I've read anecdote after anecdote on this site about pool guys or pool store employees doing a poor job testing water, not understanding the chemistry, and pushing potions instead of developing good practices. I have no basis on which to deny any of that, but when I'm telling other people about some website where a bunch of pool owners say the pool stores and pool guys don't know what they're talking about, the natural response is, "Why does this group of internet randoms think they know more than the experts?" Fair question, so I'm asking it here in a genuine spirit, "Why do you know more than the experts?"
Some answers that could be valid singly or in combination:
1. Years of empirical evidence gathered by members through trial and error have shown that these certain chemicals and practices yield the best results. That's not nothing, but it doesn't equip someone to speak with authority about, for example, the various chlorine compounds formed in the pool through interactions with cyanuric acid and organics or burnoff rates as a function of UV flux.
2. There are sufficient chemists, engineers, and other technically minded people in this group whose professional knowledge base and ability to review the available published literature, give them the authority to hold forth on topics that should be familiar to the "experts," but a combination of the inability to hire or train knowledgeable staff and the inability to turn a profit on inexpensive products leads them to remain willfully ignorant of that industry knowledge.
3. There is a group of mad scientists among the users at TFP who have gone beyond the published literature through original research and experimentation to more thoroughly understand the mechanisms by which pool water is sanitized and the interplay between the various chemicals in the pool water. The pool stores can't keep up with TFPC, because TFP are the experts now.
So which answer(s) is it, and is there a short list of published items in a thread somewhere that users can refer to? Or is this all such basic chemistry/organic chemistry that we can be referred to a 50 year old handbook whose validity stands unimpeachable, but unread by Leslie's employees?
Some answers that could be valid singly or in combination:
1. Years of empirical evidence gathered by members through trial and error have shown that these certain chemicals and practices yield the best results. That's not nothing, but it doesn't equip someone to speak with authority about, for example, the various chlorine compounds formed in the pool through interactions with cyanuric acid and organics or burnoff rates as a function of UV flux.
2. There are sufficient chemists, engineers, and other technically minded people in this group whose professional knowledge base and ability to review the available published literature, give them the authority to hold forth on topics that should be familiar to the "experts," but a combination of the inability to hire or train knowledgeable staff and the inability to turn a profit on inexpensive products leads them to remain willfully ignorant of that industry knowledge.
3. There is a group of mad scientists among the users at TFP who have gone beyond the published literature through original research and experimentation to more thoroughly understand the mechanisms by which pool water is sanitized and the interplay between the various chemicals in the pool water. The pool stores can't keep up with TFPC, because TFP are the experts now.
So which answer(s) is it, and is there a short list of published items in a thread somewhere that users can refer to? Or is this all such basic chemistry/organic chemistry that we can be referred to a 50 year old handbook whose validity stands unimpeachable, but unread by Leslie's employees?
