Jack’s Magic – Stain Identification Program

Jack’s Magic – Stain Identification Program

Jack’s Magic – Stain Identification Program

Many home owners are unsure of what to do when they notice stains in their swimming pool. Often these ugly marks result in frustration and bitterness towards the swimming pool that you once loved and enjoyed. You may try to remove these stains yourself, but it is highly recommended to reach out to a pool professional before you let too much time pass. Often these situations only worsen if left untreated for too long.

Matt’s Water is highly trained in Stain Identification Technology and we can treat any stain you come across. By contacting Matt’s Water we can quickly diagnose the cause of your stain & begin a treatment plan immediately.

What Causes Staining In Your Pool?

There are very many causes of stains in your swimming pool. Each cause has a root issue that almost always revolves around the chemistry of your swimming pool. We refer to the chemistry of your swimming pool as the Water Balance.

To understand this concept, we need to break your water balance into it’s individual components. Below is a list of each aspect of your water balance along with the recommended levels:

  • Free Chlorine: 1 – 3 ppm
  • Total Chlorine: 1 – 3 ppm
  • pH: 7.4 – 7.6
  • Calcium Hardness: 200 – 400 ppm
  • Total Alkalinity: 80 – 120 ppm
  • Cyanuric Acid: 0 – 30 ppm
  • Copper: 0 ppm
  • Iron: 0 ppm

Maintaining these chemistry levels is often a challenge for most home owners. It seems easier to understand how your cable bill is calculated than understanding how to keep your water chemistry in balance. Oftentimes because these chemical levels seem daunting, most home owners default to the age old method of taking care of their swimming pools. Looking for clear water, shocking & adding chlorine tablets is general practice for most home owners.

Many Factors Affect Our Pool Chemistry

Unfortunately, this is often not enough maintain to keep your water chemistry properly balanced. Similar to the engine in your vehicle, your pool chemistry needs to be checked regularly (we recommend weekly checks). We emphasize regular testing because your pool water is impacted by many internal and external factors:

  • Body sweat
  • Sun screen & tanning oils
  • Grass, leaves & other vegetation
  • Rain
  • Evaporation
  • Much more…

It’s important to realize that your swimming pool is an open air ecosystem that absorbs many elements & constantly seeks balance. Water by nature requires balance to be satisfied. When our pool water is allowed to spend ample time out of balance it will naturally draw elements from your pool plaster or pull molecules from “out of suspension.” This is not good!

Believe it or not, molecules such as metals are often unseen (or invisible) because your water is balanced and satisfied. However, if too many of a particular product exist in your swimming pool this causes that molecule to become too heavy and “fall out of suspension.” The same can be said for other elements of your swimming pool. Let’s continue diving in and learning more!

How to Identify Stains In Your Pool

Keeping all of this detailed information in mind, how do we recognize when staining is occurring in our swimming pool? Also, if we begin to notice stains, how do we treat them and remove them from our swimming pool?

Well, first thing is first. Since we have already identified that stains are primarily the result of chemical issues from unbalanced water, then we must treat our stains with chemicals to remove them. That being said, we utilize a very unique and handy produced – the Jack’s Magic: The Stain ID Kit.

This kit includes 4 topical tests that we apply individually to each stain. Within 30 seconds, one of these four tests will cause a chemical reaction or “erasing” of the stain. This indicates what compounds are impacting your pool plaster and helps us identify our treatment method.

Developing a Jack’s Magic Treatment Plan

Trust us, stains happen. They happen even to the best swimming pool owners at one time or another. Often they arise without notice and it’s not until they reach a size of 6″ or larger that we often notice them. By that point the damage is already done and it’s time to seek professional treatment to eradicate them.

Upon noticing a stain, we urge you not to panic. Instead contact Matt’s Water so we can identify the type of stain that is occurring and begin an immediate treatment to mitigate the damage.

