Cyanuric Acid Isn’t Sunscreen… It’s a Regulator - Rudy

This week on Talking Pools Podcast, Rudy Stankowitz rips into one of the most misunderstood topics in pool chemistry—cyanuric acid. Starting with a hard truth most pros overlook, the EPA-required label on chlorine products caps free chlorine at 4 ppm… and that’s not a suggestion, it’s law. From there, the episode dismantles the industry’s oversimplified “stabilizer” narrative and replaces it with what’s actually happening: cyanuric acid doesn’t just protect chlorine—it binds it, regulates it, and suppresses the amount of active sanitizer available in real time.

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Because that “perfect” chlorine reading on your test kit? It doesn’t tell you how much hypochlorous acid you actually have—it just gives you a combined number that includes both active and bound chlorine. Drawing on research from Richard Falk, CDC studies, EPA modeling, and decades-old equilibrium work, Rudy breaks down how rising CYA levels throttle chlorine performance, slow disinfection, and create a system where pools look fine on paper but underperform in reality. The myth that “pH doesn’t matter with CYA present” gets crushed too—because while the impact is reduced, it’s still very real, and ignoring it stacks the problem. 

The takeaway is blunt: cyanuric acid isn’t the villain—mismanagement is. Every tablet adds CYA. Every week without dilution compounds the problem. And every pool pro who ignores the FC-to-CYA relationship is operating blind. This episode draws a hard line between surface-level pool care and true chemical control, making it clear that the industry is shifting toward those who understand the science—not just the numbers. Because at the end of the day, you’re not managing chlorine… you’re managing how much of it is actually doing the work.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Pool people, before we get into what we're talking about today, there is one label I wanted to discuss last week that I just forgot about. Completely slipped my mind. And it is a big one as far as laws go that govern our industry. So let's take a look at the back of your chlorine bucket. Don't care what type of bucket it is. It could be trichlor, dichlor, calhypo, doesn't matter. Whatever type of chlorine bucket you happen to have handy, spin it around. Take a look at the label. This is the EPA required label on this chlorine bucket that states a maximum chlorine level in a swimming pool of four parts per million. Four parts per million. That's the maximum level. That makes it the law. I know, I know, I know your health department still says it's okay to go up to 10. I know the CPO course still says it's okay to go up to 10. Got it. The EPA law also governs drinking water. And because the chlorine that we use in swimming pools is really just the same chlorine that we use in drinking water, it has to have that label. It has to be rated for drinking water, which means it is indeed a maximum level of four parts per million of chlorine allowed in a swimming pool. What do you think about that? I know, me too. I can tell you this. I do know the CDC is challenging the label and is hoping to get the EPA to separate pool water and drinking water chlorine regulation. Welcome to Weekend Eve. I'm Rudy Stankowitz with the Talking Pools Podcast. This is the Flocket Friday episode. I hope you are all doing well. It's starting to get warm out there, which means it's starting to get crazy. And when it gets crazy out there, the people who live in those houses that own the pools that you take care of, those people go complete batshit, buckfuck, nutty c've been there. I understand. God bless you. God bless the pool pro. You guys put up with more from homeowners than probably any other profession in the world. That's my truth, and I'm sticking to it. I sympathize, I've been there. I know it's hard and I know it's about to get harder, but there's a light at the tunnel, there is an ended site. Might not be until Labor Day, but gosh darn it, it is out there. So until then, how about we talk some more about cyanuric acid, about how it's not just a stabilizer, but how it actually serves as a chlorine regulator. Most of the industry still talks about it like it's sunscreen. So let's stop being polite here for a minute about this. Cyanuric acid is not some harmless little sidekick that protects chlorine from the sun. That's the kindergarten version of the story. It's not the full story. And if you are still