The Pool Problem You Don’t See… Until It’s Too Late - Wayne & Steve

What looks like algae… isn’t always algae.
 And what looks like “clear but weird” water? That’s where things get expensive.

In this episode of Talking Pools Thursdays, Steve and Wayne break down one of the most misunderstood issues in pool service: metals in the water—how to identify them, where they come from, and what actually works when you’re dealing with them in the field.

It starts with a simple truth:
 👉 Water has no color.
So when it turns green, blue, brown, or something that just feels “off,” something else is driving that change—and metals are often the culprit.

They walk through the key differences between algae vs. metals, including:

•  Why algae presents as cloudy, opaque, or “carpeted” 
•  Why metals (like copper) often show up as clear, tinted water 
•  A simple field test using your brush to tell the difference instantly 

From there, the conversation goes deeper into where metals actually come from, including:

•  Source water (especially wells) 
•  Heater corrosion and heat exchanger failure 
•  Overuse of copper-based algaecides 
•  Aging infrastructure and legacy municipal systems 

They also cover the thresholds where metals become a real problem:

•  Copper above ~0.2 ppm 
•  Iron above ~0.3 ppm 
•  And how rising pH (above ~7.6) triggers precipitation, staining, and discoloration 

Then comes the part most techs get wrong—treatment strategy.

This episode breaks down the difference between:

• Sequestering agents (hide the metals, prevent staining) 
• Chelating agents (bind metals into larger particles for filtration/removal) 
•  Why most modern products attempt to do both 
•  And why you’re still often vacuuming to waste or cleaning filters after treatment 

They also get real about the operational side:

•  Why chelation jobs can take multiple visits 
•  Why sequestering requires ongoing maintenance dosing 
•  And why metals are “not a problem… until they’re a problem” 

There’s also a candid discussion on:

•  The risks and realities of acid washing 
•  Why vinyl and fiberglass pools present different limitations 
•  How improper dosing in small bodies of water (like spas) can trigger metal precipitation instantly 
•  And why no two metal situations ever behave exactly the same 

The episode wraps with a broader industry conversation on rising costs—fuel, materials, and equipment—and how those pressures are forcing service companies to rethink pricing, efficiency, and long-term profitability.

Because whether it’s metals in the water or money in your business…
 👉 Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Happy Thursday, everybody, and welcome to Talking Pools. Thursdays with Steve and Wayne. Um they have something good to talk about. I follow a lot of people and um for the most part uh they're not bad. They're good. I mean, we know Andrea's great, so you know, she's above and beyond anybody else. But uh is um uh pools that say for example go green. What causes pool water to go green? Well, there could be a number of different things it really depends.

SPEAKER_06 1:30

Now I in in my green, not to cut you off, I just want to be super clear with the listeners that like we're talking about a green that's more of like a translucent green, right? And like almost like a tinted green where like you can still see through the water, you can still see the bottom, it just looks fucking funky, you know. You're like something something's wrong, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Right, where that's the big differentiating thing, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:51

Because if it was algae, it then the pool would be blanketed or carpeted in green with this tur with this turbid type yellow or green, right? So I just want to make sure that like we're all looking at the same thing here because you could go to the pool and it could be algae, right? So, and how I always determine is like if you can't figure it out, take your brush and your pole, brush the wall, and if a big puff of green stuff comes off, you have algae. If nothing happens, it's metal.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Right, right. And and remember, it's generally speaking, if the tint of the color is cloudy, like you said, or opaque or translucent, it's probably going to be algae. If it's clear, okay, then it's probably going to be metals. That's a usual differentiating factor between the two.

SPEAKER_06 2:35

Right. So we're talking about so we were talking about copper when I cut you off.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 2:38

So and copper, it comes out of solution and precipitates a few different ways, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:42

So the first way is this in a moment. The other most common metal you see in water is iron. Now, iron can come out in a variety of different colors. You can see it's brown, rusty color, reddish. I've even seen it's orange. Um so and where does that come from? Well, that comes from uh the source water. Yeah, there's no iron any heater in the element or anything like that, although you'd be surprised I'd get the calls. Um it's primarily from source water, and copper can come from source or source water too, particularly if your source water is from a well. It's almost a guaranteed you're gonna have copper now. Because back in the day it was used as a corrosion engineer. Um we're talking like in the early 1930s, 40s, things like that. So I I knew that's an example involved on your city water, there's about 0.05 per million copper in there. And that's okay, but that's not that much copper to cause a problem. With copper, if your heating is greater than 0.2 parts per million, or your iron level is 0.3 or higher, then you're probably gonna have some sort of metal screen. Add to that if your pH is high, what's high is greater than 76, the high pH lends itself to release the metal ions that are in the water and you get stained, standing along with discord, discovered water. So a couple things, weird things have to happen in order for it to appear, right? Now, it's appeared. What do you do? There's a couple things you can do. First of all, lower the okay, that's number one. Get it down to seven two to seven three. Then you want to add a metal removing product. So you want to have a product that both does two things, it relates or sequesters. You wanna you want to have to do both. Okay, now when I say sequ sequesterum agent in these metal removing products, what that does is basically hide the metal ion. It doesn't remove them, it just kind of hides them. Okay, to remove them, you have to have a chelating product in in there, and that's C H E L A T I N G. Chelating something chelating, whatever tomato tomato. So so you want that one, two, three. And what the chelation process does is that it makes the metal ions larger. So it's traveled by filter. The size of a metal ion is so small that it can even go through a DEO. Okay, and it just goes straight through. So so you want to make you want to make them be trapped by the filter to help it get out. So the big thing here is a combination of check your pH, make sure it's on the low side of things. Adam metalically does both. Okay. And it may turn out, depending upon what the source water is like, that's maybe a regular routine chemical addition.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

