Tucson, Arizona isn’t just cactus and sunsets—it’s also home to one of the sharpest and most stubbornly curious minds in swimming pool chemistry. Que Hales, co-founder of OnBalance and longtime manager of PoolChlor, has been named one of the Talking Pools Podcast’s Top Ten Mentors of 2025.
If you’ve flipped through Aqua Magazine or Service Industry News lately, chances are you’ve seen his name. His articles aren’t written to sell products. They’re written to challenge assumptions. They ask questions nobody else thought to ask—and then back up the answers with data pulled from real pools in real backyards.
And if you’ve ever changed the way you cared for a pool because of something you read in a trade journal or heard at a conference, there’s a good chance Que had something to do with it.
The Blame Game
Que didn’t start out as a chemist. His degree was in English education. But in the mid-1990s, as a relatively new pool company manager, he kept getting dragged into jobs where plaster was spalling, iron stains were blooming, and homeowners were pointing fingers at service techs.
“The problem wasn’t ours,” Que recalls, “but at the time, I didn’t know what it actually was.”
That helplessness—being blamed for things he couldn’t explain—lit the fuse. He turned to Kim Skinner, PoolChlor’s owner, whose chemistry background offered possible explanations. Que, the teacher, translated those explanations into field tests. Together, they began connecting dots the industry had missed for decades.
His breakthrough came when he uncovered the truth about acid dosage charts. For years, every chart printed in textbooks and distributed by manufacturers had been based on concentrated hydrochloric acid—the 37% lab version. Pool pros, though, used 31.45% muriatic acid. That 6% gap meant every chart in the field was wrong.
Que published the finding. Within months, manufacturers quietly corrected their charts.
It was vindication—but also a lesson. If something as basic as an acid chart could be wrong for so long, how many other “truths” in the pool industry needed testing?
OnBalance: Curiosity Formalized
That question became the seed for OnBalance, the collaboration Que co-founded with Skinner and Los Angeles’ Doug Latta. Their goal was never to sell anything. It was to investigate, publish, and teach.
“See a problem, research it, prove it, teach it,” Que says simply.
And teach he has. At trade shows, in magazine columns, and on PoolHelp.com, Que has walked service pros through topics most thought were settled.
Take his 2025 Aqua Magazine article, Just Above the Waterline. Pool pros had always called those stubborn white rings “scale.” Que showed they were often evaporites—a natural geological process of minerals concentrating as water wicked and evaporated. The fix wasn’t more acid; it was understanding evaporation.
Or his pigment study, which tested plaster colors under balanced and aggressive water. The results flipped assumptions: inorganic cobalt blue held strong, while organic pigments bled out, especially near the deep end where liquid chlorine tends to settle. For builders, that knowledge reshaped how they promised color longevity to customers.
The Why Behind the What
For Que, the explanation is everything. “It’s like math class,” he says. “You can get the right answer, but if you don’t understand the method, you’ll fail when the problem changes.”
That philosophy makes him a reluctant enforcer of reality. In his younger days, he sometimes called out companies by name when they spread misinformation. Today, he tempers that with empathy, but he hasn’t softened on truth.
“If what’s on paper doesn’t match what happens in a pool, we need to figure out why,” he says.
Setbacks and Stubbornness
It hasn’t always been easy being the guy dismantling myths. Early on, Que’s insistence on accuracy made him unpopular with some manufacturers who preferred a simpler story. “There were times I wondered if it was worth the pushback,” he admits. “You feel like the skunk at the garden party.”
But his stubbornness came from a place of responsibility. Dozens of techs at his own company were relying on him for answers. “If I let bad information stand, it wasn’t just my reputation—it was their livelihood.”
That conviction kept him publishing even when critics circled. And over time, those critics often became readers.
Water and the Desert
Living in Tucson means living with scarcity. Water conservation isn’t a marketing line; it’s survival. For Que, that reality bleeds into every solution he explores. He looks for ways to correct water problems without dumping and refilling pools. Reverse osmosis, nano-filtration, targeted chemical adjustments—every drop matters.
His approach reflects a bigger theme in his life: stewardship. Of water. Of truth. Of people.
Mentorship Beyond the Pool
Over 40 years, Que has managed more than 400 service techs. Many were students picking up hours while finishing degrees. Today, some are doctors, lawyers, engineers.
“It’s fun to see where they end up,” Que says. “And to know that, for a time, I was part of their journey.”
For him, mentorship is less about chlorine curves and more about showing people that curiosity, persistence, and integrity pay off.
The Last Image
In the quiet of an Arizona evening, Que often finds himself answering unusual emails from across the country. A tech in Florida sends photos of a plaster stain. Another, in Ohio, asks about a weird scale line that won’t budge.
He smiles. Because this is what drives him.
Somewhere, a pool pro is kneeling by the water with a flashlight, trying to solve a problem they’ve never seen before. And maybe, just maybe, the answer is already in something Que wrote.
That’s the legacy: not just cleaner pools, but a new way of thinking. A mirror held up to the industry that whispers, What if we asked better questions?
