Category: Town of Vienna, VA

Post #2092: Salt rising — through 2/18/2025

 

In this post, I’m documenting the progress of my road-salt-in-my-drinking-water experiment.

Recall that:

  1. We had a half-inch of rain Friday 1/31/2025 that washed away the piles of road salt that remained from an earlier winter storm.
  2. It should take about a week for water to work its way from the Potomac River to my tap, per Fairfax County.
  3. Nothing filters salt out of the water, so the salt that got washed off the roads should show up in my tap any day now.
  4. After correcting for operator error, my tap water has shown a steady 210 ppm (parts-per-million) TDS (total dissolved solids) for the entire past week.

I am pleased (?) to report that last night’s water sample clocked in at 232 ppm.  And as of 2/8/2025, it had risen to 242 ppm.

Assuming that was not a fluke, I expect that was the beginning of the salt passing through my fresh water system.  The timing is right, in any case.

I’ll be tracking this for another few days, and will continue to document the results, here in this post.

Update 2/18/2025 PM sample:  Tap water TDS returns to baseline level.

 

Between the time of the rain, and now, my tapwater’s TDS increased by about 100 parts per million, against a relatively stable baseline of about 200 ppm baseline. The peak occurred about 10 days after the salt-clearing rainstorm.

But even if that entire increase is, in fact, due to chloride ion from road salt, we still won’t taste it in the drinking water.  The 100 ppm (presumed) chloride ion concentration in the drinking water is well below the threshold (250 ppm) above which (some?  many?) people will detect a “salty” taste to the water.  The bottom line is that, so far, this should not be a generally taste-able water saltiness event.

And that’s a good thing.

In addition, it is far from proven that the uptick in TDS of my tap water is even due to road salt.  E.g., maybe this happens after every significant rain.   But I’m betting that’s the road salt.  And even if it is driven by road salt, there has to be more in the TDS increase that just chloride ions.

It doesn’t matter.  Won’t taste this amount of salt in the water, no matter how you slice it.

In summary, there was a modest increase in my tap water’s TDS.  Timing is about right for this to reflect “salt in the tap water”, from road salt runoff of 1/31/2025.  But nothing has been proven, except that, even worst case, the ion concentration is not nearly enough to give the water a salty taste.

Edit:  As of 2/13/2025, we’re midway or better (?) through the “runoff” step of a new road salt runoff cycle.  Or, if not midway, we’ll get there and beyond today, with a predicted high in the low 50s.)  And so, we should see a smaller, smearier version of this most recent drinking water salt pulse … 2/21/2025.  It’s not clear that this simple rig, or any simple rig, would reliably let you “see” a pulse that small and ill-defined.  (And that’s assuming the measured TDS number for tap water is otherwise pretty steady from day to day.) 

OTOH, it’s no hardship to keep this going.  Just KISS.  All it takes is this cheap TDS meter, a drinking glass, and patience.

Use just one glass.  Test the water twice a day.  But you need to let that cold tap water stand a good long while, if you want a reliable reading out of a slow-read $6 meter.  So, let each sample sit half a day.  Covered.  AM and PM,  you use (and rinse) the meter, dump that water sample, run the tap and replace the water sample, and set it aside, covered. Then leave it alone.  Until it’s time to do all that again.  Repeat twice a day.

It’s idiot-proof.  And sometimes that’s a good thing.

Post #2091: Blah blah blah blah salt blah blah blah. Part 3: Operator error.

 

Edit 2/7/2025:  One week since a half-inch of rain washed away the remaining salt on the roads … and no sign of salt in the water yet.  TDS (total dissolved solids) readings for properly aged (i.e., room-temperature) water samples are steady at 210 ppm, plus or minus some single digits.

 

Recall that, as of my last post, my road-salt-in-drinking-water experiment was floundering.  My tap water was showing far more variation in measured total dissolved solids (TDS) than seemed reasonable.

Turns out, that’s because a) my tap water is cold, b) temperature strongly affects the conductivity of water, c) this $6 meter measures and adjusts for temperature,

d) extremely slowly.  And e) I’m not exactly a patient person.

I didn’t wait anywhere near long enough for the meter to adjust to my tap water temperature.  And going forward, I’m not going to stand around for a quarter-hour holding this meter in a glass of water, waiting for the temperature adjustment to reach equilibrium.

The solution is simple.  I have to let the glass of tap water sit for a couple of hours, and come up to room temperature.   Then measure TDS.  Once I do that, these “well-aged” water samples all provide consistent readings for parts-per-million total dissolved solids.

