Maintenance and Mends of Mistakes

Current through PrP#42, to be updated as necessary…

Rather than waiting a quarter of a year (or a bit more) for the next issue of the Pumproom Press, my web-guy Mel and I thought it might be good if I owned up to screw ups in real (OK, almost-real) time. These errors would probably not be noticed except to those who really were serious pool-guy readers – the techie type, you know…

Now this feature is not intended to blab on about spelling or punctuation errors, layout inconsistencies or lousy photographs; we will focus here on technical, mathematical, or factual errors. A good example is the first one, below, a mistake which was strongly criticized by our former technical editor. (It was erroneously presented in PrP40, and not corrected until PrP#42, half a year later!)

Error 1: While free chlorine and ozone are terrific oxidizers, the article in PrP#40 said ultraviolet (medium-pressure, as used now in many pools) was an oxidizer too. Well, it does not “oxidize”, but strips the exit flow of chloaramines in other wondrous ways. The full description has been published in the recent PrP#42.

Error 2: In PrP#42, the lead article talks a bunch about floatation, from cruise ships to katydids. In referring to overly precise conversions, a gallon of water is correctly shown to weigh 8.345404 pounds, and a cubic foot is said to hold 62.42796 gallons. NOT! It should have read 62.4+ POUNDS. If you’re interested, the cubic foot of water contains 7.48 gallons, a very useful number!

Error 3: We haven’t made this one yet (or haven’t had one of you find it…)!