The Washington Post Asked Me About the Reflecting Pool
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Recently I was interviewed by the Washington Post about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation and the interior surface change to "American Flag Blue". During the interview we talked about reflecting pool coloration and how dark colors change the way light is absorbed (or reflected) by the water. We also discussed concerns about changing to a darker interior surface in terms of inconsistent coloration, potential for hazing, as well as potential for increased water temperatures and algae growth.
In this response video to the Washington Post article I share more details with my listeners about that interview. What makes it into the actual article in terms of direct quotations is literally two partial sentences from a long form discussion, so I thought a little more information would help viewers with context and clarity about the concerns and potential ramifications of this renovation project on the reflecting pool.
Here is a transcript of the video:
Recently, I was interviewed by the Washington Post in regards to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool being painted American flag blue. And as it turns out, this is a hot button issue that people are very much invested into. I think a lot of you who follow me on this channel might know, I'm not American, so I don't particularly have a, you know, a vested interest here other than I am a swimming pool specialist. They were looking for my opinion on the situation and what actually gets printed in the article is very short. It's like one or two little, you know, bits of a sentence there that actually gets published as the swimming pool expert that they were talking to but in reality, this was a much longer nuanced conversation that I had with the reporter from the Washington Post. I just wanted to expand upon that a little bit because one of the statements was "Swimming Pool Steve says it won't look like a pool" and I probably did say those exact words at some point during that conversation there. But the nuanced part was I was talking about how changing the color of the reflecting pool to this American flag blue which is a darker blue color. There are definitely a host of concerns and I think this is what people are riled up about.
There's a bunch to be said about is this going to work? Is it going to function as a reflecting pool? And that's one of the primary things they were interested in asking my opinion about. There is merit to the logic of if the interior surface is dark enough, it should allow for a higher contrast between light, sky and clouds and then the dark body of water. So, it should function in a reflective way. But it, you know, there's a lot of stuff that you have to get right here! You have to have a dark enough color like this American flag blue color which is a custom blended color for this application that I've read in the news, and you do that - if you paint large surfaces if you've ever done that. I certainly do as a swimming pool specialist. It's actually pretty tricky to do. And when you're dealing with custom colors, oh boy, I get nervous because what you really need to do is take all of the colors that you're you're going to use, as many buckets as you're going to use for the whole project, mix them all together at once, and then apply that to the interior surface. Otherwise, there's going to be slight differences in the batches of the color. Even when they try to make the same exact color, there's differences. And over the, you know, the immense scope of this interior surface, of course, it all can't be done in one shot. So, it's being done in different patches and it's some people are complaining. It looks mottled and colored and patchy. And that was something that I definitely identified with the the reporter was that inconsistencies in coloration, especially when you're talking about a dark interior surface. Man, you're asking for trouble there because you can see it. You can see the inconsistencies. You can even see it in lighter colors like white plaster, which is a common interior surface in concrete swimming pools or has traditionally been. When you do a black plaster, or a really dark blue plaster in a swimming pool, you have to have some really skilled craftsman operating those trowels because you can introduce a lot of inconsistencies in the color. You can see that you can see it through the water and it's something that swimming pool owners often complain about with an inferior application of a darker colored interior surface. I would also very much be worried about this mottling or inconsistent color because over the scope of the size of the body of water that we're talking about here, yeah, you definitely would be able to see that if you're not able to nail that consistent coloration.
