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The Pool Envy® Podcast goes beyond surface-level swimming pool advice to examine the standards, systems, evidence, and professional judgment behind pool construction, safety, operation, and failure.
Hosted by Jason Davies, a licensed swimming pool contractor and independent consultant, the show explores pool code compliance, construction defects, inspections, workmanship, water chemistry, equipment, litigation consulting, and expert-witness issues through real-world observations and practical explanations.
Created for pool professionals, homeowners, property owners, attorneys, and anyone who wants to understand not only what happens in a swimming pool—but why—each episode helps listeners ask better questions, recognize meaningful evidence, and distinguish confidence from informed judgment.
Pool Envy® — Standards, not suggestions.
From the job site to the code book, this is a Pool Envy Podcast where licensed pool professionals speak up. Code, compliance, craftsmanship. Hosted by Jason Davies. Licensed across Wisconsin, Florida, and Texas. Your deep end starts now.
Jason Davies:I've been doing it this way for thirty years. If you work in the pool industry, you've heard that sentence. Maybe you've said it. I probably have too, and there's nothing wrong with experience. Thirty years in a trade matters.
Jason Davies:Thirty years means you've seen things. You've solved problems. You've worked through jobs that didn't go according to plan. You've probably learned things that were never written in a textbook, but today I want to ask a different question. What does thirty years of doing something actually prove?
Jason Davies:It proves exposure. It proves repetition, but does it prove outcome? That depends on something we don't talk about nearly enough, feedback. Did you see the work again? Did anyone measure what happened?
Jason Davies:Would somebody have told you if the result wasn't what you thought it was? Because it's entirely possible to perform the same procedure for thirty years, sincerely believe that it works, and never receive the information that would have told you otherwise. And psychology gives us some very good explanations for how that happens. Welcome to the Pool Envy Podcast. Today, we're talking about experience.
Jason Davies:More specifically, we're talking about the sentence, I've been doing it this way for thirty years, and why that statement can be both completely true and still not answer the question being asked. I'm going to use one example throughout this episode, brand new, cementitious pool blaster. Not an old finish, not a stain removal, not cleaning up a pool that has been in service for ten years. I mean a new finish that has just been installed. And at some point during that process, acid exposure may become part of the discussion.
Jason Davies:Now I want to be careful here. Acid is not automatically bad. That would be an oversimplification. With some new plaster finishes, a controlled amount of cementitious material may need to be removed from the surface to expose the intended finish. Acid can be one way of accomplishing that.
Jason Davies:The issue is not simply was acid used. The issue is how aggressive was the exposure. This is where the conversation gets more interesting. Think about acid in a very simple way. Orange juice is acidic.
Jason Davies:Coca Cola is also acidic. Battery acid is acidic. All three of those statements are absolutely true, but nobody would argue that those three liquids are interchangeable just because they're acidic. They do not react with materials in the same way. They do not have the same concentration.
Jason Davies:They do not have the same chemistry, and they do not have the same capacity to damage a surface. The same basic idea applies when acid is used around new plaster. The strength matters, the concentration matters, the amount matters, the contact time matters, and whether it sits in one place matters. How it is rinsed matters, how the surface responds matters, and the particular finish matters. Acid removes cementitious material.
Jason Davies:Sometimes controlled removal is part of the process, but the acid does not know when you have removed exactly the amount you intend to remove. It reacts with the material in front of it, and that means a stronger reaction is not automatically a better result. More acid is not automatically better. Longer contact is not automatically better, and a dramatic visible reaction does not necessarily mean you improved the finish. It means you caused a reaction.
Jason Davies:There is another practical issue. The manufacturer of that particular finish may have installation instructions, startup requirements, exposure procedures, or warranty conditions. Those requirements vary, and departing from them can potentially affect warranty coverage. That does not mean every manufacturer has the same rule. It means the person performing the work now needs to know what applies to the material actually installed.
Jason Davies:This is very different from we always make ours pretty hot. We've always mixed it this way. We hit it again if it doesn't look right, or I've done it this way for thirty years. Those statements describe a routine. They are not specifications.
Jason Davies:And that brings us to the real subject of this episode. Why do experienced, intelligent, well intentioned professionals become so attached to a procedure that has been repeated for years? And why can that attachment survive even when better information becomes available? There are several psychological mechanisms that help explain it. Psychologists Wendy Wood and David Neal have studied the relationship between habits, goals, and context.
Jason Davies:One important idea from habit research is that when behavior is repeated often enough in a stable situation, the situation itself begins triggering the behavior. In plain English, at some point, you stop making the decision every time. Think about a plaster crew. The finish reaches a certain stage. The tools come out, the water goes on.