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SPEAKER_00 7:45

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SPEAKER_06 8:12

Lord, I have sorry, I have two I have two questions for you. So you said lower the pH. I just want the listeners to be all be I always like to be on the same page. How low are we going? Like, do you want it at 7.2 or you want it at like 7.0 or you want it at 7.3? Or what how low do you want?

SPEAKER_03 8:29

Yeah, 7.2 to 7.4 is good.

SPEAKER_06 8:31

And obviously all the manufacturers' directions are going to be a little bit different, right? You want to follow the manufacturer's directions because I know that some some of them are kind of crazy where I've seen it like drop the pH to six plum, like 6.8. I'm like, I don't even, you know, I'm I'm just making an example, and I can't even say which which one it is, but okay, that's the first question. So about 7.3, you're saying. And then my second question is if we're because I don't use key later, I try not to use key lading agents just because we live in LA and everybody's so far away. And what, you know, the way that I describe key lading agents is it just takes those pieces of metal and kind of turns them into magnets and they they form together to make bigger pieces of metal. So now it's a piece of metal that's so big. But most of the key lading agents that I used back in the day, and correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a new way to do it, I am all for it. But it actually used to say pour this into the pool, take the elements of the filter out, or if it's a sand filter or a DE filter with a multi port, put the multi port in, recirculate, right? And recirculate is everything works the way that it's supposed to, it just skips the filter. Right. Right? Because that will get, you know, it'll gum up the filter or or whatever it is. But my problem with key lating agents is now most of the time you have to pour it in, you leave the pump on for X amount of hours, and then you come back and you turn the pump off for X amount of hours, and now all that gray sludge kind of falls to the bottom of the pool, and now you have to vacuum it out to waste.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

Right.

SPEAKER_06 9:58

So I've yet to ever have one time to do that. Like where I went back, I vacuumed it, and then we were like, okay, cool, everything's good. No, like I'd have to come back two, three, sometimes four times because this stuff would like re-come out and you know, re-come out of solution and then basically fall down to the bottom. And you're like, fuck, man, like this is taking a lot of, and I just I wasn't losing money, but it was I wasn't making enough money where I was like, this is a viable option, right? So that's why I love sequestering agents. But I I just go back to the key lading agents. I just wanted to like, you know, is there a key lading? Because you're saying there's a key lating agent that also has a sequestering agent in it, yeah, and it does both, so you don't you just put it in and you leave it, or you still have to vacuum to waste, or or what's the deal with these products?

SPEAKER_03 10:45

You still have to eventually vacuum to waste.

SPEAKER_06 10:47

Okay. Or break down the filter and clean it, or you know, what whatever.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

I know there are a number of products out there that chelate and sequester. Um, again, this is no shout out to a particular brand, but metal out, metal be gone, um, things like that.

SPEAKER_06 11:05

I used to use Conquest back in the day. Um, I don't know if they I don't know if they still make that, but or like Conchelate, they would call it. Um, but I did have actually, I did have to use, I did have to use a metal remover the I guess last week it was, my like 5,000 gallon spa, my commercial client, one of my hotels. Over the weekend, we just showed up and it was just smurf blue. And we were, and it could be the heater, it could be that they have copper lines, it could be a bunch of different stuff because they the problem there is the venting is no good. And the pools are on the fifth floor, which is the roof, and the venting goes eight floors to the ground, and of course the heaters are in the basement, right? The the lowest floor possible. And what I I had I had Raypak come out and I was like, look, like we're going every three months, we totally break down the heater, we totally you know clean it out, and it looks, Wayne, like we have had the worst water chemistry in the world, and it's been it's been a-oka every day. What's happening is as the steam comes goes into the vent, it's this hot air that it's releasing, and by the time it gets to the top, it mixes with cold air. And you know what? It's start, it starts fucking raining. It may it makes its own climate and it starts raining onto the heat exchanger. And that's the the you know, that is acidic, and that's what winds up uh you know happening with that. But I had to use I actually this, it was the first time in uh probably a year and a half that I had to, I've been very lucky with the with the metals.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

So the other bad thing about metals is that if you don't treat it early, it can actually stain the surface itself, and that's a whole nother issue. Um depending upon how deep the metal has been embedded into uh your standard gunite. Everybody loves that though.