Properly measured, my tap water TDS has been around 210-215 ppm TDS for the past three days.  A little higher than the 170 ppm I expected based on “10 grains of hardness” of the water.  But definitely in the ballpark.  And seemingly stable.

Hey, maybe I’m not crazy.  It does, in fact, take about a week for water to pass through the Fairfax County drinking water system.

The presence of a stable, measurable baseline is important for this experiment.

And yet, as I go day after day without an increase in TDS, I begin to wonder whether I just imagined the salty-tasting tap water of winters past.

I expect road salt runoff to produce a big upswing in my tap water TDS, Wednesday-ish of this week, best guess.  That’s based on last Friday’s half-inch of rain washing (almost) all the remaining salt off the roads.  And my vague memory that the salt taste showed up on-order-of a week after road salting.

FWIW, I finally found confirmation that it takes about a week for water to move through my local water distribution network.  When Fairfax flushes the water mains, they change disinfectant chemicals.  Depending on where you are in the system, those chemicals may take up to a week to show up in your tap, and a week to go away (reference).

Depending on your usage patterns and location within the distribution system, it could take up to a week for your drinking water to transition from combined to free chlorine at the beginning of the flushing program, or from free chlorine to combined chlorine at the conclusion of the flushing program.

The upshot is that a) we may still be a few days away from salt showing up in my tap water, and b) while it has taken me a while to figure out how to use my $6 TDS meter, there’s no harm done.

So far, properly measured, the TDS in my tap water has remained steady at around 210-215 ppm.  If a flush of road salt passed through the system, that ought to stand out pretty sharply against that steady background rate.

 

The full story

  • This meter measures water’s electrical conductivity.
  • That conductivity is increased by ions in the water.
  • Such ions are generated when minerals and salts dissolve in water.
  • Thus, the meter can infer the amount of ions in the water, from the water’s conductivity.
  • It then translates that into something the user can understand, such as parts-per-million total dissolved solids (TDS) or salinity.   Depending on the end-use market that is being targeted.

Source:  Mettler Toledo white paper, “Reducing Measurement Error in Conductivity Readings”.  Annotations in red are mine.

 

  • But water temperature strongly affects conductivity.  A 9F decrease in water temperature creates a more-than-10% reduction in water conductivity.
  • Hence, this measurement typically requires temperature correction. The goal is to measure the water’s conductivity, adjusted to some standard water temperature.
  • And this $6 TDS meter includes that temperature correction via a built-in thermometer (and presumably a look-up table on a chip, or something).
  • But the meter is excruciatingly slow about doing that.

I finally got the bright idea of sticking this meter in a glass of ice water and see how long it took to display a temperature of 0 C. 

I gave up, it took so long.  I got tired of holding the meter in the ice water.  I’m guessing it would eventually get there, but it would take five or ten minutes to do so.

In any case, that adjustment is so slow that what I interpreted as the meter reading “setting down” to a final value, in just a few seconds, was nothing of the sort.

And that’s what tripped me up.  With incomplete temperature adjustment, cold water registers as “cleaner” water (lower TDS), owing to the lower conductivity of cold water.

Conclusion:  Never rule out operator error

On the on hand, I could blame the meter for being so slow to adjust to different temperatures.

On the other hand, it’s up to the meter operator to use it correctly.  Or spend the big bucks on one that works faster.

In any case, for $6, I got a very smart meter.  Smart enough to do the temperature correction for me.

But the hardware?  That’s still the best that $6 can buy.  It’s fine, as far as I can tell, but there’s no expectation that $6 bought me some kind of heirloom-quality super-tool.

And, as it turns out, what I got for $6 is a meter that works, but takes forever to settle to a final reading, owing to the glacial pace of adjustment of its internal temperature sensor.

Which I consider fair, for $6.  That it works at all is kind of a miracle.  That was unkind.  What I should have said is “more than fair”.

Now that I know that the temperature correction takes forever to register,  all I need to do is let my tap water samples warm up to room temperature.

And poof, what seemed like a ridiculously inconsistent meter turns out to be … pretty consistent.

Well worth the $6.

I probably need to buy some distilled water, for another buck or two.  Not to test the meter, but to rinse it after I’m done.  By device design and by common acclaim, I get the impression that I’m never supposed to let anything touch the electrodes but water.  Which precludes wiping the electrodes dry, in any fashion.  But, I think that if I just let the little electrodes air-dry, after tap water, I risk “poisoning” the electrode surfaces over time with calcium carbonate deposits, a.k.a., water spots. This, by analogy to premature dulling of un-dried razor blades by the thickness of water spots (Post #1699).

