Cyanurics ~

[Watermom]

Doug,
Please do not take offense. None of the comments are directed at you. You had no way to know that apparently this Kent guy isn't on the up and up. I don't think there is a "firestorm" of response to your original post and certainly, none of it is directed at your personally.

There is a lot of good information here on the forum and a lot of very knowledgeable people who are most willing to help pool owners. Hope you will stick around and be a part of our pool community. I personally, would like to welcome you to the forum! Happy to have you here!

[waterbear]

First, welcome to the forum!
The comments are most certainly not directed at you!
However, it is not that CYA is bad and that the smallest amount is good as the cyanurics paper suggests, that is far from the case and there are times when a higher CYA level IS desirable, such as with SWGs and in climates with strong sun such as AZ and FL. Also, gas chlorination warrants the use of higher CYA levels.
What is bad is the indiscriminate use of chlrorinated isocyanurates like trichlor and dichlor (particularly with cartridge and bump style DE filters) and NOT paying attention to the effect they have on the CYA which is all too common and encouraged by the manufacturers of teise products (like Chemtura , who own the Bioguard, Sun, Hydrotech, Omni, Guardex, and mass market AquaChem and PoolTime brands and take the corporate stance that CYA levels up to 200 ppm are not a problem!)

I think that many 'newbies' get the impression that CYA is bad. This is not true, proper use of CYA is the best think that has happened to chlorine sanitized pools in the past 50 years (which is about as long as CYA has been used in pools.) What is bad is ignoring and not understanding what CYA actually does in the pool. Knowledge is power and THAT is what the responses to your initial post are really all about and that this forum is all about.

Understand that there are a lot of people in the pool industry with self serving interests. This forum tries to avoid that and is the only one to my knowledge that does and I am active on several pool and spa forums and have moderated one other popular forum the past and asked to be a moderator on another one so I feel I do have some perspective on this.

Welcome to the forum and please try and understand where the responses came from. They were not directed at you!

[giroup01]

Let's not forget the TrueTex guy too!

[PoolDoc]

Hi "HeavyHook";

I'm sorry if we seemed to be attacking you -- I know all the people who responded, and I'm 99% certain that none of them intended to do so. I know I did not.

Since it seemed we were, I would ask you to consider how your post appeared to us.

First, you wrote, "I would love to read any comments the veterans in this Forum have concerning Mr. Williams data and conclusions!". That's pretty much what you got. The fact that several of us have reason, personal and otherwise, to consider Kent less than 100% candid or trustworthy is relevant. Because you were a new poster, it was reasonable for us to assume that you were considering following Kent's advice and guidelines. And since we know that doing so will cause you unnecessary pool problems, it was appropriate to caution you that Kent is not what he presents himself to be.


Second, and nothing against you is implied by this, those of us who are "veterans" of the forum have to keep in mind that our responses to YOU are read by dozens or even hundreds of others. In fact, if you search Google for "kent williams" and "cyanuric" and "acid", this very thread is the second result. [ Google search ] Most people wouldn't realize that -- no criticism implied or intended -- but it's something in the back of my mind all the time.

In other words, some of us realize that when we respond to you, we're also writing answers that all sorts of other people will read. And, we want people to know that Kent is not a trustworthy guide to home pool chemistry


Third, and this is again not something anyone expected you to know, the Pool Forum regularly encounters new posters who register for the unannounced purpose of promoting this product or that site or this other idea. Typically, such posters will began promoting their cause or product with their first or second post. Often this "promotion" is couched as a question. It's unfortunate, but your post fell into that pattern, and put us 'on guard'. If I had checked your registration, I would have seen that you were a Doughboy owner, and thus unlikely to be promoting Kent's work. But I didn't, and since signature lines don't appear for Temp subscribers, none of the other posters could have known that, either.

Obviously, whether continue participating here or not is up to you. But we really weren't attacking you, and our issues with Kent are primarily a matter of facts and not personalities.

Hope we see you again,

Ben

[Heavyhook]

Thanks everyone for clarifying what was going on with regards to Kent Williams. As stated before I was mearly trying to share some information I thought might be helpful. While searching the WWW I ran across his article , and thought the graphs that were included would be helpful to other as it has been to me in understanding how CYA and Chlorine work together(only to find out there is no science behind them).
One thing I guess I forgot is just because something is published on the net does not make it true! And To find out that someone has created a Persona with their own credentials by establishing the" POOL" origination, if it really exist. And naming them self president to give legitimacy to their cause is something I never expected.
I'm glad there are members here with the experience and knowledge to know the difference. I have only owned my pool since the end of May and have relayed on INTERNET sources in this short time, instead of pool stores to educate myself on its operation and care.
Unfortunately in a Capitalistic Society this happens all to often and is not limited to Pool service/supply company's. Auto Repair/Maintenance, Plumber's, construction contractors, insurance sales persons etc. are only a few examples. Its just another example of how uneducated consumers get taken advantage of. Everyone in these professions are not all self serving but enough bad apples exist to give entire parts of their respective industries a bad name. Many our chasing every dollar that can be taken from the unwary consumer.
I have enjoyed reading the Forum and appreciate your efforts to keep the shysters out, Thanks Doug

[chem geek]

I have a post on Pool Water Chemistry in The China Shop that has some graphs based on the chemistry determined back in 1974 when the chlorine/CYA relationship was definitively determined. However, the graphs on CYA's protection of chlorine from breakdown from sunlight make assumptions that we have since found to be incorrect. Namely these graphs do not take into account that there is an additional CYA protection effect by shielding lower depths from UV -- not just from binding to chlorine to make it more stable. Also, the graphs I made on chlorine breakdown in sunlight use Kent Williams' data for the presumed rates of breakdown of chlorine bound to CYA from UV in sunlight and those rates may be incorrect.

I also have a link to an ORP post that shows the fallacy of using ORP for absolute measurements. It can be OK to use for process control to maintain an FC level by using an ORP mV "setpoint", but that's about all. (Ben, if you could allow the "CODE" to work again in vBulletin, that will make some formatting work better -- also, if vBulletin allows for subscripting and superscripting, that would be helpful as well).

I wrote E-mails to Kent Williams at PPOA in 2004, 2006 and 2007 and never received any response. My comments with regard to Kent Williams' paper and commercial pools are limited to his suggestions regarding the importance of supplemental oxidation due to the high bather loads in such pools and have nothing to do with the chlorine/CYA chart which applies to the chlorine levels needed to prevent algae in ALL pools. The oxidation of bather waste, particularly urea, can be very slow if there is no exposure to UV or higher water temperatures (i.e. spas). So indoor pools and high bather load pools can benefit from supplemental oxidation not only to oxidize faster but also to help prevent disinfection by-products (DBPs) which virtually every scientific paper shows to be mostly proportional to bather load. Though one could raise active chlorine levels (either raising FC or lowering CYA to raise ORP) for faster oxidation as he proposes, one could increase DBPs by doing so.

Richard