The Pool Guy Podcast Show

Your pool can look fine on paper and still be losing the chlorine battle. We dig into the frustrating “problem pool” scenario where you’re pouring in gallons of chlorine and the free chlorine (FC) reading barely budges, then break down what’s really happening when chlorine gets consumed faster than you can add it. With Bob Larry’s help, we walk through how to think like a detective: look at the environment, the deck, landscaping, runoff, bather load, and even the odd stuff people don’t mentio...

Your pool water can look “chlorinated” on a test and still be unsafe or algae-prone. The missing piece is cyanuric acid (CYA), the pool stabilizer that quietly binds most of your chlorine and changes how much active sanitizer you actually have working for you. We sit down with Bob Lowry, inventor of liquid pool conditioner, to get brutally clear on why high CYA is a real problem and how to fix it without guessing. We dig into what cyanuric acid really does beyond UV protection, how the...

Metal stains are one of the fastest ways a pool can look “dirty” even when the water is balanced and clear. The tricky part is that metals like copper and iron can hide in plain sight as dissolved ions, then suddenly oxidize and plate onto plaster, steps, and fittings. That’s why we wanted a straight, practical conversation on pool metal removal that goes beyond quick fixes and old myths. We’re joined by Joe Loreno, CEO and president of Puretic Products, the company behind Culator. Joe...

A drained pool looks harmless until you realize it can become a boat. We’re talking about pool pop-ups, the real-world risk behind the phrase “the pool can pop out of the ground,” and the simple physics that make it possible when groundwater rises under an empty shell. We walk through what actually holds an inground plaster or concrete pool in place, including the massive weight of thousands of gallons of water, and what changes the moment you drain it for an acid wash or to lower high cyanu...

Filter problems love to disguise themselves as “chemistry issues” and that’s exactly how pool owners waste weekends and pool pros lose hours. We walk through the real decision that matters: do you simply need new filter media, or is it time to replace the whole filter body because the tank, clamp, or lid is worn out and headed toward failure. We start with the basics in plain language: what “filter media” means for cartridge, DE, and sand systems, and why each has a different lifespan. Then ...

Eyeballing pool chemicals feels fast, but it can quietly wreck your results and your margins. I walk through the most common pool water chemistry mistakes I see on pool routes, starting with the habit of default dosing: “a quart of acid,” “half a gallon of chlorine,” and other shortcuts that ignore what the water is actually doing. With today’s chemical prices, accuracy matters, and the good news is it does not have to mean slow, complicated math. A simple dosing app like poolcalculator.com c...

One rushed hire can undo years of hard-earned trust on your pool route. We break down how we train and onboard a new pool service employee so customers still get the same clean water, the same reliable routine, and the same professional experience they expect from us. We start with a realistic training timeline (and why three to four weeks of ride-alongs is often the sweet spot), plus the mindset shift that saves your sanity: a new pool technician will have questions, forget steps, and need ...

Your pool service route isn’t just a weekly schedule, it’s an asset that can be worth real money if you can prove it. We sit down with Niki Acosta and Hal Denbar from Skimmer to get specific about what actually increases a pool service business valuation, and what quietly destroys it when a buyer starts digging. If you’ve ever wondered whether you can build something you can sell, this conversation lays out the practical path. We get into what “due diligence” looks like when someone wants to...