SPEAKER_06 12:46

They're like, oh, they're like the pool looks so blue, it looks so great, looks fantastic. And I'm like, I'm like, it does not look to do that, right? Which you guys know if you've listened to the show in the past, how much I ate, how much I anybody who really likes it, Steve. I mean, I used to like it back in the day, and I think it's a great viable option on the East Coast and on uh on the Pacific Northwest, where you have a really short swim season and you're like, you know, like we don't want to put up 15 grand to to resurface, but we definitely can put up 2500 or 1500 or 3,000 or whatever. Right. Um, and you just you you squeak through the to the rest of the sea to that end of the season, right? Because it's only a hundred days till you get there, and then next year we'll worry about this. Where here, our pools are open all year long. So one of the things that I'm using in all of our pools that are brand that are newer plaster, we're using sequestering agents in them. And I think that that helps us out a lot. And like you said, with key leading agents, they're basically making the pieces of metal bigger. The sequestering agents, they're just enveloping the pieces of metal and kind of just keeping them out of the way to make sure that they don't precipitate and come out of solution.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

Exactly. Exactly. Um, for for those of you who are new to the industry and have no idea what an acid wash is, just very, very briefly, you're taking um um a combination of hydrochloric acid part and a little muddy water into a spray system, kind of like and then we you take a very what it does is takes a very, very thin layer of open stuff so that hopefully your stain has not really grabbed and booted itself into the surface. That's called a whole new replacement. That's that's another shit. Okay. But acid blocks are are protected when done right, right, the situation is is appropriate for them. And and of course your customer is willing to go through that hassle of having this done. Now, as far as you, the pool guy or gal doing it, you gotta protect yourself. Um so you do well, I I will when I did a banana suit, I call it one of those yellow, all full-body, I don't know what you call them, outfits, uniforms, a respirator, gloves, the the whole DLC, that nothing gets on your skin. Because it's pretty important if you don't do it right. And and you have to make sure that as you spray the solution onto the surface and it's doing what it's supposed to do, you can't let the water drain into a public system unless it's been altered to a pH of seven. At least that's how it is if you're in the Maryland area. You can't let the dis not discharge the residual water very, very Yeah, I don't think anywhere they want.

SPEAKER_06 15:47

I mean, people do it, but I don't think that they want, I think that that's illegal everywhere. So you should be using um, you know, sodium carbonate, which is pH plus. So we always buy an extra couple bags of that, and then we kind of we kind of let it sit into the middle of the pool. And if you do the acid wash right, the way that we usually would do it, and I didn't wear any equipment at the beginning, which was crazy, but like I just didn't know any better.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

You have no hair, Steve.

SPEAKER_06 16:10

Right. And that's that I mean, but like over time I I understood that, like, hey, like there's these things called organic vapor masks, you know, that that actually work for muriatic acid. And like there's these double walled gloves, and you wear long sleeve shirts and you know, pants and booties and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but for me, coming from the East Coast, like I'm deathly afraid of leaving pools drained for any amount of time. So what we would do is we would, you know, the night before the acid wash, we would come and drop a pump and we would put that pump in like the middle of the pool where it would drain most of the water out, but there was still like five, ten, you know, 10,000 gallons sitting in the deep end. And then when we got there in the morning, we put just moved the pump to the deep end, started draining that out. But then we would start like once we got it to where it was low enough, then we would start on the acid wash on the the shallow end.

SPEAKER_04 17:04

Right.

SPEAKER_06 17:05

And then that acid would actually fall on the floor, and that would actually do some of its own acid washing. So we were trying to work a bit smarter and not harder. And then as soon as we got done with the bottom of the pool, you know, we discharged everything, and then we would start filling it back up more or less immediately. But part of the problem with acid washing is that you know, it takes away some of the surface and it's gonna make it rougher than it than it was before. So a lot of times, yeah, a lot of times I would get finished, and then these people are like, Well, it's really rough. And I'm like, Okay, well, like, yeah, well, we can we can polish it for you, but like that's not part of the cost. So now I needed to start adding that in as part of like if we if we need to polish, it's gonna be X amount of dollars. And every pool that we were coming to was having to be polished, so that's like I said, I'm I'm very uh not souped up on doing acid washes anymore, even on regular white plaster pools.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Now the there's other two issues if you have a vinyl liner pool uh or a fiberglass and you get stained, not a whole lot you can do. Uh with a with a vinyl liner pool, you gotta get a new liner. But that's you know because even your S metal removing product have some have issues with with vinyl. With fiber shells, again, it it's it's a matter of how dead the staining is, how deep it is. Um, sometimes you gotta live with what you got. So you really don't want to buy a new fiber dad shell.

SPEAKER_06 18:32

I used to, I when I was in New Jersey and I was doing pools there, we used to use lithium hypochlorite for all of our uh vinyl liner pools and all of our fiberglass pools, just because we didn't want the chlorine doing the staining, which it can do, especially in those two, especially in those two instances. But I have like three or four pools here that are vinyl liner pools in California, and like uh they're all bleached out. And like, you know, you can either you can take one of two approaches. You can either put in so little chlorine that it doesn't bleach the liner out, you know, and then have to do either multiple visits a week because you can't put in enough chlorine once a week for it to stay in the pool for seven days to shock it to 10, where you get you're getting rid of some of the bacteria and viruses, and then make it, you know, so you have a chlorine residual when you come back the next week. So I kind of tell everyone, I'm like, look, I'm like that, you know, get having a vinyl liner pool, like it's over time, like no matter what, it's gonna start to fade.