treating cyanuric acid like it's just sunscreen for chlorine, then you're not practicing chemistry. You're repeating, packaging, copy. The deeper chemistry is that cyanuric acid changes the equilibrium of chlorine in water by binding with it and suppressing the concentration of the most active form of chlorine in water. That's not fringe theory. That's the entire reason this subject has been debated for decades. Now, Richard Falk, who most people know as Kemgree, uh geek you spend any time in the trouble-free pool form, he spent years explaining this to the pool industry in a way service pros could actually use. But Falk did not invent the chemistry. He leaned heavily on the classic equilibrium work of O'Brien, Morris, and Butler from the 1970s, because that paper is where chlorinated cyanurate equilibrium constants were pinned down in a way later's researchers kept building on it. EPA's later modeling work explicitly points back to O'Brien's chemistry, and Fox's own writing openly does the same. So let's say this clearly: when you add chlorine to the water in presence of cyanuric acid, you do not just have one little neat bucket labeled free chlorine. You have a dynamic equilibrium involving hypochlorous acid, hypochlorite ion, cyanuric acid species, and chlorinated cyanurid species. The test kit gives you a number. The chemistry gives you a reality. And those are not always the same thing. In fact, the 2024 MAHC MAC MOLOPRODI CODE now explicitly states that DPD free chlorine testing in water containing cyanuric acid includes cyanuric-bound available chlorine in addition to the truly free forms. That is a huge admission. And it matters. That means a test result can look comforting while the water is chemically underpowered. And that's where the industry loses their shit. Because a lot of people still say things like, My chlorine is at three parts per million, so I'm good. No, you are not automatically good, not even close. Three parts per million in a pool with little to no cyanuric acid is not chemically equivalent to three parts per million in a pool with a heavy cyanuric acid load. Same number on paper, different, oxidizing and disinfecting reality in the water. Falk has been pounding that drum for years, and the peer-reviewed literature backs him up. I need to address something that's been floating around this industry like it lost a bet and ended up in a pile of camel shit. Every pool group on the internet, the idea goes like this. Once cyanuric acid is in the water, pH does not matter as much. And I get it, I understand where that comes from. There is a sliver of truth buried there, but what started as nuanced chemical observation somehow turned into a shortcut. And shortcuts in water chemistry tend to come back and bite you on the ass. So let's clean this up. Not with opinions, not with this is how I've always done it. We're going to walk through the way this actually works at the molecular level. When you add chlorine to water, what you're creating is a balance, a chemical equilibrium between two primary forms, hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ion. Hypochlorous acid is the one doing the heavy lifting. That's your fast-acting sanitizer. That's what's taking out bacteria, oxidizing contaminants, and keeping things under control. Hypochlorate ion is the weaker form. It still works, but it's slower, less aggressive, less effective. And what determines how much of each you have? pH. Lower pH favors hypochlorous acid. Higher pH shifts more of your chlorine into hypochlorite ion. That's not theory. That's not preference. That's equilibrium chemistry. At a pH around 7.5, you're sitting roughly in the middle. Start creeping up into the high sevens, low eights, and you are actively pushing your chlorine into a less effective form. So in an unstabilized system, pH is a big deal. It directly controls how effective your chlorine is. Now, let's bring cyanuric acid into the picture. Cyanuric acid doesn't help chlorine in the way people casually say it does. It doesn't make it stronger, it doesn't improve its killing power. What it does is bind with it. It forms a reversible bond, creating chlorinated isocyanates. In simple terms, it takes a large portion of your chlorine and holds onto it. That bound chlorine is not immediately active. It sits in reserve. It's protected from UV degradation, which is why we use CYA in pools, but there's a trade-off. Only a small fraction of your total free chlorine is actually present as active hypochlorous