Something else we talked quite a lot about when you're dealing with dark colors for interior surfaces, I warn that it's usually inclined to fade. Fading, hazing, these are real concerns for a dark interior surface. And so it would be in this application as well. Now, I haven't worked with the product that they're using for this application. So, I can only speculate and say that just in general, that's something that I worry about when I'm doing a dark surface for something that's going to be exposed to so much direct sunlight. Like, it's really got to be UV stable to avoid having a bleaching or hazing effect. And that's to say nothing of the, you know, chlorine equation. I don't know what the Memorial Reflecting Pool uses for keeping the water clean, but if it is any kind of chlorine like you might find in a swimming pool, well, that stuff is pretty aggressive and it's pretty hard on things in terms of like bleaching, pulling, and fading color over time. (editor note - the reflecting pool is not chlorinated. It is untreated water from the Pottahawk river)
Something else I saw a lot of people talking about in the comment section on that article was the fact that this dark interior surface is going to be more inclined to grow algae. And I would agree with that statement because it's a darker interior surface. More likely it's going to be warmer. The water will be slightly warmer than it was before. And that almost directly increases an increase in algae growth. Like the warmer the water, the more aggressive the algae grows. But the real problem from like a maintenance perspective, as somebody who maintains a lot of swimming pools, when you have a really dark interior surface, they're rare, but they are out there...it's really hard to see when you have a problem started. If you have a white or a light blue interior surface - Oh, look. You can see a little bit of algae starting there in the corner, we should do some extra scrubbing. We should adjust the chemicals because there might be a problem here that's allowing that algae to grow. When you have a very dark interior surface, you can't really see that stuff started. So, you don't really know about it until it becomes a prolific problem. And that would obviously be something very bad.
So, the real question here is, is this thing going to look like a swimming pool because people do not want it to look like a swimming pool. It's been light gray in color since 1922. And I think a lot of people really don't think that it should be changing in color at all. I think that's kind of the polarizing issue at the heart of really it's more of a landmark. It's something that shouldn't be changed in color. That's why, you know, there's the question of is it going to work? But there's the entire point about should this even be happening at all? And I think that's what a lot of people are upset about. Being that I'm not American, that's not an issue that I can weigh in on. I'm only here to talk about the actual physics of dark water and reflecting pools and swimming pools and expansive bodies of water because that's the thing. This thing is so big. It's not a swimming pool. It's hard to even contextualize how large it is in your mind because it's much much bigger than probably you're picturing it to be in terms of if we had a swimming pool next to it and we did an exact comparison. The volume of the water in the memorial reflecting pool. It it's hard to know exactly. We have to assume an average depth here. And from what I've read, I assume that the average depth is around 1.5 ft. And if we make that generalized assumption, we'll get like pretty close to the right number here, which is approximately 3.8 million gallons of water. A large residential swimming pool might have 25,000 gallons of water or 30,000 gallons of water. An Olympic size swimming pool is about 660,000 gall of water. The square footage of the Memorial Reflecting Pool is 338,000 square ft. That's like almost 8 acres of surface area compared to a large residential swimming pool. A bigger than average residential swimming pool is 800 square ft. So 338,000 square ft versus 800 squared ft. Again, the comparison is hard to contextualize because the numbers are just so wildly disproportionate. That's something like 425 residential swimming pools. Even if we looked at Olympic swimming pools, and Olympic sized swimming pools are gigantic, that would be 13,500 square ft compared to 338,000 square ft of surface area of water.
Why that matters is because there's a scope to this that makes the water enter into architecture. It's no longer just a swimming pool that you look at and oh, it looks like I could go swimming in it. It's so large, so grand in scale, it becomes part of the entire landscape that you're viewing. It's not really something that should look like a swimming pool. And I would feel a lot more comfortable if that was the statement that was printed. It's like - it shouldn't look like a swimming pool because of the grand scale and size of this body of water. If it is a dark enough color, it should effectively reflect at the surface level. But whether it reflects at the surface level or not is secondary to the entire question of whether it should have been painted blue at all or not. I do understand that it required repair and that is one of the things that's being addressed. This process during which it's being painted is also doing a repair process...but the there was an option on the table to not change the color. I think that is at the heart of the situation here is should it have changed color or not?
It shouldn't look like a swimming pool. Hopefully the people will be happy with the end result. You know, it's a it's a big statement to make to make a change to a national landmark like this that's existed like this for 100 years. It should function as intended, but whether the people accept that as something that they wanted or needed or not is a secondary question. If you found this information helpful, like this video, subscribe to my YouTube channel here, and you can check out my website, SwimmingPoolSteve.com
Here is a link to the original Washing Post article featuring Swimming Pool Steve - Did Trump pick the right blue for the Reflecting Pool? We asked a pool guy
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