The Jack’s Magic Treatment Plan is simple but must be followed correctly for the highest level of stain removal. The treatment plan follows this plan but you can find the complete treatment plan by clicking this link:

  1. Identify – what is the cause of the stains? (use the Stain ID Kit)
  2. Remove – after locating the cause of the stain apply a Jack’s Magic treatment product for proper stain removal
  3. Prevent – once your stain is properly treated, we can set your up with a “preventive plan” to keep the culprit minerals out of your water

So What Was The Result of Our Tests?

You may have noticed the images of the Stain Tests throughout this article. By reviewing our first set of images from start to finish, we are following a process of elimination. We also are sure to test multiple stain locations around the swimming pool. This helps to isolate each stain to receive the best test results.

As you can see, we use the following test (4 topical treatments) on different points throughout the swimming pool:

The objective of using different tests is to see which ones consistently and effective remove our “test stains” from this swimming pool. As you can see from our set of images, it appears that Test #1 & #4 were the most effective at stain removal.

At first glance, we assume this is related to by Iron & Scale (exists in both sets of tests). In order to treat this type of staining, we will combine both Jack’s Magic Copper & Scale Stuff as well as their Magic Stain Solution.

If you have any questions about which treatment method your swimming pool might use, just give us a call. We will come out and test your water and help you identify the appropriate treatment option for your swimming pool!

Matt’s Water Brings The Best Treatment Tools

There is a whole lot more that we can cover about Pool Stains & Treatment Options. In fact, this is a very involved subject that requires years of industry knowledge to truly grasp. However, for our purposes, we hope to just highlight the causes of stains (often chemistry issues) & identify a solution (stain identification & targeted treatment).

Matt’s Water has the equipment, team and expertise available to help you treat any pool stain that you are encountering. We also have the capability to service any other aspect of your swimming pool. In fact, we have a fully functional Service Plan, a Brick & Mortal Retail Store or Online E-Commerce store. We provide you with all sorts of options to get the products and services you need to service and maintain your swimming pool.

We service Corsicana, TX as well as all surrounding areas. We invite you to give us a call for a free estimate of our services or visit our store or Online Shop for more information over products and services!

Maintaining Proper Chemistry for Summer 2018

Maintaining Proper Chemistry for Summer 2018

Maintaining Proper Pool Chemistry

It’s All About Enjoying The Pool

Despite what your experiences with your own pool may be, owning a swimming pool is about one specific purpose: enjoying your swimming pool and outdoor living space! Many non-pool owners may look at pool ownership as a tedious task or one that they feel is too complicated to take on. Other current pool owners look at their “soon to be swamp” and regret the purchase of their swimming pool. Others may feel stressed by the complicated pool chemistry and unsure of what to do next.

Let’s take a moment to peal back some of those misconceptions and summarize pool ownership and what it means for you and your family:

  • Owning a pool allows you to move your family time beyond the four walls of your home
  • It allows you to expand the functionality of your backyard and create an outdoor living space
  • Pools are exceptional recreational spaces that boost your daily physical activity
  • Last, but not least, they increase the resale value of your home and provide exceptional ROI (return on investment)

Pool Chemistry is comprised of 5 key elements: PH, Alkalinity, Chlorine, Calcium Hardness & Cyanuric Acid. The most common way to test for these chemical levels requires a Taylor or Lamotte test kit similar to the one shown above. This particular unit utilizes "Drop Testing." This is one of the simplest method to test your pool chemistry - and we can show you how it's done!

Pool Chemistry is comprised of 5 key elements: PH, Alkalinity, Chlorine, Calcium Hardness & Cyanuric Acid. The most common way to test for these chemical levels requires a Taylor or Lamotte test kit similar to the one shown above. This particular unit utilizes “Drop Testing.” This is one of the simplest method to test your pool chemistry – and we can show you how it’s done!

Maintaining Proper Chemical Levels

Pool ownership provides exceptional value to you and your family. Oftentimes, however, it feels like quite the opposite to many frustrated pool owners; and this detracts from the “fun” of pool ownership. Believe it or not, many of the problems and frustrations that pool owners experience could be solved by one key word: Chemistry.