Jason Davies:The acid comes out, the next step happens. Nobody necessarily stops and asks, what does this particular finish require? Nobody necessarily says, are we still doing this because it is necessary, or are we doing it because this is what we always do next? The job reaches a certain point and the routine starts. That is not stupidity.
Jason Davies:Habit is actually incredibly useful. Imagine having to consciously reconsider every step of every job, every fitting, every measurement, every trowel pass, every valve, every chemical adjustment. You would never get anything done. Skilled professionals depend on habit. Habit makes work efficient.
Jason Davies:But there's a problem. You cannot reevaluate a decision that you no longer realize you are making. If somebody taught you a procedure twenty five years ago and you have repeated it thousands of times since then, it may no longer feel like a choice. It feels like that's how this is done, And that matters when somebody says, I've done it this way for thirty years. That statement may sound like thirty years of repeated evaluation, but sometimes it is actually thirty years of repeating something that stopped being consciously evaluated a very long time ago.
Jason Davies:This is the first reason people can become stuck in their ways. Not stubbornness, not stupidity, habit. Now let's add another psychological effect. In 1988, William Samuelson and Richard Zechauser published research on what became known as status quo bias. People tend to favor the existing opinion, the familiar opinion, the default, even when other choices may be equally good or better.
Jason Davies:Think about what that looks like in the trades. You have used the same procedure for twenty years. You know what it looks like. You know what your crew does. You know roughly how long it takes.
Jason Davies:You know what the surface looks like when you leave, and then somebody hands you new instructions. They say, this material should be handled differently. Which option feels risky? Very often, the new one. If you change what you've been doing and something goes wrong, you changed it.
Jason Davies:That decision has your fingerprints all over it. But if you keep doing what you have always done and something goes wrong, psychologically, it can feel different. That's just how pools are. That happens sometimes. The homeowner's chemistry did it.
Jason Davies:The service company caused it. Everybody does it this way. Maybe one of those explanations is correct. But notice what happened. The familiar procedure was given the benefit of the doubt simply because it was familiar.
Jason Davies:That is status quo bias. The old method feels safer because it is old, but familiar does not mean correct. Here's a simple test. Imagine a brand new employee walked onto the job tomorrow and proposed the exact same procedure. No history, no tradition, no thirty year reputation behind it.
Jason Davies:They say, I think we should make this acid wash stronger, apply it to the new cementitious finish, and judge when we finished it by how the surface looks. Would you immediately say yes, or would you ask questions? How strong? Why? How long?
Jason Davies:What are we trying to remove? How much material is supposed to come off? What does the manufacturer say? What happens if we go too far? Those are all reasonable questions, and they remain reasonable even if the procedure is thirty years old.
Jason Davies:That is the interesting thing about status quo bias. Sometimes history protects a procedure from questions that we would absolutely ask if somebody proposed the same procedure today. There's another psychological phenomenon that fits this remarkably well, the effect. The classic work comes from psychologist Abraham Luciens. He gave people problems involving water jars.
Jason Davies:Participants learned a particular multistep way of solving them. Then they were given new problems that could be solved much more simply. Many people continued using the longer, more complicated method they had already learned. Some people did not even notice the easier solution. The method that had worked before actually made the alternative harder to see.
Jason Davies:That's fascinating, and it happens everywhere. A successful method becomes the lens through which you look at the next problem. In our plaster example, imagine how someone who has spent decades asking how strong should I make the acid? That question itself may prevent another question from appearing. Do I need additional acid exposure at all?
Jason Davies:Maybe the surface is already where it needs to be. Maybe enough material has already been removed. Maybe another process was intended. Maybe a weaker exposure is appropriate. Maybe the manufacturer's procedure has changed.
Jason Davies:Maybe this particular finish is different from one you installed last week. The old solution can make it harder to see those possibilities. That does not mean the person lacks intelligence. That's exactly why the Einste Lung effect is interesting. Expertise can sometimes create tunnel vision.
Jason Davies:The method that has worked before becomes the method you instinctively reach for again. And sometimes the right step is not do this differently. Sometimes the right step is don't do that step. That can be surprisingly difficult to see when the step has been part of your process for thirty years. This is the part of the episode I care about the most.
Jason Davies:In 2009, Danielle Kahneman and Gary Klein published a paper titled Conditions for Intuitive Expertise, a Failure to Disagree. They came from different perspectives on expert judgment, but they found important areas of agreement. One of them was that expertise requires more than repetition. The environment has to be regular enough that patterns can actually be learned, and the person needs meaningful feedback. Think about that.