acid at any given moment. So now we have a different system. Instead of most of your chlorine being active, now most of it is tied up, waiting for its turn. It's still measured as free chlorine, which is where the confusion begins. But chemically, it's not all doing the same job at the same time. This is the part where the myth starts to form, because once CYA is in the water, the amount of hypochlorous acid is already significantly reduced. You're operating with a much smaller active fraction. Now, when pH shifts in that system, the change in hypochlorous acid is still happening. The equilibrium between hypochlorous acid and hypochlorate ion is still controlled by pH. That hasn't gone anywhere. But because the starting amount of hypochlorous acid is already so low, the relative change looks smaller. And that's where somebody looks at it and says, see, pH doesn't matter as much. Not when I have CYA in the water. No. What you're seeing is not pH becoming irrelevant. What you're seeing is a system that is already constrained. CYA already stepped in and reduced the amount of active chlorines. When pH shifts it further, the drop doesn't look as dramatic on paper. But chemically, it's still happening. Functionally, it still matters. You didn't remove the effective pH. You just started from a weaker position. So now instead of thinking about one variable, you have two working together. Cyanuric acid is controlling how much chlorine is available in its active form. pH is controlling how much of that available chlorine is the stronger versus the weaker state. They stack, they don't cancel each other out. And this is where things start to fall apart in the field. You walk up to a pool, the free chlorine reads fine, maybe even high. pH is creeping up, cyanuric acid is elevated, and the water just isn't responding the way it should. It's dull, it's sluggish. Maybe there's the beginning of algae trying to get comfortable. And the response you hear, I don't get it. The chlorine is in range. Chlorine might be in range, active chlorine is not. And that distinction is everything because your test kit doesn't tell you how much hypochlorous acid you have, it tells you the total free chlorine. It lumps it together, the active portion and the reserve portion, and it gives you a number. And if you don't understand what makes up that number, you're flying blind. This is exactly why the FC to CYA ratio became such a critical concept. As cyanuric acid increases, the amount of chlorine you need to maintain the same level of hypochlorous acid also increases. Not because you're trying to chase a number, but because you're compensating for how much of that chlorine is bound up. Researchers like Richard Falk have laid this out in detail. The effectiveness of chlorine in a stabilized system is tied to that ratio, not just the standalone free chlorine reading. So when someone says pH doesn't matter because cyanuric acid is present, what they're really saying, whether they realize it or not, is that they're not accounting for how little active chlorine is actually in the water. And that's where the problems start, because now you've got a system where most of your chlorine is already tied up, and then you let pH climb, which reduces the effectiveness of what little active chlorine remains. You've essentially created a bottleneck. And then you wonder why the pool doesn't recover quickly, why it struggles under load, why it needs more chemical input than expected. It's not a mystery, it's chemistry. And the reality is this myth sticks around because it's convenient. It simplifies things, it gives people permission to ignore one of the core variables in water balance. But the water doesn't care about convenience. The equilibrium doesn't change because someone read a post online. So here's the bottom line: cyanuric acid reduces the amount of active chlorine by binding most of it. That's its job. That's the trade-off for UV protection. PH still determines how effective the remaining active chlorine is. That never went away. So no, pH does not stop mattering in the presence of cyaneuric acid. You're just starting from a position where your chlorine is already partially handicapped. And if you ignore that, the pool will absolutely let you know because at the end of the day, you're not just managing chlorine. You're managing how much of it is available and how effective that available portion actually is. And if you don't respect both, you're not in control of the water. You're reacting to it.

