 50:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:28

Yeah. I also want to get Jen, your wife, on one time because you're you're the dynamic duo out there. So we'll we'll we'll deal with that too down the road. But um ladies and gentlemen, I think that's probably it for today. We appreciate you listening as always. And again, uh like Sean has discovered, if you send us an idea for something we can talk about on the podcast or have a question or or whatever, a comment, send it to talkingpools at gmail.com and it will be directed to the appropriate person. And again, if your idea is used, uh we'll send you a little thank you present. So um we appreciate everybody who listens. Shout out to all of our sponsors and Mr. Steve, take care, sir. Have fun in your travels, and uh, I will see you in a few weeks.

SPEAKER_08 51:10

Yeah, have a good one, guys. And thanks, Mike.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Take care. Bye bye. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 51:14

All right.