Jason Davies:You do something, something happens. You learn whether your judgment was correct, then you adjust. That feedback loop is exactly how experience becomes expertise. Now let's get back to our plaster. They have been doing this for thirty years, maybe hundreds of pools, maybe thousands.
Jason Davies:They finish the plaster. They perform the exposure. The surface looks good. The pool gets filled. Everybody gets paid.
Jason Davies:The crew leaves. Successful job. Right? Maybe. But what happens next?
Jason Davies:What does that finish look like in six months? Three years, five years, ten. Did the original plasterer ever see it again? If the surface became unusually rough, who got the phone call? If the finish became porous or deteriorated early, who saw it?
Jason Davies:If there was discoloration, who investigated it? Did the homeowner call the plasterer, the builder, a service company, another contractor entirely? Did they call anybody? Maybe the homeowner simply assumed that's what plaster does. Maybe they sold the house.
Jason Davies:Maybe somebody else drained and refinished the pool years later. Maybe the problem was blamed on chemistry. Maybe chemistry actually was the problem. The point is this. Did the feedback make its way back to the person who performed the original procedure?
Jason Davies:Often, we do not know, and that changes what thirty years of experience actually means. Thirty years of work is not necessarily thirty years of feedback. You could perform the same procedure for thirty years and only see a tiny percentage of the long term outcomes. Now add another complication. Even when feedback comes back, is it clear?
Jason Davies:A cementitious pool finish has many variables, materials, mixing, application, troweling, exposure, fill water, startup, ongoing chemistry, maintenance, environment, time. When a service develops a problem years later, connecting that problem cleanly to one particular decision made during installation may be difficult. The feedback is delayed. It may be incomplete. It may be noisy, and sometimes it never arrives.
Jason Davies:This means a person can sincerely say, I've never had a problem, and they may be telling the truth. They have never had a problem reported back to them that was identified as being caused by that procedure, but that is very different from this procedure has never caused a problem. Those statements are not interchangeable. So when somebody tells me, I've done it this way for thirty years, I wanna ask three questions. First, what outcome would prove this method wrong?
Jason Davies:If there is no possible outcome that could make you reconsider the method, then the method is not being tested. Second, did you ever go looking for that outcome? Did you inspect those surfaces later? One year, three year, five year, ten? And a third question, who would have told you if something went wrong?
Jason Davies:That may be the most important question of all. What is your feedback mechanism? If your only feedback system is nobody complained, then you do not have a very good feedback system. No complaints does not mean no failures. It means no complaints reached you.
Jason Davies:The customer may have called somebody else. They may have accepted the condition. They may not know that the condition is unusual. They may have sold the house. They may have decided that pursuing it was not worth the effort, or someone may have blamed the problem on something completely unrelated.
Jason Davies:You do not know. An information you never received cannot become evidence that your method worked. This is why thirty years of experience may sometimes be thirty years of jobs where the feedback never came home. Now, let's add another psychological and organizational concept. Sociologist Diane Vaughan studied the decision making surrounding the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
Jason Davies:Her work is closely associated with the concept of normalization of deviance, and I wanna make something very clear. I am not comparing a swimming pool finish to a space shuttle disaster. The consequences are obviously not comparable. I am talking about the mechanism. Something occurs outside the expected condition, nothing catastrophic happens.
Jason Davies:It happens again, still nothing catastrophic. Again, again, again. Eventually, the fact that nothing terrible happened becomes evidence that the deviation must be acceptable. You can see how easily that develops in construction. We've always made it this strong.
Jason Davies:The pool looks fine. Next job. The pool looks fine. Next job. Looks fine.
Jason Davies:Ten years go by. Twenty years. Thirty. Eventually. See, I've always done it this way for thirty years.
Jason Davies:But what was actually established? We established that the consequences were not obvious enough, immediate enough, or connected strongly enough to that procedure to make the person stop doing it. That is not the same thing as proving that the procedure was optimal. The surface looked good when the pool was filled. That is feedback, but it is short term feedback.
Jason Davies:If the question concerns what the surface looked like five or ten years later, then how it looked Friday afternoon does not answer that question. That is one of the reasons written procedures and manufacturer instructions matter. They provide a reference point outside our own experience. Our personal definition of normal does not get to drift indefinitely just because nothing immediately obvious happened last time. Now, we really get to the human part.