Distilled water, by contrast, leaves nothing behind when it evaporates.  So you don’t dry them, you rinse them with pure water and then allow them to air-dry.

Otherwise, the experiment is now on track.  I have documented a stable baseline of around 215-225 ppm dissolved solids in my (room-temperature) tap water.

I just need to give it a few days for the road salt to work its way from the Potomac River to my water faucet.

Post #2090: Documenting the post-snowmelt salt spike in my drinking water. Part 2, not obviously a fool’s errand.

 

In this post, I do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on salt in my drinking water.

Is the road-salt-driven spike, in salt in my drinking water, likely to be big enough that I can detect it with a cheap total-dissolved-solids (TDS) meter?

If not, this is a fool’s errand.

Spoiler:  Yes, the increase in ions (here, part of total dissolved solids), from this hypothetical “salt spike” in the drinking water, as a result of the road salt washing off the roads, should be more than big enough to be detected using just a cheap TDS meter.

All I really need to do is stick that meter into a freshly drawn glass of water, once a day.  And record the results.  No muss, no fuss, almost no effort.

If there’s no “spike” in ions — interpreted by the meter as a sharp rise in TDS — then that’s that.  No matter what I thought I tasted in the water.

As a bonus, I get to use grains of water hardness in a calculation involving metric units.

Chapter 1:  Wherein Sodium and Chlorine, who had been bound together as Rock Salt for hundreds of millions of years, are now Released, and Go Their Separate Ways.

One of the stranger twists in this whole road-salt-life-cycle saga is that the sodium and chlorine ions from the road salt now permanently part ways.  Or, at least, in the typical case, do so.

This is usually expressed as “the sodium does not travel as far”.  In hindsight, I think this means that if you filter the salt water through dirt, the sodium ions will preferentially stick to the dirt. I vaguely sense that “ion exchange” is at work here.

This tendency for the sodium to “stay put” is also why the sodium is fingered as the cause of the localized damage to vegetation.  Apparently, that’s why rock salt (NaCl) “burns” lawn at the edge of salted sidewalk, but not so (or as much) calcium chloride (CaCl2).

For all intents and purposes, magic happens. What begins as simple salt water ends up passing along just the chloride ion, out of the salt (NaCl).

Presumably, that chloride ion is now dragging along god-knows-what ion-of-the-street with it.  Something it picked up in the dirt, no doubt.  Calcium, maybe, from the soil it passed through.  Apparently, it doesn’t matter, or something, because I can’t find a ready discussion of what takes sodium’s place.

In any case, so the story goes, what starts off as salt does not end up as simple dilute salt water.  Stuff happens along the way.  I suspect that contact with the dirt plays a major role in that.

So Chloride ion travels, but Sodium ion stays at home.  Or so they say. 

Except sometimes?  Flashy urban environment.

I noted that much of the research on road salt in the water was done in New Hampshire where a) they apparently use a lot of road salt, and b) the issue is contaminating water wells.  So that research is clearly talking about well water, which is most assuredly water that has percolated extensively through soil.  (Although, in fairness, they also manage to salt up quite a few lakes and streams.)

Here in NoVa, by contrast, I think we’re at the opposite end of the percolation spectrum.  Around here, it’s road runoff to culvert to storm sewer, to clay-banked “flashy” urban stream.  To the Potomac.  In my mind, I’m not seeing a lot of filtration of any sort take place.  As a result, I’d bet that what starts out as salt water mostly ends up salt water, sodium intact, in the Potomac.

But I don’t really know.

All I know is that, as with many divorces, the tale you’ll be told about the breakup of Sodium ion and Chloride ion can’t possibly be the full story.  Ions have charge, and charge must balance.  So that the only way chloride can drop its ex — the sodium ion — is to pick up a suitable replacement.  I can only guess that, somehow, whatever that replacement ion is just doesn’t much matter. So nobody talks about it.

They dump on the ex (sodium) for killing the vegetation at the site of application.  But nobody bothers to name Chloride’s current partner.

Either that, or I fundamentally misunderstand something about this.

 

Grains of hardness should set my TDS baseline.

Horsepower.  Tons of cooling. British thermal units.  Teaspoons.

Grains of water hardness.

There’s just something about crazy old units of measurement that simply refuse to die.

At any rate, here’s where this stands.

I’ve ordered a cheap TDS (total-dissolved-solids) meter.  Assuming it works, it’ll give me good information on the density of ions on my drinking water.  Expressed in parts-per-million (ppm).

I’m going to draw daily samples of water for the next N days (like, 14 or boredom, whichever comes first).  By samples, I mean fill a mason jar with water and give it a labeled plastic top.  Kitchen faucet (so I know it’s well-used every day).

