Editorial Policy
The rules this site holds itself to, written down so you can hold us to them.
Independence
- No sponsored placements. No brand has paid to appear on this site, and none can. There is no rate card because there is no product to sell.
- No free products accepted. Nothing here was supplied by a manufacturer, and nothing will be.
- No advertiser influence on picks. The only commercial relationship is Amazon Associates commission, disclosed in full on the affiliate disclosure page.
- Commission is not a ranking factor. Several pages here recommend a two-dollar net or a bag of baking soda over anything expensive, because that is the right answer.
What we will not publish
- A claim to have tested something we have not. Skim & Soak has no test pool, no lab and no units. Units we claim to have tested: 0, stated on every commercial page.
- A price we have not verified. Prices come from a live layer or the button says “Check price”. Our content model has no field capable of holding a remembered price.
- A star rating or a review score in structured data. We do not run a testing lab, so marking an editorial opinion up as a review rating would contradict our own copy. There is no
Review,reviewRatingoraggregateRatinganywhere in this site’s JSON-LD. - A testimonial. This brand launched in 2026 and has no customer reviews. A page with no testimonials is honest; a page with invented ones is fraud.
- A dose without a source. Where a figure cannot be sourced, the page says “check your label” and prints no number.
- A credential we do not hold. No certifications, no tenure claims, no “our expert panel”.
Why every roundup names something to skip
A roundup where every product is good and the only question is which is best is not a recommendation - it is a catalog with adjectives. If nothing is ever wrong for anyone, the writer has not made a judgment.
So every one of the 71 products in our registry carries a “skip it if” line, and the field is mandatory in the data model rather than a habit we might drop. Several roundups also include a product we would not buy at all, named as the skip, with the reason - and those links earn us exactly the same commission as the ones we recommend.
Sourcing standards
- Every dose states a pool volume and cites its source. Manufacturer label first, then a published standard, then a government reference. Full hierarchy on the methodology page.
- Citations are inline links you can click, not a bibliography nobody reads.
- We name the standard. “CDC Model Aquatic Health Code 5.7.3.1.1.5.0”, not “industry guidelines”.
- We never cite a competitor article as the source for a fact. If a figure matters, we go to the primary document.
- We do not cite what we could not read. The CDC’s own pages returned an HTTP 403 to our systems, so MAHC parameters are cited through a state document that quotes them and that we did read.
Corrections
If a number on this site is wrong, we want to know. Send it to info@skimandsoak.com or use the contact page, ideally with:
- The page and the specific figure
- What you believe the correct value is
- A source - a product label, a standard, a manufacturer page
What happens next: a factual error gets corrected and the page’s last-reviewed date updated. A correction that changes a recommendation is noted on the page itself rather than made silently. A disagreement about judgment rather than fact gets a reply, and sometimes a revision.
How often pages are reviewed
| Content | Cadence | Also triggered by |
|---|---|---|
| Prices | Continuous, from the live layer | Nothing - it is automatic |
| Roundups | Quarterly | A product being discontinued, or a new model |
| Dose figures | Annually | A label revision or a standard being updated |
| Problem guides | Annually | A reader correction |
| Methodology | On any process change | It must always describe what we actually do |
| Seasonal content | Before the season it covers | Pool opening and closing periods |
Every one of the 47 content pages here shows the date it was last reviewed, at the top, next to the byline. A stale page that says so is more useful than an undated one.
Authorship
Everything on this site is written by Scooter M., who is an enthusiast rather than a credentialed professional and is described that way everywhere, including in the structured data attached to every article.
There is no ghostwritten “editorial team” byline, because there is no editorial team. If that changes, this page will say so.
On how this is written
Research, drafting and the arithmetic on this site are produced with the help of automated tooling, and every published figure is traced to a source that a reader can open. We would rather tell you that than have you wonder.
The rules above are the ones that make it work: no figure without a source, no price without a live check, no claim of experience we do not have. Those constraints matter more than who typed the sentence, and they are the ones we would like to be judged on.
Scope
This site covers residential pool water problems and the chemistry and equipment that address them. It does not cover pool construction, resurfacing, gas work, high-voltage electrical work or structural repair - those require a licensed professional, and nothing here substitutes for one. We also make no local service recommendations, because we have no way to assess a contractor in your area.