SPEAKER_04 19:32

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_06 19:33

You know, like what shows outside of the pool, like those three, four inches that you have where the tile line would be or whatever. Yeah, like yo, the water's never touching that.

SPEAKER_04 19:42

Right.

SPEAKER_06 19:42

So, like that, it's only getting UV degradation from the sun. Where underneath the water, you're getting UV degradation from the sun, and then you're also getting blasted with chemicals weekly. So, you know, I've I'm just not a huge fan of the vinyl liner pools. I understand the um the allure of them, but then like you have kids or you have like uh twigs and pebbles, and then you use wheeled vacuums, and like now all of a sudden you're leaking water with anything. You know, you have you have too too long of toenails. Your kids, you know, they need to clip their toenails and you haven't clipped their toenails in a while, and they go to get out on the sidewall, you know, without the ladder, and they go, they scratch their their legs or their feet against uh their toes against the vinyl. So I mean, for me, like if somebody said, Hey, would you want to go with a vinyl pool or a concrete pool? It wouldn't even be close. I would always tell them, hey, I would I would definitely go with a concrete pool. But you know, the cost obviously jumps up, you know, exponentially when you're when you're doing a concrete pool as opposed to um you know vinyl and that's one of the things you have to weigh, you know, when when you're deciding how much money to spend.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

You want the ease of it, or do you want to do it right? You know, doing it right, like say a concrete gunite pool, it's gonna cost a whole obviously a whole lot more money than a vinyl liner or even a fiberglass shell. But fiberglass and vinyl liners are e easier to install, okay? And then after that, and even with chem, even the chemistry of the water, a little bit different when when you're talking about vinyl linerslash fiberglass versus your standard hyperpull. Not gonna get into that right now, but I will in a later show.

SPEAKER_06 21:17

So let's go. So let's reel, let's reel, let's let's reel it back in for a second here, right? Yeah. Um, so we were you were saying about chelating agents, and then we were gonna talk about sequestering agents. So um let's go back into that realm because there's a bunch of stuff to talk about with that.

SPEAKER_04 21:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 21:35

So you were saying about the chelating agents, and you know, you can use a chelating agent and a sequestering agent at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Right. Well, most of the of the good products that are out there are already part of that product. Okay, so you don't have to worry about buying a bottle of chelating product versus a bottle of a sequestering. It's together. And those are the like the metal output, metal be gone, that kind of thing, those kind of products. That's why it's critical you look at the label and see that there is your sequestering agent. It's also known as E D T A. Ethylene, amenamine, five amino ethylene. Don't ever add again. But and that is about the green product. That's that's what it is that you added the water to hide all those ions. Okay. And and with with the chelating agents, it's an issue like like you mentioned polarity. And it turns into the little magnets that they get attracted to each other, become bigger, and you're not obviously water. You also can't you're right.

SPEAKER_06 22:39

It's also like a full stop. Like, yo, you're not using the pool for the next five days, like the pool's dumb. Like, don't, like, while we're using doing this chelating agent, like don't, don't, don't go in the pool.

SPEAKER_04 22:49

Right.

SPEAKER_06 22:50

Where with the sequestering agent, like on some of my Clients, I use two ounces per week. So it's just part of the visit. Okay. And I put it in, you know, two ounces every week. And then for my commercial clients, where they're three days a week, I think I add between two and four ounces a visit. And we just squirt it into the pool. The only downside that I've found with the sequestering agents is they're so acidic. Like the pH is so low that when I pour it into like a 1,500-gallon spa, it actually makes the machines kind of like when you put in a bunch of baking soda or you put in a bunch of chlorine or you put in a bunch of whatever chemical in the pool and you don't turn off the flow switches to the automation systems, it fucking goes crazy. Right. Like it, the pH all of a sudden it thinks it's at uh 6.7, and it's like it's not it's not at 6.7. It's just, you know, it's this is has a really low pH and it's now mixed with the water, so it's making this probe go crazy. Um, but the best way, and this is my favorite, one of my favorite stories to tell in CPO because it it really make paints a nice visual picture. Sequestering agents, they don't remove the metals from the water. They just basically they envelope them and they so like if you look, if you imagine like a bunch of three egg yolks, four egg yolks, microscopic egg yolks that are just floating around in the pool as pieces of metal, and they kind of like, you know, they can slap into each other. And you know what happens when uh an egg yolk slaps, right? It's fucking goes all over the place, right? And winds up staining. But when you pour this sequestering agent into the pool, it almost like when you fry an egg, like the white around the egg, it almost kind of like does that. It like it like covers that piece of metal, and that metal still gets to move around in the water, but now it kind of like bounces off like a kid in like a in a bubble, kind of like bounces off of each other and it doesn't staint on the walls and floors. But you have to keep a residual of this in there. Um, and I know that we've talked about this before that like there are ways that you can test for this sequestering agent in there, but like uh that's that's a lot. Like, that's a lot of a lot.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

And and when I worked for Taylor, we did have a sequestering kit. It was so rare to be ordered that we didn't even put it in any of our catalogs. And I think Lamotte's pretty much the same way. It it there is a way to do it, but the bigger question is why why do it? But yeah, uh the whole metal issue is is convoluted, it's um it's complicated.