Plus, no at-home science project is really complete if it doesn’t use a mason jar.

Then I’m going to do the obvious things.  Test the water, using the meter.  And, with the aid of my wife, taste the water, blinded as to which mason jar is which.  Hoping that “ion count is up” and “tastes like salt” days a) exist, and b) coincide.

This, assuming that TDS is normally slow-varying, and doesn’t just like spike at random times all year long.  (Or, for that matter, does not spike following rainfall, regardless of salt on the pavement, something I would in theory need to test for.  These are things that I hope are true — basically, that my water’s TDS does not normally have short-term intense spikes of ions.  But this is something that I hope is true, not something that I know or have shown to be true.

But how big a blip can I reasonably expect?  Will I even be able to register it, with this cheap meter? 

That’s what this post is about.

The commonly-stated standard for drinking water taste is that water should not exceed 250 ppm (parts per million) chloride ions.   At least, this seems to be what Google’s AI tells me, expressed as 250 milligrams chloride per liter of water.   Above this level, a salty taste is evident.  (To some, I guess.  Salt sensitivity varies across individuals and over time, but 250 ppm is what gets cited as a common standard for avoiding salt taste in the drinking water.)

So if I can taste the salt in my water, that ought to correspond to that level of chloride, or higher, in the water.

That’s going to add to the total dissolved solids that are routinely in my water, that is, my “baseline” TDS.  Which my town’s legally-mandated annual water quality report helpfully lists as being in the range of 5 to 10 grains of hardness.  By weight, I believe that’s almost entirely calcium carbonate.

And 10 grains of hardness works out to be 640 mg of dissolved minerals (mostly harmless calcium carbonate) per gallon of water.

(So “a grain” is weight, now equal to about 64 milligrams.  The answer above is what you’ll get from Google’s AI.  And a grain of water hardness is a grain of dissolved minerals, per gallon of water.)

The term grain comes from exactly where you’d think.  Its supposed to be the weight of an idealized grain of wheat.  Or so they say.  But it is widely listed as equaling 1/7000th of a common (avoirdupois) pound, and so it doesn’t play nicely with standard U.S. units.  Aside from the fact that a grain is tiny, I think this explains why grains are not used in the U.S. (outside of ammunition and water hardness, and I guess alchemical receipts.  But never in the day-to-day.

To put those two numbers on common footing, note that a gallon is four liters.  So ten grains of water hardness is (640 mg/4 liters =~) 160 ppm dissolved solids.

Or close enough.  (When I ask Google, it helpfully tells me that a grain of hardness works out to be 17.1 ppm, or ten grains of hardness is just over 170 ppm.  Plenty close enough to the prior estimate, for this work.

And, because, by weight, calcium carbonate makes up the vast majority of what’s dissolved in my drinking water, that should be my baseline TDS reading.

Which means that the expected minimum taste-able chloride spike (250 ppm) should easily show up on top of my background TDS of around 170 ppm (10 grains of hardness).

Things could still go wrong.  Perhaps the day-to-day TDS level of my drinking water is erratic, spiking up and down all the time.  Perhaps it kicks up after every significant rainstorm (so that the expected coming spike might have nothing to do with salt.)  Perhaps this $6 meter is so unreliable that random meter errors will swamp the expected salt-driven increase in TDS.

But if none of that is true, then if I can taste the salt in the water, the concomitant jump in ion concentration in the drinking water should easily register on a cheap TDS meter.

Conclusion

So far, this is not a fool’s errand.

A cheap TDS meter should be good enough to document the expected salt spike in my drinking water.

Addendum:  Initial impression of cheap TDS meter.

My $6 TDS meter arrived.  Worked right out of the box.  At any point in time, it seems to give a consistent reading.

But glasses of water drawn three hours apart differed almost 10% in their measured TDS.  I don’t know whether that’s the native uncertainty of the meter, poor water-draw technique on my part, or actual hour-to-hour variation in my tap water’s TDS.

After a little poking about, I find a few things.

First, weirdly enough, there are different procedures for drawing water to test the water, as opposed to drawing water to test the plumbing.  If you’re testing the (incoming) water, common advice is to let the tap run full-on for five minutes, then take a sample.  By contrast, if you’re (e.g.) testing for lead in the pipes, apparently, you want to catch and test what’s sitting in the pipe, and you don’t want to flush the pipe at all.

I’m only letting the kitchen tap run 30 seconds.  (But, honestly, if the difference across readings is due to stuff coming out of my pipes, I’d kind of like to know that.)  I may try some five-minute flushes to see if that gives me more consistent readings.

