Purified Pool Water Trailer- Anyone Familiar?

hokulii · Dec 10, 2020

Hello folks,
My brother is looking at a business possibility and has asked my opinion on it. I’ve been following the ‘bbb’ method with excellent results for about 15 years. My brother and his wife have an in ground pool with an elevated hot tub (waterfall from tub to pool) which is quite nice. Their pool is concrete/pebble surface. He travels extensively for work and is away about 300 days a year. They have a weekly pool service guy maintaining it. When he’s at home, he uses the heck out of the pool. I was visiting with him once and asked if he had a test kit, he did and I sampled his water. I found 0 chlorine and a ph above 8. I know what this ph would do to my vinyl liner pool, but not a pebble pool. Like I said the pool guy comes once a week and the water is perfectly clear. I have no idea how that’s working, but it has been for a long time.

That part of the story aside, my brother wants to go home and stay, so he’s looking at various things he could do, he came across this; Pool Water Purification Pool Water Purification Products and Processes
Is anyone familiar with it? Anyone operating this business? I can’t imagine what one of these trailers costs, not cheap,I know that much. They don’t say (that I saw) how often you treat a pool with this, once a week? Twice a year?
Thanks!

mknauss · Dec 10, 2020

That is a Reverse Osmosis system. There are companies here in the SW Desert and California that do that service. It runs the pool water through the RO to remove the Total Dissolved Solids (calcium, salt, CYA, etc). It is normally much more expensive than just draining and refilling your pool with tap water. But some pool owners like to do it as it feels like they are not 'wasting' the water by draining. Of course, water is never wasted unless it is injected into deep earth formations. But that is another subject.

JJ_Tex · Dec 10, 2020

Interesting concept. I would think you would be limited to places with:

- Water restrictions that prevent you from dumping and refilling
- High cost of water that makes refilling prohibitive
- Locations where the fill water is problematic (iron, high calcium, etc.)

I've often wondered if there is a market for something similar, but for green pools. Suck up the green water, spit out clean water. We certainly get plenty of posts of people who have neglected their pools for weeks/months who are trying to get their pools ready for their swim party in 2 days. One of these trucks and some liquid chlorine could save the day for them.

hokulii · Dec 10, 2020

mknauss said:
That is a Reverse Osmosis system. There are companies here in the SW Desert and California that do that service. It runs the pool water through the RO to remove the Total Dissolved Solids (calcium, salt, CYA, etc). It is normally much more expensive than just draining and refilling your pool with tap water. But some pool owners like to do it as it feels like they are not 'wasting' the water by draining. Of course, water is never wasted unless it is injected into deep earth formations. But that is another subject.

Hi Marty, and thanks. My brother is your neighbor across the river in Bullhead City. So that’s it essentially, it’s a huge RO system, guess I was thinking it was sanitizing the water and balancing the ph too. So this isn’t something you would do with too great a frequency. Still have to do the regular stuff. Have you seen one of these trailers in the Laughlin/Bullhead area? The website says they’re based in Havisu.

I love it there! So beautiful! Always have a great time when we’re there. Have you been to the Topock66 place in Topock? Fun times!
Dennis

hokulii · Dec 10, 2020

JJ_Tex said:
Interesting concept. I would think you would be limited to places with:

- Water restrictions that prevent you from dumping and refilling
- High cost of water that makes refilling prohibitive
- Locations where the fill water is problematic (iron, high calcium, etc.)

I've often wondered if there is a market for something similar, but for green pools. Suck up the green water, spit out clean water. We certainly get plenty of posts of people who have neglected their pools for weeks/months who are trying to get their pools ready for their swim party in 2 days. One of these trucks and some liquid chlorine could save the day for them.

Thanks for the thoughts on this. Might have to charge more if it’s processing neglected green muck! Plugging up the ro filters a lot quicker I would imagine.

mknauss · Dec 10, 2020

The water must be completely free of algae to run through the RO.
I do not know of any companies here. As I said, our water cost is so low it does not make economic sense to do it. I suspect the Lake Havasu angle is folks moving from California that think they are being environmentally friendly by doing it.

Donldson · Dec 10, 2020

RO still dumps about 25% of the water in the pool down the drain, so it's even more costly than it looks.

Just about the only thing it's good for is removing calcium from water in an area that has calcium rich tap water. Since there's no CYA in tap water it is almost always more cost effective to do water replacement. Salt buildup is benign, no reason to get it done for that. Other than that it doesn't do anything special to the water. No sanitation, no pH or TA adjustment, just removing of dissolved solids.