SPEAKER_06 13:09

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SPEAKER_00 13:41

The active killer in a chlorinated pool is primarily hypochlorous acid. The MAHC says that directly. It also says hypochloride ion, which is OCL, is also a biocide, but it's much slower. And that matters because cyanuric acid does not merely protect chlorine. It reduces the concentration of active HOCL, hypochlorous acid, by shifting chlorine into chlorinated cyanurate reserve forms. The whole game is not how much chlorine you can measure. The whole game is how much active chlorine you actually have available right now. And this is where the phrase stabilizer starts sounding way too cute for what's actually happening. Because yeah, cyanuric acid reduces photochemical loss. That part is true. Wolchewicks wrote that clearly in outdoor unstabilized water, chlorine can disappear rapidly in sunlight while cyanuric acid dramatically slows that loss by forming chloroisocyanids that are less vulnerable to UV destruction. He even noted that in stabilized pools, over 99% of the available chlorine can exist in the form of chloroisocyanids. Over ninety-nine percent. Think about that. The stuff most people think they are measuring as ready to fight chlorine is largely sitting in reserve. Now, before somebody starts foaming at the mouth and yelling that I'm attacking cyanuric acid, let me say this cyanuric acid is not the villain. Mismanagement is the villain because in an outdoor pool, some cyaneuric acid makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Nah, I train them too. Tellin's be blasting niggas them fools, flopping out of pool, faster fast. What the fuck? It's a fucking Friday. Time to make the cat fit your ass. God bless the pool pro. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

God bless the pool pro.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

In an industry built not just on skill, but on those willing to teach it, there's a call to recognize the people behind the professionals. The Talking Pools Podcast is now accepting nominations for its 2026 Mentor of the Year Award, honoring those who don't just have the answers, but teach others how to find them. If someone helped shape your path in this industry, now is the time to return the favor. Visit cpoclass.com. Click on the Talking Pools Podcast Mentor Award tab, and submit your mentor's name up until May 15, 2026, because behind every great pool professional, there's someone who showed them how to think.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

The manufacturers that recognize mentorship as important to the pool industry are Blu-ray XL title sponsor and Revved Up Apparel Silver Sponsor. Go to mentorshipAward.com and tell us who had your six and helped you succeed. I've been getting Service Industry News since I first stepped into this business, and every time it landed, I did the same thing. Flip straight to the horror file. The weird installs, the absurd finds, the stuff only pool pros ever see. Then I'd go back and read the articles. Service Industry News is a twice-monthly trade publication for pool and spa service text, 24 issues a year, emailed free to over 10,000 texts and available on their app. Every issue covers nationwide industry news and real technical content you actually will use. Get your free subscription at serviceindustry news.net. Again, that's serviceindustry news.net. Do it now. Cyanuric acid is not the villain. Mismanagement is the villain because in an outdoor pool, some cyanuric acid makes sense. The chemistry literature, manufacturer white papers, and public health guidance all recognize the UV protection benefit. But they also show diminishing returns. One modern white paper notes the greatest improvement in chlorine retention happens with the first small additions of cyanuric acid, and the incremental UV benefit flattens out as concentration climbs, especially through the common pool range. So in plain English, the first bit helps a lot. The extra bit helps less. The extra extra bit keeps costing you activity. That last part is where the pool industry gets itself into trouble. Because what many pool pros are really doing is not stabilizing chlorine. They're slowly anesthesizing it. Every trichlor tablet is not just adding chlorine. At theoretical purity, each one part per million delivered from dichlor adds about 0.89 milligrams per liter. That's 0.89 parts per million of cyanuric acid, while trichlor adds about 0.59 milligrams per liter cyanuric acid. So when someone feeds a pool on stabilized chlorine week after week without managing water replacement or changing sanitizer strategy, they're not maintaining their load in the spring one click at a time. That is why a pool can mysteriously get harder and harder to control over time. It's not mysterious. It's chemistry with a body count. No, you pervert, not that body count. The active HOCL fraction