Pool Chemistry is quite frankly the most important part of your swimming pool! It is the key ingredient that allows your water and equipment to thrive or die. It can harbor dangerous bacteria or provide crystal clear water for hours of outdoor enjoyment. Does maintaining proper chemistry levels require and little bit of work and elbow grease? Yes, but we’ve got the tools, information and products to help you get the job done!

This may also, be a great time to point out that we offer a full range of swimming pool chemicals, parts, equipment and accessories at our retail store located in Corsicana, TX. You can feel free to stop by during business hours or visit our Online E-Commerce Storefront!

Diagnosing Problems Before They Grow

As you may be able to tell, the key to eliminating chemical issues in your swimming pool is simple: prevent or catch them before they ever get started! This is an important time to realize that Matt’s Water is a resource for you as a pool owner! We are not a huge service company that gouges our customers on prices. Instead, we’ve have built our business model upon treating our customers fairly and focusing on high quality customer service.

Each of our team members spends time in the field continuous educating, learning, studying, applying and treating swimming pools. Our goal is simple: to become the very best Swimming Pool Service company in Corsicana TX and all surrounding areas!

What Exactly Do We Test For?

It’s always easier for us to treat a chemical problem when you realize early on that there is an issue. Our diagnosing procedures are pretty standard. We are going to follow this list of actions to diagnose and treat your chemical issue:

  • We use these test results to determine what the specific chemical levels are for following criteria:
    • PH – the balance of the water between Acidic & Base
    • Alkalinity – “The PH Buffer” that absorbs the changes of the water without impacting the PH
    • Chlorine – the level of sanitizer in the water that keeps the swimmer safe
    • Calcium Hardness – water seeks “balance” and requires calcium to keep it from scaling or etching the surface of your pool plaster. Swimmers often refer to this as “hard or soft” water.
    • Cyanuric Acid – the stabilizer of the water. This reading gives us an idea of how quickly or slowly your pool loses Chlorine levels due to the impact of UV rays on your water.

Real Life Example: High Cyanuric Acid & Metals

All of our conversation would be pretty mute if we didn’t give you a real life example of what exactly can go wrong with improper pool chemistry. In this example, our customer reached to alert us of an issue, but unfortunately it was too late for much to be done.

In the example below, our customer experienced the Fall Out of both Cyanuric Acid & Metals. All of our pool chemicals require “balance” in order for them to stay in a state of suspension. Simply put, our water must remain balanced for the chemicals to remain invisible and blended together. When metals and other water content levels become too high – they become to “heavy” for the water and collect on the walls and surface.

Unfortunately, for our customer, this issue was caught too late and some serious damage is done to both the pool plaster (surface underwater) and pool deck. That being said, the key to pool chemistry is maintaining proper levels and contacting a professional (i.e. Matt’s Water) when you detect an issue.

This image shows the effects of too high of Cyanuric Acid & Metal levels. Metals are existing in most water environments, however, they are supposed to stay in a state of "suspension." When these levels become too high, water "falls out of suspension" and particles begin to form and collect along the walls and floor of your pool. Surprisingly enough, these chemical levels combined together created a purple hue that stained both the plaster and deck - this will require some repairs.

This image shows the effects of too high of Cyanuric Acid & Metal levels. Metals exist in most water environments, however, they are supposed to stay in a state of “suspension.” When these levels become too high, water “falls out of suspension” and particles begin to form and collect along the walls and floor of your pool. Surprisingly enough, these chemical levels combined together created a purple hue that stained both the plaster and deck – this will require some repairs.

Matt’s Water: Service You Can Trust

We appreciate you taking the time to read our extensive article. If you’d like some more information about how to maintain proper chemistry levels, give us a call! Our goal is always to provide the very best in customer service to each and every customer. We pride ourselves on educating all of our customers to become their own pool experts!

If any of this is beyond your scope of expertise and you’d like to sign up for our professional weekly service, that’s great! We’d love to care for your swimming pool and keep it in top notch shape for your summer enjoyment! Give us a call and we’ll provide you the very best in swimming pool service!