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What does nearly 50 years in the swimming pool industry teach you? According to Jerry Wallace, there are no shortcuts, you never stop learning, and sometimes you need to show up with a rolling suitcase full of textbooks.
Natalie Hood sits down with Jerry Wallace, president of Swim Chem and one of the 2026 Talking Pools Podcast Top Ten Pool Industry Mentors. Jerry shares how he entered the family business as a teenager, the mentors who shaped his career, and why mentoring is about leaving the industry better than you found it.
Then Jerry puts his decades of water chemistry, plaster, and expert-witness experience to work busting some persistent myths about calcium nodules. Are they caused by excessive calcium hardness? Are they simply another form of scale? Can adjusting the water chemistry stop them?
Jerry explains why calcium nodules are typically associated with voids, delamination, pinholes, or cracks beneath the plaster surface, not a pool professional’s failure to maintain the water. His message to service professionals is blunt: educate yourself, document your work, demand an explanation, and stop allowing people to steamroll you.
Jerry also discusses why manufacturers need to listen more closely to service professionals, what younger professionals bring to the industry, and the three groups every successful business must protect before looking at the profit-and-loss statement: family, employees, and customers.
And, because this is Talking Pools, Natalie settles the critically important question of whether pineapple belongs on pizza.
In This Episode
- How Jerry entered the pool industry at age 16
- The mentors who helped shape his career
- Why mentorship is about life lessons, not merely technical knowledge
- How to recognize when someone is no longer coachable
- Why there are no shortcuts to long-term success
- The difference between calcium scale and calcium nodules
- Why high calcium hardness does not selectively create isolated nodules
- How voids, delamination, cracks, and pinholes contribute to nodule formation
- Why changing the water chemistry treats the symptom, not the underlying problem
- How service professionals can defend themselves against unsupported blame
- Why pool professionals must become experts in their trade
- What manufacturers misunderstand about real-world equipment retrofits
- Why the industry needs stronger communication between engineers and field professionals
- What younger generations are bringing to the pool industry
- The three priorities Jerry’s father used to measure a successful year
- Jerry’s controversial but unwavering defense of pineapple on pizza
Jerry’s Message to Pool Professionals
Do not assume a calcium nodule is your fault simply because someone points at the water chemistry. Test the water, investigate the surface, document the evidence, ask for the actual mechanism, and make the person assigning blame show their work.
If you are going to work as a pool service professional, become an expert and stand up for yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you.
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