keeps getting suppressed, staring at the same free chlorine test method and acting like the number means what it used to mean. Fox's 2019 paper showed that as cyanuric acid raises, HOCL falls. And he also showed something else that should have made more noise in the industry than it did. Many U.S. state codes and the MAC, model quite health code, when expressed in terms of actual HOCL concentration, allow a range that can span more than a factor of 500. That should make every operator uncomfortable. You can read that research titled Assessing the Impact of Cyanuric Acid on Bathers' Risk of Gastrointestinal Illness at Swimming Pools. The website is www.mdpi.com 314. And again, the brilliant minds contributing to this research are Falk, Ashley, Kuklar, Terry Pickens, and Supies at DOI.org 10 3390 W1061314. The part that really gets interesting. Once cyanuric acid is present, pH still matters, but not in the same traumatic way people were taught in chlorine-only water. Fox 2019 risk paper showed that without cyanuric acid, hypochlorous acid drops sharply as the pH rises. But with cyanuric acid present, that pH effect is muted because the cyanuric acid equilibrium is now dominating the available HOCL concentration. So in his example, going from a pH of 7.5 to 8.0 with no cyaneuric acid, dropped the HOCL by 53%. At 30 parts per million of cyanuric acid, the drop was only 15%. So that does not mean pH stops mattering. It means cyaneuric acid has entered the chat and is now controlling far more chemistry than most techs realize, which also should bring to mind the statement that pH doesn't really matter in an outdoor pool when you're using cyaneuric acid because the pH doesn't affect it. That's not true. It just went from 30% impact to a 15% impact. That's still an impact. So let's be blunt. This is why the old just keep chlorine between one and three mentally is chemically lazy, because the real question is not what is your chlorine reading. The real question is what is your cyanuric acid and therefore what is your actual hypochlorous acid concentration likely to be. Fox paper showed that HOCL stays nearly constant when the CYA to FC ratio is kept constant, which is the core chemical logic behind the FC, CYA ratio discuss that so many people wrongfully dismiss as internet cult behavior. It's not cult behavior, it's equilibrium chemistry applied to field practice. And before someone says, yeah, but that's just the pool nerd theory, let's bring in the CDC. In the CDC Cryptosporadium hypochlorination study, cyanuric acid clearly reduced chlorine disinfection efficacy. At 20 parts per million of free chlorine with no cyuric acid, the estimated Three log inactivation CT stands for contact time value was about 15,300 minutes. That means at a chlorine level of one part per million, it would take 15,300 minutes in order to inactivate cryptosporidium greater than 99%. Now that number climbed up to 31,500 minutes when the cyaneuric acid level was at 16 parts per million. So it's twice as long. At around 48 parts per million of cyanuric acid, they can only estimate a one log count of 76,500, which I'll save you the time in doing the math. That's 53 fucking days. Can you imagine that? That crypto is still a risk because it was treated in a pool that has a cyanuric acid level that's a little bit higher. That same 20 parts per million for chlorine. We do in a pool that has no cyaneuric acid now. Keep in mind your CDC's fecal incident response guidelines. 20 parts per million for 12.75 hours. Bring that cyanuric acid level up to 48. You need to maintain that 20 parts per million for 53 fucking days just to do one third of what we did in 12.75 hours. That's insane. And at around 100 parts per million of cyanuric acid, even after 72 hours, they were only seeing a 0.8 log reduction at 22 hours, 20 part per million free chlorine range. So, I mean, that's not subtle. That's cyanuric acid reaching over and choking the hell out of hypochlorination performance. This is where Wojewicks deserves more credit than he gets. He described cyanuric acid chemistry in terms that service pros should have taken more serious decades ago. He wrote that monochloroisocyanurate under typical pool conditions is an ineffective bacteriocide compared with hypochlorous acid, even though it serves as a reservoir that releases hypochlorous acid on demand. That reservoir concept is useful, but people mishear it. So a reservoir is not the same as immediate force. A reservoir means stored potential. It does not mean instant punch. That is why I keep saying cyanuric acid is better understood as a chlorine regulator than as a stabilizer. Because stabilizer makes people think the only thing happening is UV protection. Regulator forces you to admit that there is a cost. And that cost is reaction speed. The cost of disinfecting power at any given measured chlorine level. The cost is slower oxidation. The cost is