ECOsmarte blog

Staff person Jeffrey Shannon spoke with Scott Johnson, an ECOsmarte Director, earlier this week about the company’s involvement with local Food Banks.

Q: What is ECOsmarte’s corporate philosophy on giving?
A: Obviously, our company was founded with a very eco-friendly ethos, but we have also always believed that we need to do whatever we can to help those in need. In our early years the demands of starting a business placed fairly strict limits on our monetary contributions. As we have grown, we have attempted to make more concrete and consistent contributions. We have attempted to remain faithful to this approach even though the recent recession has impacted us and many other small and medium-sized businesses.

Q: What are some examples of putting your philosophy into practice?
A: ECOsmarte has a history of community involvement, with Books for Africa and Healing Haiti being two recent examples of our financial support. With Books for Africa, we supported a program to send volunteer teachers and professors to Africa to organize recycled textbooks. For Healing Haiti, ECOsmarte purchased a water truck in 2008 to be used for both daily and emergency water deliveries.

Q: Why Food Banks:
A: We are conscious that we live and work in a global community and targeted our initial efforts at specific acute needs in developing countries. We thought it was time to help people in our own country hit hard by our recent economic downturn. We believe that the Food Banks provide a very real opportunity to get a targeted, maximum bang-per-buck for our contributions this year.

Q: How will ECOsmarte’s involvement work?
A: We will identify 5 Food Banks from across the country as beneficiaries of monthly contributions over a 6 month period.

Q: How will specific Food Banks be chosen?
A: We will look to our loyal customer base for recommendations. We realize that they are best able to judge the needs and capabilities of their own community organizations.

Q: How will you evaluate your efforts?
A: To be honest, we know that given the large number of people in need that any contributions will help. Again, we look at the feedback from customers with first-hand knowledge as well as from the Food Banks and their clients.

ECOsmarte is looking for American Food Banks to support and we need our customers help in finding them. We are looking for Food Banks that serve 1,000 or more people a month and are located within the United States. We are limited to 5 Food Banks and if you simply email us the name of the Food Bank you would like us to support, we will donate $250 per month to the Food Bank for 6 months. We will post the Food Banks on the ECOsmarte Blog at www.ecosmarteblog.com for you to help as well. Dateline NBC has motivated us here, joining our other charities, Books For Africa (a great textbook recycle concept) and Buya.org -- we had water deliveries BEFORE the Earthquake in Haiti.

It was confirmed on June 3, 2010 that ECOsmarte will emerge from CH. 11 bankruptcy one year after filing for court protection from a lost profits binding arbitration award in 2008.

The order was signed by Minnesota bankruptcy judge Robert Kressel based on a plan that pays out all creditors by July 18, 2010. ECOsmarte CEO Larry Couture indicated the CH. 11 process itself was largely responsible for the successful reorganization.

“ECOsmarte itself became a company focused on financial objectives quarterly as opposed to a business preoccupied with eliminating chlorine and chloride discharges,” said Couture.

During reorganization sales of its non-chemical pool system have recovered to 90% of the record June 2008 levels and sales on non-salt whole house purifiers have ris
en to new record levels as a result of a few key water treatment dealers and rising consumer awareness of health and environmental water issues, according to Couture.

“Our core business, people and balance sheet have never been stronger and I want to thank the dozens of customers that purchased whole house water systems and the dealers that nearly unanimously stuck with us during this last year,” said Couture.

Download file

OCTOBER 2009
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation to permit six more of California’s wastewater districts to restrict or ban the use of all salt based water treatment systems. LA County previously banned these devices without “grand fathering” any existing equipment owned by homeowners or commercial properties.

AB 1366 by Assemblymember Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) will improve water quality by addressing the problem of excess salinity caused by residential water softeners. The bill gives greater discretion to local water agencies where surface and groundwater supplies are particularly susceptible to salt contamination with additional authority to manage these salt discharges. The bill applies to the South Coast, Central Coast, San Joaquin Valley, Tulare Lake and the lower half of the Sacramento Valley hydrologic regions.

Great story of Ecosmarte stockholder Jeff Gacek getting four orphans out of Haiti on Sat; also great shots of of our water truck and pleas for food and water by Haiti informal camps.

For the blog-- we need to stres we want to raise one years worth of water truck funding, $6000 to $10,000 which will secure a full time driver, a full time security guard, gasoline and repairs to keep two water trucks going instead of one as their volunteers cannot sustain this effort too long .

