Bob Lowry’s Borate Blueprint for a Better Pool

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (01:54):
Bob Lowry, Bob Lowry to talk to Boris in swimming
pool, and how they can be highlyeffective in preventing algae,
and allowing you to let us lesschlorine in your pool.
And there's no one better thanBob Lowry to talk about Boris in
your pool since he was thepremier expert on the use of
boring and swimming pools.

(02:15):
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The Bory thing we talk about allthe time.

(02:37):
And I think one of the thingsthat we have to emphasize is
that adding bore is not a magicpill to your pool or magic
bullet.
So there's things you have to dostill after you add the bore to
the water, like balance thewater, check the LSI.
And I think the impression thatpeople get is that when they add
the bore to the pool, they'redone with their pool care at
that point.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (02:58):
Well, and I I wrote a technical bulletin about that
too.
Um and that's exactly the way Ifelt about it is that you know,
people are saying, well, I putsuborates in, I won't have algae
anymore.
And that's it just isn't true.

(03:19):
Um, you have to still maintainthe pool, and there's some
things you need to do.
And, you know, not the least ofwhich is to keep the right
amount of chlorine in the pool.
Um, you know, you need to keepthe the chlorine level either 5%
if you're going to use borateand you keep the level of
chlorine in at 5% of CYA.

(03:39):
So you need to do that.
And with a minimum of two partsper million, because people say,
well, you know, just keep thechlorine level or the CYA level
at 20.
Then I can keep uh you know onepart per billion of chlorine in
the pool, and that's not the wayit works.
You still need the uh theminimum, still needs to be two.

SPEAKER_02 (04:00):
And I think you wrote about that as far as your
cyanetic acid level.
Uh, didn't you write that youknow, 30 parts per text, three
parts per million, five, fiftyparts per million protects.
You need parts per million.

SPEAKER_00 (04:12):
You need about what 10 parts per million for each
one part per million of chlorinethat you're gonna keep in the
pool.
So um, if you're gonna put fourparts or five parts per million
of chlorine in the pool, youneed 40 or 50 parts per million
of chlorine.

SPEAKER_02 (04:28):
Of cyanaric acid, you mean right?

SPEAKER_00 (04:29):
I mean of cyanaric acid.

SPEAKER_02 (04:31):
Excuse me.
And I've done tests before withmy pool where I kept it at 10 or
20 parts per million, and itdoesn't hold chlorine for
nothing at that level.

SPEAKER_00 (04:40):
No, it doesn't.
And and uh and actually theproblem may be the test itself.
The manufacturers that I checkedwith, 20 parts per million is
about the bare minimum that theycan accurately say it's okay.
And even that level is plus orminus 20 percent.
You know, when you think aboutit, you know, if you're
measuring 15, it's 20 percent ofthat.

(05:03):
It may be only 10 or 12 insteadof 15, like you think it is.
I think keeping a low level ofcyanuric acid, the minimum level
of cyanuric acid you ever needis 20 and probably probably 30.
But if you're gonna put two tofour parts per million of
chlorine in the pool, you'regonna need 20 to 40 cyanuric

(05:24):
acid.

SPEAKER_02 (05:25):
And so with the with the bories in the pool, this is
a question I get asked a lot.
Um, is it harder to lower the pHin alkalinity once you have the
bories at 50 parts a million?
Are you gonna use more acid todo that?
Because it is a buffer.

SPEAKER_00 (05:37):
Well, yes, actually, the pH won't go up as fast or as
high, but once it does go high,it'll take you almost twice as
much to go to back down.
So it it technically doesn'tsave you any acid, but it does
um save you the time and the theheight that it's gonna go up.

(06:02):
That's the advantage to it, isthat um instead of the pH going
to eight in a week, the pH maygo to eight in two weeks.
So it doesn't stop it, it slowsit down.
But then once it gets up there,it's gonna take you twice as
much acid as it normally takesto get a better map.

SPEAKER_02 (06:22):
And I think that's something that they should know
about when they add the borateproduct, is that it's a good
idea to have the pH andalkalinity in range first, your
target ranges first, before youadd the borate, because then
it's harder to lower it downafterwards.
Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 (06:38):
Well, and understand this too.
I I had a couple of calls thisweek from people saying, I've
added a borate to my pool and itclouded my pool.
What happened?
And the answer is that there arethree kinds of boring, boring
products you can add to thepool.
The one that I recommend usingis called boric acid.