slower kill. The cost is more time for contaminants and microorganisms to exist in the water before the chemistry catches up. That is not my opinion. That is the direction the literature points. Whether you approach it through O'Brien era equilibrium work, Woljewick's pool chemistry papers, Fox's modeling and risk analysis, the EPA's drinking water equilibrium modeling, or the CDC's disinfection studies. Now, let me take a shot at the phrase chlorine lock. No, I still don't like it. It's chemically sloppy. Chlorine is not locked, not in the sense that it becomes permanently unavailable, but the equilibrium is reversible. Cyanurate bound chlorine is a reserve that can hide that can hydrolyze and release active species as demand consumes them. Even industry summaries that explain overstabilization correctly still describe it as chlorine being slowed, not magically shut off. So no, chlorine lock is not a good scientific term, but it does sound a heckle of a lot better than chlorine bound and gagged, right? So the reason this has survived for so long is because of operators in the field noting the behavior. They see that there's chlorine present and the performance is lousy. The chemistry behind that lousy performance, it's not locked. It's suppressed HOCL concentration and slowed kinetics. And if you want the truly nasty part, the EPA's 2019 model work showed that even temperature changes matter enough in the chlorine cyanuric acid system that a drinking water system using dichlor or trichlor could overestimate truly free chlorine by as much as 50% if temperature is ignored in some conditions. That is drinking water work, not backyard pool sales fluff, drinking water work. So if temperature matters, cyanuric acid matters, pH matters, and test method definitions matter, then anybody out there pretending the entire story can be reduced to a single free chlorine reading is operating without half of their fucking mind. They have the chemical sophistication of a squirrel on Adderall. So what's the practical takeaways for the pool pro? Test cyanuric acid like it matters because it does. Treat stabilized chlorine as a delivery system with baggage because it is. Understand that DPD-free chlorine in cyanuric acid water is not a pure measure of immediately active sanitizer. Because the MAHC now says so in plain language, and stop acting shock when a pool with normal chlorine and high cyanuric acid behaves like a lazy, underproof mess. Chemistry didn't betray you. You betrayed the chemistry by pretending the reserve and the active fraction were the same thing. Richard Falk helped a lot of people see that the FCCYA relationship is the operational language of this chemistry. CBC showed the public health consequence when CYA is present during disinfection. EPA showed the equilibrium system is robust enough to need real modeling. Wojewitz, the mechanism and the reservoir behavior and the old O'Brien equilibrium work still sits underneath all of it like bedrock. That's the comparison. Different voices, same direction, same warning, same unavoidable conclusion. Cyanuric acid is useful, but it is never free. So I'm gonna talk about this now because this just seems like a right the right time to discuss it. And this came up the other day in LinkedIn Dewey Case with the CMAHC, the CMAC Counsel for the Model Aquatic Health Code, asked a question, tagged me, and it was about cyanuric acids. So this definitely relates. The conversation itself actually came to a head back in 2019 during a CMAC session where we were digging into cyanuric acid and chlorine effectiveness and stabilized pools. There was real field data being looked at. I think it was a county in Florida, Hillsborough County maybe. And I was in conversations with input from folks like Ellen Myers, Jen Wong, Roy War, Richard Falk, all who have spent a lot of time in the weeds on this. We were trying to reconcile the EPA label constraint of four parts per million of free chlorine in public pools. We mentioned, I mentioned that at the beginning of this episode before even said hello, really. Again, that's what we were looking to do. What came out of that was that a 1 to 20 free chlorine to cyanec acid ratio gave you effective sanitation while still staying within those label limits. In real terms, four parts per million free chlorine still effective at 80 parts per million of cyanuric acid. The 7.5% number, the one that everybody's probably most familiar with, the ratio, salary needs to be 7.5% of your cyaneuric acid to keep your pool bacteria and algae free. So again, that's the number that was changed. Going with the 1 to 20 ratio now, what we're looking at is 5% with a maximum chlorine level of four parts per million per the EPA label, the 7.5% number based on maintaining a specific hypochlorous acid level. And that's the chemistry. You know, you don't always get to operate in a perfect chemical model. So we've got