Someday it is our goal to build a solar powered desalination system (as proven in the Middle East) to furnish daily water for the slums in Citei Solei. This project will only run $ 1 million dollars with our partner vendor discounts and it is amazing this has not been built. It will be built to withstand both hurricane and earthquake 300,000 people will have access to their very low 3 gallon per day per person use thru a plastic pipeline. We hope others will copy the engineering and equipment group for three other systems in Port au Prince.
Download file

We love saving people thru emergency water but wish to devote future years to infrastructure. The current attention to the crisis should make the easements, permits and engineering help easier to obtain. Ecosmarte seeks intellectual talent, quasi public experience and philanthropic partners to chase this immediately

They have updated thier blog from Haiti and continue to ask for your prayers and support.
Please visit Jeff's Blog http://www.healing-haiti.blogspot.com

Ke Bondye Beni'ou
Blessings...

Hello, We have had a chlorine pool for about 15 years. We now have kids (5 years old) and we use the pool a lot more. I was interested in the salt as a substitute for chlorine but clearly there are other alternatives. I am seriously looking into chlorine free pools and specifically the ECO Smarte system but there seems to be a mixed bag of reviews from owner's personal experiences. I want to ensure I have all the information I need to ensure I am not making an expensive mistake. My pool is pretty much oval 40'X60' and average of 5' depth. I am very interested in the total automated solution with the CO2 but have not seen much related to that system. I am interested in some references so I could acutually talk to owners about their experience. Thanks, Jim

Hi Jim,
Thanks for your interest in ECOsmarte.
There is indeed a mixed bag of reviews for just about every chlorine-free pool system out there. Unhappy customers are usually in three different categories –
1. Those that have expectations of a carefree pool - There is no magic bullet that suddenly makes a pool carefree, especially in the world of chlorine-free pools.
2. Those that don’t follow the rules of caring for an ECOsmarte pool correctly. Sometimes pool maintenance people are given the job without any training, and have no motivation to learn a new system that requires them to unlearn all the rules for pools that they usually follow. So in some cases they don’t take the time to learn the system, nor do they call for help (the 800# is there for assistance 6 days a week). Instead they do what they know and put products in the pool that are not compatible and throw it out of balance. Sometimes the pool guys don’t tell the owner they did this and instead blame it on our system.
3. Those whose pools don’t fit the requirements. Explained below.

Here is what’s needed for an ECOsmarte pool.
A. The pool must have good circulation. If this is a pool that was built 30 years ago with one skimmer intake and a collapsed bottom drain, you will struggle with an ECOsmarte pool system (because you cannot just throw more chlorine in and make it look better).
B. Filtration is critical. Cartridge filters are incompatible with an ECOsmarte pool. DE (diatomaceous earth) filters are acceptable and should be slightly oversized.
The very best filtration choice for ECOsmarte pools (or any pool) is a SAND filter with CRUSHED GLASS media – for so many reasons explained here.
C. You need to follow the rules of maintenance - check the level of copper and the pH every week and adjust as needed. Don’t put anything in to the pool unless you are sure it is a compatible product with ECOsmarte pools and you have checked with home office at the 800 number. (This goes for clarifiers, phosphate treatment, shock treatments, etc.) They are always happy to help.
Have we had difficulty with pools that fit into the problem categories? Sure. Which is why whoever takes care of the pool must follow maintenance instructions and dealers must confirm pool requirements with you before you purchase a system.

Having said all that…the vast majority of pools do wonderfully. In fact in Minneapolis, where our corporate office is located, ECOsmarte has about 14% of the market share of the pools. I have pool contractors I work with here in CA who build a pool and automatically buy an ECOsmarte system for their customer, because they know it’s the best choice for a zero salt zero chlorine pool, which more and more people are looking for. I also work with a pool store/pool maintenance business owner who recommends, installs and maintains our systems for his customers who want a chlorine-free pool.

As far as the programmable system with CO2 – it not only simplifies the pH control, but lets you set the oxidation and ionization times to function automatically, eliminating the need to go out to the box once a week and flip the switch to ionize and more importantly remembering to turn it off again. Replacing muriatic acid with the CO2 for pH control helps reduce the handling of a nasty chemical, basically. With a pool your size you might need a lot of Muriatic acid to keep the pH at 6.8.

Lastly, you mentioned salt as an alternative for chlorine, and I wanted to be clear that where pools are concerned, salt is still chlorine!! Less chlorine, yes, but still chlorine. The manufacturers of the salt-chlorine generator systems that are so popular have done an excellent marketing job – so good that people often say, “I don’t have a chlorine pool, I have a salt pool”, and are under the impression that their pool is chlorine-free. Not true.

Hope I have answered your questions – I will post this on the blog as well, but feel free to send any more questions my way. We don’t give out numbers of customers, so your desire to speak with a customer I cannot satisfy. Currently there are so many people interested in our systems they would be spending a lot of time on the phone, with people all over the country. If you purchase a system and want to be our referral guy – we would love that! There are many testimonials on the web – just put “ECOsmarte Testimonials” in Google, and you will even find YouTube videos of some of our customers who love their zero chlorine zero salt pools.