(07:01):
And when you add it to the pool,it will change the pH of the
pool by 0.2 pH, which is barelyenough to even test for.
And the other thing it's goingto do is lower alkalinity by
about five parts per million,which is also not much that you

(07:21):
can check on a test can.
So essentially, adding boricacid does nothing.
When you add the other twoproducts, which are sodium
tetraborate pentahydrate andsodium tetraborate decahydrate,
which is borax, when you addthose two products to the pool,
they will increase the pH of thepool to nine, and they will

(07:45):
increase total alkalinity by 115parts per million.
To overcome that and get it backto where you started in a
10,000-gallon pool, you willneed 2.2 gallons of acid.
And so in a 15,000-gallon pool,you need almost three and a half
gallons of acid after you'veadded either of those two

(08:06):
products.
And this is the reason, the onlyreason that I recommend boric
boric acid.
You put it in the pool, you'redone.
You put boride in the pool, nowyou've got to put acid in there,
and you got to put, it's okay toput the acid in at the same time
as the boric.
So you don't you won't have towaste any time.
But you're gonna need 3.3gallons in a 15,000 gallon pool

(08:31):
if you've added 50 parts permillion of sodium tetraborate
and hydrate.

SPEAKER_02 (08:36):
Yeah, so the best method would be to have the pH
and alkalinity within the targetrange and then use boric acid.

SPEAKER_00 (08:42):
Right.
And the reason that this guy hadhad a problem was that he had
high pH and alkalinity and addedthe borate product on top of
that, and he he literallyprecipitated out some calcium
down of the pool.
You know, because his that madehis alkalinity about 220 and

(09:03):
230, and his calcium was alreadyabout 400, and his pH was eight.
You know, and and if you putthat on on an LSI, you're gonna
see it's you know like 1.2 orsomething.
It's a big number.

(09:37):
So the calcium actually cameright out of the water.

SPEAKER_02 (09:39):
And so I think the key takeaway is um once you add
the borids to the pool, um,lowering the pH in alkalinity
will take more muatic acid ifthat's the one you use, um,
versus before, but then the risein pH is not gonna be as
dramatic.
So if you had a pool, like myI'll use my pool as an example.
I have a salt water generator.
Before I put the borids inseveral years ago, it would be

(10:01):
at eight eight all the time,almost every week.
Even after I added acid a coupleof days later, it'd be up at
eight again.
And now with the bories inthere, I'm hovering around 7.6,
7.8 all the time.
And I add acid maybe once everyweek, or when I remember, I
should say, because my pool'spretty neglected.
Um, you know, the cobbler sonhas no shoes, you know.

(10:22):
Of course.
Um, but I check it, I mean Icheck it every every I have an
app, I have actually three umother smart monitors in my pool
because I'm testing those out.
And so I check my pH every daybecause it's on my phone, and I
can tell you it doesn't movefrom 7.8 all week long.
It just stays there um prettyconsistently, which before it
didn't.
So the benefit I think of thebore far outweighs any kind of

(10:44):
extra uh muatic acid you'regonna use to lower it, I think.

SPEAKER_00 (10:48):
Well, that's that's the big advantage, is it just it
doesn't go up as fast or ashigh.
Um, it'll take you a little moreacid to get it back down once it
gets up there, but um I thinkit's you know it is a benefit.

SPEAKER_02 (11:02):
Yeah, I just pulled it up on my phone here.
It's 7.9 right now today, and Iadded acid on five days ago.
Um, so it hasn't gone up much ina week, you know.
The um the magic level ofbories, this goes back and
forth.
And I know I mentioned to youbefore that if you buy a
pre-manufactured borie product,the manufacturer has on the

(11:25):
label uh 35 parts per million istheir level that they recommend.
Um but that's not the level thatyou recommend.