labels, codes, and enforcement to deal with. But last I heard Michelle Havlasa with CDC, she oversees the part that deals with swimming pools. She was attempting to challenge the EPA and separate chlorine levels for pool use from the maximum drinking water level. But regardless of where anybody stood on cyanuric acid pro, again, stores somewhere in the middle. There was pretty broad agreement that 1 to 20 was the most practical place to land if you're trying to stay compliant and still maintain effectiveness. Now that said, I do know pool pros who intentionally run cyanuric acid levels above 200 parts per million, and they do that successfully. They argue a noticeable reduction in UV degradation. For me, that's more of a you do you. During those same CMAC discussions, serious consideration was also given to raising the acceptable upper limit of cyanuric acid to around 180 parts per million. I know. 180 parts per million. There was actually a decent amount of data supporting that move. Where it ultimately broke down wasn't the chemistry, it was the field practicality. Most operators are relying on a visual determination turbidity testing, you know, to make the dot disappear test with a 100 part per million max. So now we're depending on dilution testing in the field, and the reality is that's inconsistent at best. Personally, I'd rather not have cyanuric acid used in commercial pools at all. Unfortunately, that would have most, if not all, in the desert and sunbelt areas going belly up due to the cost of chlorine. Um, in residential pools, well, you know what? You may as well cow cowboy it up, have have at it. But me, I'd max out at 30 parts per million or less for my personal preference. Again, a necessary evil. So the next time somebody says cyanuric acid just protects chlorine from the sun, don't nod along like they said something smart. Tell them that's the first thing that an idiot would say. And unfortunately, not the last thing an idiot says. Because the real conversation is this how much of your measured chlorine is actually active right now? How hard is cyanuric acid throttling your HOCL? How much disinfection speed did you sacrifice for UV protection? And at what point did your stabilized pool become a chemically tranquilized pool? That's not pool store drama. That's equilibrium chemistry. And if you really want mastery, that is where mastery starts. Now, they did some more research and they did find that a lower percentage, and when I say they, I mean Richard Falk, and then accepted and taught by Bob Lowry. So again, a lower percentage works just fine. One to twenty, one part per million of free chlorine to twenty parts per million of cyanuric acid, or basically five percent, which means a four part per million free chlorine level is perfectly fine at eighty parts per million of cyaneuric acid. At a hundred parts per million instead of the 7.5%, giving us 7.5 parts per million. Now, with this one to 20, 100 parts per million, we're looking at a five part per million free chlorine level. But again, that number four is eighty. That's important. That's an important number. Four parts per million of free chlorine to eighty parts cyaneuric acid still work. And the reason for that is the law. Take a look at your container of chlorine. I don't care what kind it is, look at the instructions. The instructions state that you are allowed to have as much as a four part per million free chlorine level in the pool. That means you cannot maintain a number higher than that legally because the EPA requires that label on the bucket. And if the EPA requires the label on the bucket to say that it can't be more than four parts per million free chlorine, yeah, I know that is based off of drinking water standards, but it doesn't matter. It's what we got because the chlorine that we use in pools is used in drinking water, so it has to have that label, and that label states that you cannot have any more than a four part per million free chlorine level in a body of water. That's not just commercial pools, that is all pools. This is this is EPA, not public pool regulated by health departments. No, this is EPA. That's a national thing. That bucket has to say it. Just like we talked about the sodium bromide and the other labels last week, where the label says you cannot use sodium bromide whatsoever in an outdoor pool. Guess what? That's the law. Anyway, can you tell I'm not happy about a four part per million top end for free chlorine? So why does every health department code still state, and it's not everyone, but it's a lot of them, that it's okay to have a level as high as 10 parts per million of free chlorine in an outdoor pool? I know folks up in the Northeast, they're seeing that four part per million number. But throughout the rest of the country, up to 10 parts per million is fine. Why? Well, you have government agencies that are not getting together on something.