SPEAKER_06 25:11

Uh and it's not a problem till it's a fucking problem.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 25:14

Is really what it comes is really what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

Yeah, and if you don't know what to do or uh how to deal with it, find somebody who does. Okay, don't think you can go right off the bat and oh I know I've seen that.

SPEAKER_06 25:26

I've never had two metals, I've never had two metal situations be the same.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:31

Like it could be copper, they both could be copper, but like I've had copper come out of solution as like a smurf blue stain where it's like on a white pool, and all of a sudden now it you got these circular blue stains on there. I've also seen it come out as like the oxidized color of the Statue of Liberty, where like a penny, when it gets oxidized and it gets that weird greenish color on it, I've seen it come out like that and to like a like a powder almost. And then I've also seen it come out like you said before, like the translucent, like Mountain Dew or pea color.

SPEAKER_04 26:01

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_06 26:02

And I've had that happen. And I've had that happen because in a 1500-gallon spa, my guy was supposed to add nine ounces of liquid chlorine and he added 19 ounces of liquid chlorine. And that's why I always say I would much rather take care of a 100,000-gallon pool than a thousand-gallon spa, because the smaller the body of water, the more exact you have to be with your measurements and what you put in the pool because it could actually, you know, mess it up more than you think.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

I mean, you mentioned before, uh you had two ounces of your sequestering product. Yeah, how many tens and thousands of gallons of water? So it's not a big, massive introduction of chemical. It's just enough to do the job you want it to do.

SPEAKER_06 26:42

Yeah. It is pretty expensive though. Like if like the sequestering agent that we use, um, I'm pretty sure we're using Biodex Protect All Supreme, um, which is a so which is a sequestering agent. And like a few years ago, retail price, I remember it was like$60 at Leslie's. Um, it's now$120.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

What for a quart?

SPEAKER_06 27:03

For a gallon.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

For a gallon. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 27:05

Yeah. You need to use one quart. I think it's per, I think it's per 10,000 gallons or 20,000 gallons, regardless. Like uh, if you have a 10,000 gallon pool, like uh this quart's only gonna last you a few months. Right, you know, so it's it it is really, really expensive. But uh, you know, if somebody has a pool that's like has modeling in their plaster or like the plaster is coming up in areas and like they need to be resurfaced, this isn't something that I'm pushing on them at all. But like I just picked up a new client across the street from one of my other clients, and he had redid his pool, and he was like, Hey, can you come out and start start service next week? And I was like, Yeah, no problem. And I actually was just texting before we got on the show today. I was like, Hey, you need to either buy this stuff, and this is why I give the client like I'm like, you can buy this if you want, or I can get this for you. But the way that this works is we buy you a gallon and the first week of the month we put in a quart of it. Like, that's how this works, you know. Like if you want to buy another one, you buy another one in three months, and we kind of go from there.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

You have to ask, have to ask, and this kind of will sum up everything. What's the gas prices out there like on the West Coast?

SPEAKER_06 28:13

Holy shit, it's six, it's so so we put premium gas in our tr in our truck. So right now that's at like$645 a gallon. I think like regular gas is like$615 a gallon and diesel's up at$750 a gallon. Wow, so the gas prices here are are crazy. I just listened to Lee's Lee, Shane, and uh Nick is the new guy, right? So I listened to their show on Monday because I was just in the car the other day and I just had a long ride. So I listened to her show, their show and Andrea's show from yesterday, and they were saying that their PVC supplier they increased their prices, Wayne. You want to guess how much?

SPEAKER_03 28:50

They got at least double or triple, if not more.

SPEAKER_06 28:53

Wayne, 30% three zero. That is that is F an insane. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Did it imports or or just start?

SPEAKER_06 29:04

Think think it's because to make like polymers and PVC, you actually have to use gas, yeah at some point.

SPEAKER_04 29:11

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_06 29:12

Like I think at some point in that process, like you have to use something that that uses gas, right? So I think that that's why the cost has gone up so much with it. But at what point, and someone just said this on Facebook was like, they were like, Does anybody did anybody do a podcast on gas prices and like uh you know, are you gonna start doing a surcharge and stuff? And you know, for me, I mean we use a lot of we use a lot of fuel. And you know, my guys like they all love their tundras and their Chevies, you know, their Chevy pickup trucks and stuff, but like the guy who has the Ford Maverick nowadays is really coming out on top of this because like you can't beat a hybrid motor that uh gets 40 40 miles to the gallon.

SPEAKER_03 29:51

Right.

SPEAKER_06 29:51

You know, like even in my truck, like my truck's pretty fuel efficient. I have a Honda Ridgeline, and like uh it still only gets like 18 to 20. And that's that's that's pretty that's pretty good. You know, like there's trucks out there that do less than that. So I don't know what we're gonna do with like a I don't know necessarily that we're gonna do a fuel charge, and like I don't know how long this is gonna last, but at some point, and then they also were talking about whatever like one of the main ingredients in making the salt cells is for like the the metal pieces and stuff. That because you see you saw that all of the the salt cells have gone up like 12, 24, 25, 28 percent um in the last year. So I only think that you know prices are gonna continue to rise. Don't necessarily think or believe that uh once it once this like once this war ends and once we go back to normal that it will self-correct, maybe at the pump, but I don't think that the suppliers are ever gonna be like, hey, like we're gonna lower our prices this quarter. Like I don't think they're ever gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

Yeah, because we didn't enjoy all the profits that we made.

