Pillar 1
LSI Balance & Calcium Management
We need to come together and understand how calcium behaves in water. Let's start by debunking a myth in the pool business: calcium is NOT your enemy! It is actually your best friend.
Yes! Calcium does amazing things for water chemistry and helps pool owners and operators balance their pools according to the LSI. When the pool is properly balanced with calcium, other water chemistry factors become surprisingly easy to manage. Factors like pH and total alkalinity seem to stay more consistent. Read the articles below about calcium management and the LSI.
Pillar 2
Organic Waste & Carbon Management
Bather waste. Non-Living Organics. Carbon-based crud. Body Butter. People have different names for organic waste in the water, but here's what you need to know: you need to manage it. If you do nothing, chlorine itself will try to oxidize the organics out of the water, and chlorine is not a very efficient oxidizer of organics.
In the Orenda program, we know that being proactive against bather waste is essential to water quality and sanitizer efficiency. So we use enzymes to break down non-living organics and devour them. Enzymes can help do the heavy lifting, so chlorine is free to do what it does best: sanitize.
Pillar 3
Phosphate Removal
Phosphates — the invisible common denominator behind many pool problems, elevated chlorine demand, and even cloudy water. Removing phosphates is the third of Orenda's Four Pillars of Proactive Pool Care. This third pillar is an easy one to master.
The action step is simple: keep your water's phosphate levels as low as possible, ideally below 500 parts per billion (ppb). Phosphates usually get into water three ways:
- Chemically: phosphate-based chemicals like sequestering agents are popular in the pool business to prevent scale and metal stains.
- Organically: weather like wind and rain can introduce soils and other debris from nature containing phosphates.
- Tap water: Water treatment centers have treated drinking water with phosphate-based sequestering agents. They do so to protect the infrastructure and pipes from scale formation and corrosion.
Pillar 4
Minimal Cyanuric Acid
With all we have learned about stabilizers (cyanuric acid, or CYA), it is no surprise that we should keep it to a minimum in our water.
- Minimal CYA still has tremendous sunlight protection for chlorine.
- Over-stabilization, as we continue to learn, is an ever-increasing problem.
- Sanitization and oxidation are affected, as is testing water itself.
- With high levels of stabilizer (say, over 50 parts-per-million), maintaining a good chlorine residual becomes nearly impossible.