SPEAKER_00 (11:32):
No, and it's not the level that's that's very
effective, to be honest withyou.
I think that 50 parts permillion is the effective range.
But there is a an obscure uhdetail from EPA, and they ran a
test and and did a bunch ofthings and produced of you know,

(11:53):
115-page report, and andultimately had said that that
they wouldn't have any problemwith 30 parts per million with a
uh no level of concern, ANOLA,of 150 percent.
So when you take you know 30parts per million times uh 1.5,

(12:19):
you come up with 45.
So EPA is saying that it's okayto have 45, but there isn't
anything that's gonna measure45.
So they they agree that 50 wasokay.
So 50 is what basically EPA issaying is okay.
And that level is still with alevel of concern, which is

(12:43):
different than the other one, alevel of concern of like uh six
times.
So you could actually keep awhole lot more in there and not
have a problem, uh, any seriousproblem.
People sometimes read that NOLAmethod and come up and say,
well, yeah, okay, then weshouldn't be recommending more

(13:05):
than what EPA says.
So from a legal standpoint,they're telling you that 35
parts per million is what youneed in your pool because that's
under the EPA maximum.
So, you know, EPA also has amaximum of 100 parts per million
on cyanoric acid, and you seewhat we do to that.

(13:27):
There is an obscure uh maximumlevel of boring in a pool of 50.
And I sometimes with a achlorine generator recommend a
level of 70.
And in the original patent thatJohn Gervin got on uh using
borate in water in 19, uh usingit in pools in 1984, his patent

(13:54):
says that borate at 50 parts permillion is an effective
algorithm.
And he actually went on fartherand found that 200 parts per
million of borate in the wateris an algicide, but um they
didn't they didn't want torecommend 200 parts per million

(14:16):
of borate in the pool as analgicide.
So um so 50 is in there as apreventative, as an algis staff.
At any rate, it's effective, and50 is is an okay level.
And the folks that that you andI both know over at Trouble Free
Pools and Richard Falk have beenrecommending 50 parts per

(14:38):
million of borate for probablyalmost uh 15 years.
I think uh Ben Powell and andthose guys over there at Trouble
Free Pools first startedmentioning using borates in
pools in 2007.
That would be 14 years ago.

(14:58):
Recommending myself for eightyears in in my publication.

SPEAKER_02 (15:02):
And you mentioned 70 parts per million in the
saltwater generator pool.
Well what's it what's thereasoning behind that level?

SPEAKER_00 (15:09):
Well, um, it's actually just field reports from
guys that I I trust theirknowledge.
You know, the a couple of guysthat have attended my classes
have said, you know, I'm aservice tech, I got 50% of my
pools on on uh borates and andchlorine generators, and we're
finding that 70 works betterthan 50.

(15:31):
It's just field reports, andobviously, because of the patent
and the the data that's behindthe patent, because they did a
test that a university usingborates, and they they did find
that at 200 it is an algae side.
So the higher you go, obviouslythe better it is.
It's just how much do you wantto put in there until you think

(15:53):
it's safe or whatever.
So I think 70 is the maximum Iwould ever recommend, but I
think 70 is a good thing for achlorine generator pool.
I also think that 70 parts permillion of cyanuric acid is the
right level for a chlorinegenerator pool, too.
And the reason is that most ofthe time, when you have that

(16:15):
chlorine generator set onmaximum and it's pumping out
chlorine, it's making morechlorine than there is cyanuric
acid near the point of whereit's being made in the cell.
And so then you have chlorinethat's unattached to cyanuric
acid getting back into the pool,and it's being dispensed close

(16:37):
to the surface of the pool wheresunlight degradation is huge.
At the surface of the pool,chlorine degradation is 90% in
two hours.
So you can lose a significantamount of chlorine if it's being
unattached at the level at theat the surface of the pool, uh,

(17:00):
if it's if you don't have enoughcyanuric acid in the water.
So we found that 70 is betterfor cyanuric acid with the
chlorine generator pool.

SPEAKER_02 (17:10):
That's interesting.
I you know, I think youmentioned that before, and
explaining it like that again, Ithink it makes a lot of sense
that the way it generates it isthe reason why you want to have
a higher cyaneric acid level.

SPEAKER_00 (17:21):
You want all of the chlorine that's being made to be
attached to cyanuric acid beforeit gets to the pool.

SPEAKER_02 (17:27):
And then the borate tests, testing for borates is
one of the probably the biggesthurdles that people face.
Um currently, there's the teststrips that you can get, and
then there is the spin touch.
They have a disc that doesborates also.
But besides that, I haven'theard of many other tests for
borates in the water.

