Hello!
I just want to say this is a phenomenal website. My wife and I closed on a house today that came with a pool, and while I have never owned/maintained a pool before, I consider myself to have a lot of knowledge on the fundamentals of water chemistry control. I spent the last 9 years in the Navy maintaining reactor plant chemistry on U.S. nuclear submarines. The Nuclear Propulsion Program demands a very high level of knowledge, and also an in-depth understanding of not just the steps involved of maintaining chemistry, but the "hows" and "why's" associated with it on a fundamental level. Such as:
I instantly knew the TFPC system would work before even trying it because it shares the same core concepts as the Navy's Nuclear Program:
I just want to say this is a phenomenal website. My wife and I closed on a house today that came with a pool, and while I have never owned/maintained a pool before, I consider myself to have a lot of knowledge on the fundamentals of water chemistry control. I spent the last 9 years in the Navy maintaining reactor plant chemistry on U.S. nuclear submarines. The Nuclear Propulsion Program demands a very high level of knowledge, and also an in-depth understanding of not just the steps involved of maintaining chemistry, but the "hows" and "why's" associated with it on a fundamental level. Such as:
- Why do we add certain chemicals to the plant? Knowing "how" a certain chemical gives us a desired effect, their compounds, and the chemical reactions that follow.
- Why do we maintain them in the ranges specified? What are the benefits of maintaining "x" chemical at "x" specification?
- What causes chemistry to change over-time with no human action? (Not just understanding that it does, but the hows and whys associated with it as well)
- Understanding the implications of high or low out of specification results.
I instantly knew the TFPC system would work before even trying it because it shares the same core concepts as the Navy's Nuclear Program:
- Precise and accurate testing on a routine schedule - knowing what's going on is the first step, knowing past trends and anticipating future chemistry changes is the second. If you don't even know the chemical levels you don't even know where to start.
- Maintaining a set of parameters within a given specification and then doing... nothing. The concepts I read before finding TFP of shocking once a week, throwing in all these random chemicals from the pool store to see what helps, etc were all red flags to me. You know how many times in a nuclear plant we "shock" the system? Precisely never. We maintain chemistry within specification and the water just sits there perfectly happy, for months on end.
- Preventative action vice reaction.
I spent some time aboard Columbus (SSN 762) back in the 90s.