Jason Davies:Leon Feistinger described cognitive dissonance. In simple terms, it is the discomfort we experience when our behavior, beliefs, and new information collide. Imagine you've performed a procedure for thirty years. You have trained people to do it. You've defended it.
Jason Davies:You have told customers that this is the correct way. Maybe younger people in the trade come to you for advice. Then somebody presents information suggesting that part of the procedure may be unnecessarily aggressive. Accepting that information is no longer just a technical decision. There is somebody else attached to it.
Jason Davies:What does this say about the jobs I already did? What does this say about what I taught my employees? Was I wrong? What does this say about me? Now the procedure's connected to identity, and that is where people become defensive.
Jason Davies:You hear, that might work on paper. Those people don't know what happens in the field. I know what works, and eventually, I've done it this way for thirty years. That sentence is no longer just technical evidence. It is protecting something, professional identity, past decisions, pride, reputation, and if you're trying to help someone change, this matters.
Jason Davies:Do not make changing a procedure into a confession. You do not need to say, I was an idiot for twenty years. That accomplishes nothing. We learn, materials change, products change, instructions change, tools change, research changes, testing improves. Sometimes we simply have information now that we did not have before.
Jason Davies:A professional can say, interesting. I didn't know that. I'm changing that procedure. That is not weakness. That is exactly what expertise should allow us to do.
Jason Davies:Experience should make us better at recognizing new information. It should not make us better at defending the first method we learned. First, know what material you're actually working with. Not what you installed last week, not what somebody told you all plaster needs, the specific material in front of you. Know what the installation instructions require.
Jason Davies:Know what the startup procedure requires. Know whether an exposure process is intended. Know what can affect warranty coverage. If there's a defined procedure, there is probably a reason it is defined. Second, stop treating a stronger reaction as proof of better workmanship.
Jason Davies:Remember, orange juice is acidic. Coca Cola is acidic. Battery acid is acidic. That does not make them equal. The fact that something reacts aggressively does not tell you that the result is better.
Jason Davies:It tells you the reaction was aggressive. Third, document what you do. Photographs, dates, materials, water chemistry, application methods. If acid exposure was used, record enough information that somebody later can actually understand what happened. Documentation converts.
Jason Davies:I think we did it this way into here is what we actually did. Fourth, build the feedback deliberately. Go look at your old work, not only the jobs where somebody calls you, pick some. One year later, three years, five, ten, take photographs, look at the finish, ask what changed, and deliberately look for the outcomes that would prove your favorite method wrong. That last part matters.
Jason Davies:If you only look for evidence that confirms you are good at your job, you'll probably find it. Instead ask, what would change my mind? And finally, I think we should change how we talk about experience. Instead of saying I've done it for thirty years, try this. I have been doing this for thirty years, and here's what I learned from the outcomes.
Jason Davies:That is a much more powerful statement. Show me. Show me the photographs. Show me the surfaces ten years later. Show me what happened when you changed the concentration.
Jason Davies:Show me what happened when you changed the procedure. Show me the failures. Show me what surprised you. That is expertise. I've done it this way for thirty years.
Jason Davies:I'm not asking people to stop saying that. Thirty years matters. Experience matters. But I think it deserves one follow-up question. What kind of experience was it?
Jason Davies:Was it thirty years of repeating the procedure or thirty years of observing what happened afterward? Because those are not necessarily the same thing. Habit can cause a procedure to become automatic. Status quo bias can make a familiar procedure feel safer than changing it. The Einstling effect can make an older solution so familiar that better alternatives become harder to see.
Jason Davies:Normalization of deviance can turn nothing bad happened last time into, therefore, this must be fine. Cognitive dissonance can make new technical information feel like personal attack on everything we have done before, and missing feedback can allow all of those things to continue for decades. None of this means experienced professionals are foolish. It means they're human. The same mechanisms operate in every trade, every profession, every industry, and they operate in me too.
Jason Davies:The answer is not to throw experience away. The answer is to make experience better. Document it. Measure it. Go back and look.
Jason Davies:Ask what would prove you wrong, and make sure there is a way for the answer to actually get back to you because years of repetition build habit. Only years of feedback build expertise. I'm Jason Davies with Pool Envy. And the next time somebody tells you, I've done it this way for thirty years, don't argue with them about thirty years. Ask them what happened afterwards.
Spyder:This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not legal advice, and it is not site specific engineering, code, or safety determination. All field conditions should be evaluated in context. Thanks for listening to the Pool Envy Podcast, where licensed pool professionals speak up. Hosted by Jason Davies, licensed across Wisconsin, Florida, and Texas.
Spyder:For more insights, subscribe and join us next time.