SPEAKER_00 (17:47):
There there isn't.
There is a method that that Iresearched and found, a method,
but um nobody evercommercialized it.
There was a method that wascreated, but it wasn't very easy
to do, and nobody thought thatthat they needed Borea done that

(18:07):
much, so it didn't become apriority with any of the test
kit companies.
But the technology for making auh a test strip was there, and
it's easier to make the stripnow because practically every
manufacturer already makes astrip.

SPEAKER_02 (18:24):
And then uh mathematically, though, you can
pretty much calculate how muchborate's in the water based on
the gallons of the pool and howmuch you add.
Is that kind of correct?

SPEAKER_00 (18:34):
Yeah, that's you know, we that's how we recommend
adding it, is you know, we welist the amount of ounces you
need for the part per million ofborate that you want in the
pool.
You know, it's like 7.6 uh partsper million of uh ounces uh for
for each one part per million ofborate in 10,000 gallons.

(18:57):
So you just multiply 7.6 timesuh 50, and that gives you the
parts for the uh the amount youneed in a 10,000 gallon pool.
And then you can multiply thattimes whatever gallons you have
in your pool.
So um the numbers are prettyeasy to come up with.
You need nine ounces for sodiumtetraborate phenhydrate and 11

(19:21):
ounces for for the decahydrate.

SPEAKER_02 (19:23):
So it's and how do you remember all this stuff off
the top of your head?
Because you haven't given methose right now.

SPEAKER_00 (19:28):
My mind works like a computer, and and once the
information goes in, it's itstays there.
It's I don't have an idacticmemory, but I I think it's
probably close.
Uh I just remember things likethat because I remember numbers
and amounts, and you know, theyjust float around for me.

SPEAKER_02 (19:49):
So I wonder if you go to Vegas, you can count cards
at blackjack.

SPEAKER_00 (19:53):
Um you know, I looked into doing that once.
But but then they, I don't know,I guess with facial recognition,
they can see your eyes rollingback and fear that you're
counting.

SPEAKER_02 (20:06):
Yeah, like the MIT guys that had the little
calculator in their shoe, youknow, they were able to count
the cards.
Um, you do it all in your head,which is pretty amazing.
I think one thing we shouldemphasize too is that once you
add the borids to the pool, it'skind of like cyaneric acid where
it doesn't evaporate out ofthere or salt when you add the
salt to the pool.
And so the following season, youdon't need to add, you know, 20
or 30 pounds of the boric acidagain because most of that

(20:30):
should still be in the water,right?

SPEAKER_00 (20:32):
Yeah, it only, as I said before, it only reduces
when there's a water loss.
So it only reduces when umyou've got a leak, splice out,
drag out, you know, uh somethinglike that, because um it doesn't
evaporate, so it stays there.
So it may go down five or tenppm over a whole season, which

(20:55):
is not a lot because then youcan just recharge it the
following season.

SPEAKER_02 (20:59):
And I think my I tell Pool Prozos all the time
when you when you sell this toyour customers, make sure you
let them know that this is not ayearly thing that's gonna have
to be added every year.
In most cases, you just have toadd a maintenance dose.
So um at that point, it's aneasy sell once you tell the
customer that it's not a yearlykind of thing.
So I'm all for Borease.

(21:19):
I think that you know, althoughthey're not a magic pill, not
you know, they're not magic inany way.

SPEAKER_00 (21:25):
And people ask me, well, what does it do?
And basically it does two thingsit prevents algae and it keeps
the pH up from going up so fastand so high.
And that's all it does.
And if you're expecting it to domore, it doesn't do anything.

SPEAKER_02 (21:40):
I guess one last thing it can do is add a little
sparkle to the water.

SPEAKER_00 (21:43):
It it does do that.
We have reports of people sayingthe water feels silkier, it
sparkles more, it looks bluer.
I've got a video that JohnStankis did.
Shows him putting the boraid inthe pool.
And on his video, you can seethe water look different.

SPEAKER_02 (22:02):
And if you're looking for other podcasts, you
can of course find those on mywebsite,
swingingpoollearning.com.
If you go there, just click onthe podcast icon on the top.
That'll take you to a drop-downmenu where I have over 1800
podcasts for you.
And if you're also interested inthe coaching program, you can
learn more atpoolguetcoaching.com.
Thanks for listening to thispodcast.

(22:22):
Have you rest your week?
God bless.

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Bob Lowry’s Borate Blueprint for a Better Pool

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