SPEAKER_05 36:16

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SPEAKER_00 37:40

And now, breaking news. You ever get the feeling the industry didn't just change but quietly shifted underneath your feet while you were brushing a pool? Yeah, that's where we're at right now. This is not one story. This is a pattern. And if you're paying attention, April 2026 just handed you a roadmap for what this industry is about to become. Let's start with the one nobody wants to talk about. Climate, no opinions, not politics, permits. A town in Connecticut is actively discussing banning new in-ground pools in flood-prone areas. Not regulating, not modifying, banning. Why? Because pools can float. You know this. Take the water out of a pool. What do you got? You got a boat. So yeah, config problem when the ground is saturated and a storm rolls in. Now, imagine explaining to a homeowner, yeah, we can build you a pool unless the town decides your backyard is now technically part of the ocean. This is the first domino you're gonna see. More engineering requirements, more anchoring requirements, more permit denials, more environmental impact reviews. And here's the part I'm not ready for. This doesn't just stay in Connecticut, this migrates just like every other code change that starts small and spreads like mustard algae. Now, let's bring it back down south to Florida. Something big almost happened. And most people didn't even realize it. There was a push to change bonding requirements. And if that went through, you'd be looking at retrofits, callbacks, inspectors failing pools that were perfectly fine yesterday, but it failed quietly. And that's the lesson. The biggest wins in this industry are the disasters that don't happen. Because if that change passed, you wouldn't be talking about it on a podcast. You'd be living it. Now, let's talk about liability because this one should make every service pro stop what they're doing for just a second. There's a lawsuit involving Hayward Industries tied to a catastrophic suction entrapment incident. At the same time, tens of thousands of spa jets are being recalled for drowning hazards. Let that sink in. We're not talking about cloudy water. We're talking about life and death tied directly to equipment. Which means, guess who's in the conversation? You are, because you touched the pool. You serviced the pool. You saw the cover, you saw the flow, or worse, you didn't. This is where the Virginia Grand Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act stops being something you learned in a class and starts being something that can drag you into court. You don't get paid extra to check drains, but you might pay dearly if you don't. Now let's shift to something slower, but just as dangerous to your business. Water. Texas is tightening up on water usage because of drought. And if you think that's a Texas problem, you're already behind. Because water restrictions don't show up as a suggestion. They show up as no fill permits issued. Partial fill only. Drain not allowed. Now think about your business model. How much of it depends on water replacement to fix problems? How many of your solutions are actually just dilution strategies? Because those days, they're getting numbered. Now, let's talk about the shiny object everybody keeps throwing around. AI. And for once, it's not complete nonsense. We're actually seeing AI route optimization, automatic testing integrations, smarter robotic cleaners. This isn't replacing you, no, but it is replacing inefficiency. And here's the uncomfortable truth. The guy with systems will beat the guy with hustle every time. Because hustle doesn't scale. Systems do. Now, with zoom out, big picture. There are about 10.7 million pools in the United States right now. Demand is still going up. Search traffic is up, interest is up, but margins, they're tightening. Labor, harder to find. Customers, more demanding. So what does that mean? It means the industry didn't get easier, it got sharper, more precise, less forgiving. Because this one is global. Public pools are cutting hours because they can't find lifeguards. Builders can't find skilled workers. Service companies. You already know, you're either short staffed or you're one bad employee away from being short staffed. This is not a hiring problem, this is a retention problem. Because the companies that win over the next five years are the ones people don't want to leave. Now, here's something that'll make you laugh and also make you money if you're paying attention. Design trends. Diving boards are coming back. Yep. Those things we spent years pretending didn't exist because of liability, they're back. But now they're high-end, integrated, aesthetic. It's the same industry trick we've seen a thousand times. Take something old, rebrand it, charge more, and suddenly it's innovation. So what's the takeaway? Not the fluffy one, but the real one. The pool industry is not slowing down, it's tightening, it's becoming more regulated, more technical, more liability driven, more system dependent, and at the exact same time, more opportunity rich than it has ever been. So right now, you're standing out of line. On one side, you got the old way. Throw tabs, brush when you feel like it, hope nothing breaks, and pray the customer doesn't ask questions. On the other side, you've got understanding chemistry, understanding hydraulics, understanding liability, building systems, charging correctly, and actually running a business. And the industry is starting to expose people. The gap between pool guy and professional is widening fast. And the middle, it's disappearing. So the question isn't, is there opportunity? Because there is. The question is, which side of that line are you standing on? Because April 2026 made one thing very, very clear. This industry is not what it was five years ago, and it's definitely not going back. Big surprise. Anyway, that's all I have for this week. I hope you have a killer weekend. I really do. I'm Rudy Stankwitz. This is the Talkman Pools Podcast. Until next time, be good. Catch a fish. Stay safe.