SPEAKER_06 30:59

No, and I mean like there look the whole thing is like uh you have to be profitable. And if you're not profitable, you have to go back to the drawing board and see which clients are are worthwhile to you. Um, and for me, like when I was telling you in the last show about my guy got in trouble because he wasn't texting and he I didn't know if he really went to the pools or not, that's one of our newer pools. So like they're paying a premium price. It's like a 30,000 gallon pool. Like we're getting paid a decent amount for that. So like I was really upset because I was like, if this person doesn't even use the pool, this is like we're going there and we're cleaning like a you know, a figurehead pool. Nobody's even using it. Like you just have to do a good job. But like losing one of those clients would be way more detrimental to my bottom line than one of the clients that I started with at the beginning. And it's not that I don't, it's not that I treat those clients any differently by any means. It's just like I started on my own and I was cleaning the pools. So I was hungry and I was like, Yeah, I'll do your pool for this. Yeah. Because I didn't need that much. I still was able to make a decent amount of money going on my own, but now I have a middleman. Now I got a guy, now my guys are going to the pool and they need to get paid for it. Right. You know, so if you look at that, like that's that's like a hundred bucks, hundred and something bucks per month. That's going to just just the cleaner.

SPEAKER_03 32:17

That's right. Now, now to give you a a a rough idea, a comparison, over here on the east coast in the Baltimore area, I don't know what's going on, but I have seen it be as low as$399 a gallon and as high as$419 a gallon within a half mile radius of several different gas stations. And usually I'd say 99% of the time, Exxon is always the highest. And I found out why, because Exxon gas stations are independently owned. They're not uh technically owned by Exxon, they're owned by the guy who bought bought that particular Yeah, and they can set their prices whatever they want.

SPEAKER_06 32:55

So what I've found what I've found is the closer you get to Santa Monica and the closer you get to the highways, the more it goes up. And the reason being is that you know, they understand that like if you're getting off the highway to fill up, you don't have that many choices. Right. And like you're gonna fill up no matter what. Um, and as someone that I mean, Wayne, I I gotta be honest with you, before the beginning of this year, I filled up my truck and I barely even looked at the price.

SPEAKER_04 33:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:23

It's it's just a business expense. It's you know, it's something that we have to do. And it's not saying I'm not saying that I I never paid attention to it. I'm just saying that like when I went and filled up that day, I wasn't like, oh my God, it went up 10 cents or 12 cents or or whatever it is, you know. But now I'm like, I'm not going to that gas station, and then I'll go to the next gas gas station and I'll be like, shit, like this one's more expensive this one's more expensive than the other one. So you can look, there are apps and stuff, and actually, if you go into Apple Maps and whatever, it'll show you your gas prices. Yeah. But like, you know, how far am I gonna go to save four cents a gallon or whatever it is?

SPEAKER_03 34:01

It usually my my my level is that there shouldn't be any more than say a three to five cents a gallon difference before that would before it would make me go to another location. But gas money is an app that I have that helps you find the lowest gas in the area. But you know, when it cost me$42 to fill my little Honda HRV from almost empty to completely full. That literally is like me now. But now granted, I don't have as much as you guys, okay. I'm retired. What the hell?

SPEAKER_06 34:40

You know, what's yeah, I mean it's not it, it's it's it's just such a big it's such a big deal now, not just to pool people, it's just to people that commute every day and are just trying to do their their regular lives. Like Wayne, I I think I filled up last week and I think it was like uh$125 or$130, you know, because our tank is 20, 20 gallons. So it's uh it's not something that like the just the pool industry is is coming into. It's it's everybody is feeling this. And there's really right now there's no end in sight, and I think it's only gonna get worse before it gets better. But at some point, you know, when do you say, okay, yeah, we need to put on a fuel surcharge, or at some point we need to raise our prices. So I do think that at the end of this year that we will, you know, definitely be raising our price a tad bit just to just to cover that fuel cost, because I don't think that necessarily is gonna go down.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

I agree, I agree, and I think that's probably enough for today. I don't know how many people we've pissed off, but we didn't piss off somebody, we didn't do our job.

