{"id":752,"date":"2026-06-25T12:08:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T12:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=752"},"modified":"2026-06-25T12:08:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T12:08:32","slug":"even-the-internets-favorite-pool-guy-has-no-clue-how-to-fix-the-reflecting-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=752","title":{"rendered":"Even the Internet\u2019s Favorite Pool Guy Has No Clue How to Fix the Reflecting Pool"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>WIRED\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>

Read more Dobbs Didn\u2019t End Abortion. It Ignited a Movement.<\/a><\/p>\n

Steve Goodale isn\u2019t<\/span>\u00a0used to attention like this. It\u2019s not that he\u2019s unfamiliar with being on camera: His YouTube Channel, Swimming Pool Steve, has amassed nearly 91,000 subscribers covering topics like\u00a0how to bond concrete\u00a0and\u00a0clean a used hot tub.<\/p>\n

But the saga of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which an\u00a0algal bloom turned green\u00a0following a renovation that President Donald Trump\u2019s administration claimed would make the pool \u201cAmerican flag blue\u201d in time for the US\u2019s\u00a0250th birthday celebrations, has left people searching for answers about what the heck is going on.<\/p>\n

The mystery has only deepened as chunks of the newly installed lining have appeared to break off and Trump has said the pool will be drained while, without evidence, blaming vandals for the problems. Add in US Park Police arresting people for touching the water like it\u2019s some kind of biohazard, and that\u2019s made Goodale, an\u00a0award-winning pool expert, one of the most in-demand sources for anyone trying to figure out what\u2019s happening to the iconic monument.<\/p>\n

Pools are in Goodale\u2019s blood: He learned the tricks of the trade from his Uncle Joe and refers to pools as \u201ca family business.\u201d I called him up to go over some of our most burning pool questions. This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.<\/p>\n

Are you sick of talking about all this yet?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is like the\u00a0Simpsons<\/em>\u00a0episode where the devil force-feeds doughnuts to Homer. \u201cSo, you like talking about pools, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n

We heard you like talking about pools, so we\u2019re going to give you pools 24\/7. All the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been talking about them forever. It\u2019s just now everybody is listening.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve gotten a lot of reporters calling you and asking, What exactly is wrong with the Lincoln Memorial pool? But from watching your videos, it sounds like it\u2019s hard to say there\u2019s one definitive thing wrong with it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s not enough information in terms of pictures, videos, water chemistry values. A natural pond, an open-air, clear-water environment\u2014that\u2019s what this thing is. There are so many moving parts here. It\u2019s the structure, it\u2019s the water chemistry, it\u2019s filtration. There\u2019s so much stuff that has to work in conjunction with each other.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been saying for decades now, I think swimming pools are the origin of the term \u201cdoesn\u2019t hold water.\u201d If you don\u2019t do every part of your job properly, it\u2019s very easy to see that there\u2019s something going wrong.<\/p>\n

Experts like you can see 101 ways a project like this could fail, even with a very talented, experienced team doing the renovation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pools are mercilessly complicated\u2014and I\u2019m talking about little ones. This is literally monumental in size. It would take a master class in technical execution to be able to work on this thing in a competent capacity. But you don\u2019t need Swimming Pool Steve to tell you that when you see what appears to be the interior surface peeling up and floating in chunks. That\u2019s an \u201coh, crap\u201d moment.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen some speculation that the hydrogen peroxide might be the cause of the bottom of the pool peeling. But you made a video about the lining, saying that it might be more complex than just that.<\/strong><\/p>

Read more We Are Drinking the Earth\u2014and Eating It<\/a><\/p>\n

There is merit to this line of thought. These interior surfaces, they\u2019re very chemically resistant, but they\u2019re not infinitely chemically resistant. It would come down to what\u2019s being used and what concentrations of it are being used\u2014all these unanswered questions.<\/p>\n

But with a membrane system like this, there\u2019s a lot of technical points you have to nail during installation. You have to account for ambient conditions like rain, sun, humidity, moisture control in your substrate, thickness, evenness, and chemical compatibility. There are so many things that can go wrong with that process. If the material hasn\u2019t bonded to the substrate for any number of reasons, then ultimately the entire system will fail.<\/p>\n

Now the president is claiming that it\u2019s vandalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really get my head around the mechanism of vandalism that could cause this kind of damage. In terms of pictures and videos, it doesn\u2019t look good, but it was fairly localized stuff. I haven\u2019t seen anything that shows the 250-foot gash. At this point, I\u2019m sure you can understand, I, more than anybody, have questions too.<\/p>\n

The Department of Interior keeps saying, \u201cWe\u2019ve got the nanobubblers on, that should fix it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nanobubbler technology is an ozone injection system\u2014it essentially adds oxygen to the water. In theory, it\u2019s used as a suppression system to kill algae directly, but it also has a secondary function of making an oxygen-rich environment in the water, which controls the release of phosphorus from the sediment layer at the bottom of the pool, the primary nutrient source for algae.<\/p>\n

Will sediment at the bottom of the pool affect the blue color? Or is it scattered too thinly to affect it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It certainly starts thin, but it has the potential to be a heavier layer. It really comes down to the quality of the source water being used and the design of the filtration system itself.<\/p>\n

Water from the Tidal Basin is usually pumped directly into the pool, but when there\u2019s a lot of algae in the basin, they switch to municipal drinking water. The administration hasn\u2019t answered our questions about what the source of the water in the pool is right now<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also been trying to find answers to that. But the water that\u2019s in the pool is really what matters here. Now that it\u2019s in the pool, what\u2019s the phosphate level? What\u2019s the nitrate level? Those would be good things to know.<\/p>\n

So just grab a little bottle of water to test?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ve seen on the news that maybe you can\u2019t even get near it anymore. But in theory, yes, if this were my swimming pool, I would walk right up to it, dunk my little bottle into it and take a sample. I would test for phosphates, and it would tell me an awful lot about the nutrients available for algae to grow.<\/p>\n

In the big picture, how much of a mess is this to clean up? How much could it cost taxpayers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t speak to cost or budget issues. But I can tell you that draining a 6.5-million-gallon body of water is certainly a considerable thing to do. In terms of what it\u2019s going to take to fix it, what really matters at this point is, how much damage are we talking about here? Is it a localized area that can be exposed and repaired? Or is this an indication that there\u2019s some sort of systemic issue?<\/p>

Read more The Stunning Photojournalism That Made Mother Jones<\/a><\/p>\n

You have to look at it as a system as a whole.<\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A host of fixes has made it hard to diagnose the problem\u2014let alone clean up the mess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nEven the Internet\u2019s Favorite Pool Guy Has No Clue How to Fix the Reflecting Pool - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=752\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Even the Internet\u2019s Favorite Pool Guy Has No Clue How to Fix the Reflecting Pool - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A host of fixes has made it hard to diagnose the problem\u2014let alone clean up the mess.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=752\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-25T12:08:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/46feba89db3805648775fe745686be6f-1024x575.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"575\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6b7c79bcfd888d98f34c5413df7e81a2\"},\"headline\":\"Even the Internet\u2019s Favorite Pool Guy Has No Clue How to Fix the Reflecting Pool\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-25T12:08:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752\"},\"wordCount\":1235,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/a8b22833d39288cf26bc1465c0478134.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=752\",\"name\":\"Even the Internet\u2019s Favorite Pool Guy Has No Clue How to Fix the Reflecting Pool - 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