My Prediction for the 2022 Swimming Pool Season
How will the 2022 season look? In a word ugly. When making a prediction, any prediction we look at obvious indicators like past performance. How will the Yankees do in 2022? Probably just as good or better than in 2021. If we make a similar prediction about the 2022 season based on 2021 I think some of the same problems will persist.
Chapter marks:
00:00 What to expect in this video
00:58 Trichlor Tablets
04:20 Higher wages equal higher prices
07:44 More shortages
11:40 strategies for 2022
14:24 Salt water generator
16:33 Add enhancers
19:48 Keep your Free Chlorine Level higher
If you think the shortages will magically go away I have some swampland, I mean marshland in Florida I would like to sell you. The BioLab factory is still being rebuilt and it looks like any Trichlor produced out of there won’t be available until the 2023 season. In case you didn’t know that factory burned down in 2020 and it is the largest producer of Trichlor, some 2 million pounds each year. So don’t expect tablets to reappear in any quantity for 2022. This may lead to other chlorine shortages as everyone moves from 3” tablets to liquid chlorine and Cal-Hypo. Stay tuned on that.
A shortage no one is really covering yet but is on the radar of pool builders is the shortage of PVC plumbing. Namely, the resin used to make the plastic. This shortage has allowed for suppliers to cancel all orders of PVC pipes and I have heard this may also affect the availability of the plastic buckets that most chemicals come in for the pool industry. Stay tuned on that one as well.
There was a serious equipment shortage in 2021 in part because of the Deep Freeze in Texas. It appears that this winter will be equally cold and more Deep Freezes may take place. With that in mind, you would think the equipment manufacturers would be churning out pumps and filters and heaters like crazy. But all of them are having component problems as well. Try to find a Polaris booster pump housing or a Wisperflo lid and you get the idea. So you can’t make more equipment with circuit boards and parts and you certainly can’t get things from China quickly now. So the equipment shortage may continue into 2022.
Inflation is something we are just not used to. We pay the same price for everything year in and year out. So seeing prices double for 3” tablets was a bit of a shock. And seeing all of the other chemical prices rise by 10% or more was also a bit unexpected. With the higher fuel prices and higher labor prices expect inflation to continue to be a factor in 2022.
The only good thing about the upcoming 2022 season is that we know what to expect and we should not be taken off guard like in 2021. This will help us better prepare for the shortages and to get things in place ahead of time. So maybe less scrambling around looking for chlorine and equipment and also less sticker shock as we are now familiar with the higher prices in the industry.
Who knows, I could be wrong and there may be a ton of chlorine, 20 heaters sitting in your local supplier's warehouse and the prices for everything may be back to 2020 levels. More than likely not.
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