SPEAKER_06 35:50

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode with your host, Steve Sherwood from Talking Pools on Thursdays, and Pat Grignon, vice president over at California Pool Association. So, Pat, thanks again so much for coming on. We love having you here. Thanks for having me, Steve. So I wanna talk a little bit about something like I do a lot of decent amount of pool inspections, and most of the time, like if something comes up, I know that I can defer and deflect it in a sense that like it's a visual inspection, so it never covers leak detection and it's never gonna care like uh go over structural stuff. And I make I make them sign off on a piece of paper that says, like, we're not gonna really talk about that. And even if I do, I say, like, seems like the pool wasn't or was when I was there. Like, you don't, you know, you're never gonna say, Oh, yeah, that that that had happened or whatever it was. So I'm writing these insurance reports, and you know, everything that falls into the pool is part of the pool and falls into like secondary structures, which is like ADUs and like garages and and different things like that, right? So I did an inspection last week, and the guy had like an equipment pad, but it almost looked like a commercial equipment pad in a sense that like it had a untreated fence like around it that was like six feet high or like seven feet high. It was pretty, you know, like they had made it and it was the same material as the fence, and the fence went all the way around the property. So I'm talking to the homeowner and like I'm taking my pictures and we're going over stuff, and he's like, What about the the fence here? And there was just silent. Like, what about the fence, you know? And he's like, Would that be covered under insurance? And I was like, I have absolutely no fucking idea. Like, I, you know what I mean? Like, that is something like I have no idea if the fence is covered under that. And then I start inspecting the rest of the fence around the property, and Pat, it's black, man. Like it is, it's untreated wood that got heated. Yeah. So like it literally looks like burnt firewood, man. Like, this isn't like uh this may look like this. This is like this shit is charred. Okay, like you could be you could be roasted marshmallows off this stuff. So my question to you, or my question to you, I know the answer now, but obviously we're gonna let the listeners know. Uh, my question to you at the time was like, is this even my business? You know what I mean? Like, do I like where does this stop? You know, I speak on the the surface, the tile, the coping, the expansion joint, the decking immediately around the pool. But like further away than that, like we're getting that like that's that's not in that's literally not in my ballpark. So do I have an obligation to to write this up? Do I have an obligation to put a price to it? And like, how do I navigate some like as somebody that's been doing inspections for almost 20 years, like how do I navigate a new situation that I've seen for the first time?

SPEAKER_05 38:39

Well, I'll tell you, um, answering the question of what about the fence? As I don't have a fucking clue if it's covered, is probably the right, it's probably the right uh response for you. Just and this isn't this isn't something that I would I'd recommend getting into detail, but just so everyone knows. So, yes, under a standard homeowner's policy, there's a coverage, there's other stuff, but the main one's coverage A, which covers like the bones, the structure of the home, right? So separate limit for that. You know, there's there's B, which is other structures. So that's gonna be anything detached from the main home. So you got sheds, detached garage, pools fall under that, your fences fall under that, and that's normally a smaller limit than the actual rebuild of the home cost. So, yes, a normal homeowner's policy would cover a fence with uh with a fire like you saw out there, but good answer, yeah, because it's you know, I ultimately if you're if if fencing isn't in your business and that's not what you're there to talk about, I would certainly say, like, ah, you should, you know, I I don't think that that's good, just you know, between me and you, but I'm not gonna write anything down about you know, you needing to fix it.

SPEAKER_06 39:42

Okay, so you're saying don't even like just it's not even any of my business.

SPEAKER_05 39:45

I think in your response, right? Well, how I would address that in the actual report and I would say, listen, you know, like that's a potential safety hazard, you know, which is, you know, if something can break through or whatever, right? The fence is weakened and someone something can break through a dog, a neighbor, a kid, whatever, and end up like falling in the pool and hurting themselves or hurting themselves around the pool, then I think you've got an obligation to at least cite that. But I certainly wouldn't go into, hey, I'll bring out my fence guy or I know a guy and like subcontract the fence work, right? If you wanted to say, I know a guy I can refer you to that actually does fences and can look to replace that, then that's fine. But you wouldn't want to take the opportunity to try and subcontract that work out, you know, under your company name. And you also you wouldn't want to go get an estimate from a fence company and and put that into the report. I think you've got a job on these to identify the hazard. And if it was not nowhere close to a safety hazard to the pool or to anything, then then I would not list it in the report. You know, based on just you know, the the story and kind of the layout, I would say that's a potential safety hazard. Someone might break through there, it's a weakened fence, you should get it replaced, you should get it replaced by you know a licensed fencing contractor. And you know, I think that and you've met your obligation, right?