ECOsmarte Dealer

We have been using Ecosmarte in a new, in-ground 23,000 gallon pool for about six months. Overall, we're very happy with the system. My question involves "pH bounce". In order to keep the pH in the 6.8-7.2 range, I've had to add 1 gallon of muratic acid about every 4-5 days. Until recently I had not thought to check alkalinity because the Ecosmarte test kit advsises pH, copper, and hardness testing. (I do check phosphates and they are at 0.) Long story, short: a pool tech guy tested our alkalinity, it was at 0. I added 4 lbs baking soda for two consecutive days (total 8 lbs.), and alkalinity is now at 50. pH tested at 7.8 today, so I added a gallon of muratic acid. Now that the alkalinity is at a more desireable level, can I expect the pH to stay stable longer? How often should we expect to add muratic acid to keep pH in the 6.8-7.2 range? How often do you recommend checking alkalinity? Thanks! Al

In general, water with low alkalinity is very susceptible to changes in pH. Water with high alkalinity is more able to resist major shifts in pH. In theory, the pH should be a bit more stable if you raise the alkalinity - but it is not quite that simple.

The rule for an ECOsmarte pool is not to be concerned about alkalinity unless your pool is lime green with clear water - which means your alkalinity is too high. The usual mechanisms for measuring alkalinity do not take into account the bicarbonate minerals that the ECOsmarte chamber transforms hard water minerals into - so your alkalinity measurement will not be accurate.

I do not pretend to completely understand alkalinity; it's a bit complicated. Alkalinity relates to pH and the minerals in the water but is really a measure of the capacity of a solution to neutralize acid. Point being after being treated with the ECOsmarte system, the usual rules of alkalinity are no longer accurate.

To reduce the amount of Muriatic acid you use in your pool and stabilize the pH a bit more - this is the advice from home office: When you add the acid (which always needs to be liquid, btw) and you usually need, say, a half gallon to get the pH to 6.8 - go ahead and put in the whole gallon. Your pH will be lower than 6.8 for a day or so - but pH will always rise over time, so the pool will be fine. After doing this for a few weeks (putting in twice the normal amount) you will sort of "train" the pool to be a lower pH and you will need less acid. That's the word from corporate - if you want more info about this - do call them.

As far as how much muriatic acid is normal - it depends on so many environmental factors that it's hard to say. Depends on your fill water, level of pool use, dogs in pool, pH of rain, and other factors, too. There is a 20,000 gallon ECOsmarte pool just down the street from me here in Ventura County, California, and it needs less than 1/4 gallon per week.

Give it a go and let us know how it works, Al. Thanks for the great question - this is information many of our customers will benefit from.

I just got off of the phone with our people on the ground in Haiti. The orphanage is not damaged and our ECOsmarte donated (and logoed )water truck is saving lives by delivering water after the hurricane disaster!

If you can earmark donations to the fuel and maintenance of both of their trucks at www.buya.org it will give you the same goose bump reaction I had to this news after watching the CNN video last weekend. Faith based American volunteers are driving the vehicle.

I once again wish to thank the ECOsmarte customers, salespeople, resellers and stockholder who made the truck donation possible.

Larry Couture CEO

A week and a half ago I installed a new liner and ecosmarte system I have been running the unit on ionizer and high trying to get cu ions up my pH is correct and I have been adding ca. chloride crystals daily since my well water is very hard and we have had a lot of rain lately and there is quite a bit of algae developing what should I do now? thanks for the help Cary

Hi Cary,
Thanks for visiting the blog.

Since you mention a liner, I am not sure whether you have an above ground pool or in-ground pool, since liners are made for both. You are correct in running the ionizer constantly in the beginning to get the copper level up to .7 ppm. In the beginning this can be a challenge - there is a threshold you need to get beyond to get enough copper in the pool. Once you get to .7ppm, it will require ionizing to keep your copper level there.

I was a little confused when you mentioned "high" - if you have a turbo pool system with the high/low switch - you will want it on high all the time. The low setting is only used for water with high TDS (total dissolved solids) because it conducts electricity better and too much copper can get into the pool.

The calcium chloride crystals should only need to be used in the beginning, when you test the hardness of your water and add calcium chloride to bring it up to the right range (if necessary). They are not something you use on a consistent basis.

First off - call the ECOsmarte help line at 1-800-466-7946 and they will lead you through figuring out why you have algae. Phosphates are a possibility because it sounds like you live out in the country, where there are numerous situations in which phosphates could be introduced in the pool - so you will want to get your water tested at a local pool store to see what's in it - then ECOsmarte can help you treat it and get your pool back to sparkling clear.

In general, though I wish I could effectively diagnose each and every pool problem in this blog, it is much more time effective, thorough and just plain easier to call the guys on the help line. We have a new guy named Joshua who is really good at pool problems...you might want to ask for him!