SPEAKER_06 41:00

And what's crazy is like I didn't feel obligated to talk about the fence at all until the fence came off of the equipment pad and surrounded the equipment pad. Yes, and then I would kind of like, whoa, like this definitely does this is part of the equipment pad. And you know, part of what you do for a pool inspection, and this goes in some states, they like they won't give you the CO unless this is true. And then in other cities, they could give a shit. And it's the gate or the you know, the the self-closing and self-latching fence slash gate, you know, like if you have a s if you come around the house and there's like a side gate, that gate needs to be on springs and like it needs to close away from the pool. You know what I mean? Like basically, like, and that's so if somebody, you know, was trying to get in there, like and they put it was a jar, they pushed it, like it would, it would close into the pool, you know what I mean? Like that it wouldn't swing the other way, right? So sometimes they want you to have the gates a certain way. And then, like I said, some some some cities don't care. The gate most of the time is connected to the the fence, and it gets a little bit hairier because if you, you know, if you're looking at a guy's backyard from his house and the house is at your back, there's three sides there's the front side that ends at some point, and there's the two sides. All three of those have other residents on all sides of the fence. So he was saying, like, because I said to him, I think I had called you like right off the cuff there, and I like excused myself and came back and was like, Hey, I'm not gonna mention this in the report, like, especially not a dollar amount, but I'm gonna say that you should refer because it does look like a safety issue. Um, and it's it's really black, that you should refer to a fencing company. And I told him, like, I think it would be best if you got, I don't necessarily think you need another report, but if you got an actual estimate from the fencing company to include that when I send you the report, you send that as a package to the insurance company because that they would like to see, okay, this guy doesn't really know about it, but these guys do, and this is how much it's gonna cost. Yeah. And then leave it up, leave it up to them if they want to have a third party company. And that's why that's why I'm always weird about um when people are like, Can you just send me a quote and I'll just send it to the insurance company? And I'm like, the whole point is that I don't want this work, and that I'm coming in as the expert telling you like this is how much it should cost. Because once the insurance company thinks that Sherwood Pool Consulting Group wants to come on and take this work on and gives you a quote, like nobody can tell me how much to charge. I can charge what for what other people are charging$20,000 for. I can charge$120,000. Like nobody's gonna say, they might be like, oh my god, your prices are outrageous, but no one's gonna be like, it's illegal to charge that much money. Like you can charge whatever you want. So that now you guys, as the insurer are like, who the fuck is Sherwood Pool Consulting Group? Who are these guys? You know what I mean? Like, we want to send out our own guy and find out if it's 80K or if it's 30k. Like, I've gone out for an on behalf of insurance companies before, and they had like a like a check, like a two like a honey to to-do list for me. They're like, check and see like if they have a salt cell, like check and see if the heater doesn't work, like check and see like if this happened, like specific stuff. And I went out and I'm like, there's no salt cell here. And like they're asking to replace the salt, you know, because it was uh a quote from the loke from the from their pool guy, and their pool guy's like, let's see if we can get a salt cell for them, or you know, something like that.

SPEAKER_05 44:19

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 44:19

So this is super awesome information because like again, even for me, like uh I was kind of wowed. I was like, Whoa, like I don't usually walk into situations that like I have no idea, and it was it was refreshing to to learn more about that. It was leaving you with you guys with this. His deck also kind of like went into like a little staircase, and then it opened back up into like a one piece where there was like a basketball court and like five cars could be parked there, and then it went into a driveway, which is also one poor, it's like one old concrete piece, you know. Poor and like black from fire debris because there's fire, you know, raining down on it. So I was comfortable, you know, talking about the the deck around the pool because that was also black. But like what is my obligation to go into that, like over there on that side of the house? Like and and what does that fall under? Yeah, you know, they would not fall under the same thing as like a structured structure beam.

SPEAKER_05 45:15

Yeah, yeah. So it would, yes, for sure. Under their home. But again, not my b not my if you can't tie it to that. I mean, look, if there's even a long shot to tie it to the pool, you know, then then yeah, I think you can make note of I'm not an expert with decking, but you know, this seemed like it could be a potential hazard. I'd recommend, you know, getting a licensed contractor, decking contractor to come give you a bid on replacing that. But no, that's helpful. Like in that situation where, you know, the the salt cell that doesn't exist, go go check this out. You know, I think, you know, there's we're gonna cover their bases. And you know, I think that that's a that's a good example of, yeah. I mean, look, I'm not like Mr. Pro insurance company guy. I mean, you know, I'm an insurance agent, but I see it both ways, right? Where I I get why they're trying to make sure they're not getting scammed because I see them trying to get scammed frequently. So, you know, even even being able to do that and saying, you know, even if you have for this fence, like, hey, go get it, go get a quote from that from that company, and then they'll have that. The insurance company might send out their own quote, their own company to quote it as well, but at least you have a frame of reference that you can negotiate from. And so that's all part of it. So I think that's that's definitely a good good advice to give to the client to give to your client. But yeah, yeah, I've I wouldn't go and write anything outside of what could be tied, even even from the long shot to the pool somehow, and being a safety hazard or something.

SPEAKER_06 46:31

And that's what I said. I just like uh, you know, he said to me about the fence, and I was like, uh I'm not sure. And then like I said to myself, like, well, what about the deck? And like, yeah, you know, my expertise is with our expertise is with the pool, so like I want to keep that, you know, just contained around the pool. And that's that's what I did. And I, you know, I think that I followed directions diligently with what you told me. But like, you know, at the end of the day, you know, these people they want answers and like I want to do a good job for them, but I just didn't know like really if like again, if that was if that was my business. And it makes it real clear that like it's not. And sometimes you wanna, you know, you wanna bend over backwards for these people, and I want to help these people get whatever they deserve to get from the insurance company, but like we're not gonna speak on stuff that that we don't know about either. So I think that's the lesson for today. So, Pat, thanks so much for for coming on every week. And uh, this is a great interlude today. And everybody, if you want to reach out and talk more about some of this stuff and ask us questions, we would love to discuss it on air. And uh, if you guys are looking for insurance, uh reach out to California Pool Association, they will give you a one-month free for a general liability, like an annual general liability insurance. So that's a really great deal. So check them out and reach out to us at talkingpools at gmail.com if you need anything. And everybody have a happy, healthy, and profitable week. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week. Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

So uh, gang, as always, if you have any comments or questions or suggestions for topics, hit us back at talkingpools at gmail.com. Uh huh. If we use your your suggestion and comment we're on air, uh we'll send you a nice little gift as a thank you. Um, Mr. Steve, thank you as always. I hope you stay safe out there.

SPEAKER_06 48:19

You as well. Have a good one, guys.