In any event, change of plan.  I’m just going to measure the TDS of my kitchen tap water several times a day, over the next couple of weeks, and record the results.

With luck, my $6 meter will last the full two weeks.

Post #2089: Documenting the post-snowmelt salt spike in my drinking water. Part 1.

 

Major snowstorms in my area (Northern Virginia) are often followed by salty-tasting tap water, some days later.  Salt that was spread on the roads gets dissolved by the melting snow (or rain), runs off into the creeks, down to the Potomac, and from there, into our drinking water.

This is a well-known phenomenon across the northern U.S.

Here in Northern Virginia, sodium and chloride levels in the drinking water have been rising for decades, as documented by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission:

Source:  WSSC.

As the WSSC states:

The levels peak in the winter months and are higher in years where we experience more winter weather events. Because there is no economically feasible way to remove salt during filtration, higher levels end up in the drinking water.

Those annual averages are interesting, but here I want to document the short-term increase in salt in the drinking water following a big snowstorm.  Right now, all I have to back up my claim that road salt makes the water taste salty is a) my taste buds, and b) my recollection of salty-tap-water events of the past.

So this time, I’m going to try to capture that post-snow-melt salt spike in my tap water, in hard data. 

Measure it.  Day-by-day.  As it flushes through the system.

Cheap water quality testers are all water conductivity testers.

If you look on (say) Amazon, you can buy cheap little meters to measure total dissolved solids (TDS) in water.  As above.  These are often included with high-end countertop water filters, so you can see that something has been removed from the water, in passing it through the filter.  (My understanding is that consumers use the TDS reduction as a marker for when to change the water filter cartridge.)

You can also buy remarkably similar-looking meters to measure water salinity.  These are often targeted toward (e.g.) aquarium owners, and pool owners, either of whom may need to keep water salinity within a defined range.

You can even buy meters labeled for measuring the electrical conductivity of water.  Need I say that those cheap water-conductivity meters look almost identical to the first two?

Turns out, those are all the same meter.  They all measure the electrical conductivity of water.  They just label the resulting output on different scales.

Maybe — I haven’t quite figured this out one way or the other — there may be non-linear adjustments linked to the named use (salinity, TDS).  Maybe not.  I don’t think my $5 is going to buy me a lot of sophistication.  But these days, you never know.

Starting off with a DIY flop

 

So, assuming I have deciphered the technical stuff right (below), to capture the salt spike, all I need to do is measure the electrical resistance of my water.  Day after day, in a repeatable fashion.  For, I’m guessing, a couple of weeks max.

The salt, passing through the system, should show up as a temporary spike in the conductivity of the water.

To be clear, I don’t think I’m looking for some little hiccup in the data.  Back-of-the-envelope, I’m hoping for roughly a doubling of the conductivity for the days in which the salt spike passes through.  Which I have already predicted will be this coming Wednesday, based on my hazy recollection of the past.

I’ve got an ohm meter.  Somewhere.  It can measure resistance (ohms).  How hard could it be, to rig up some way to use my VOM (volt-ohm meter) to track the resistance (the mathematical inverse of conductivity) of my tap water.

Long story short, this DIY water-conductivity meter failed.  I was unable to make a reliable measurement.  After assembling the hardware (two bolts, stuck to a plastic lid, in a mason jar of water, connected to a VOM), the estimated electrical resistance of the water wandered all over the place.  Substituting stainless bolts for the galvanized bolts shown above did nothing to correct the problem.  I think that, perhaps, my VOM was just not up to the task.

After giving it a couple of tries with this DIY approach, I gave up and ordered the $6 meter pictured above.

I still don’t really know why my DIY water-resistance meter didn’t work.   Might have been as simple as a bad battery in the meter.  Not worth pursuing, when I can buy a meter for $6.

It really is this simple?  The theory.

Pure (distilled) water is a poor conductor of electricity.

But if you add ions to the water — from dissolved salt (Na+Cl-) or calcium carbonate (Ca++ C03–) or baking soda (Na+ HC03-) or hydrochloric acid (H+ Cl-) or whatnot — the ions act as charge carriers, and so allow electricity to flow more easily in the water.

The more ions you add, the better the water conducts electricity. (Within reason or at modest dilution.)   All the ions in the water contribute to the increased conductivity of the water.  Those could be “dissolved solids” ions, as from calcium carbonate in hard water.  Those could be “salt” ions, as in, the salt in a salt water aquarium.

In fact, all of these super-cheap TDS/salinity/conductivity meters measure the conductivity of the water.  Period.  They just put a different label, and perhaps a different scale, on that measured conductivity.

The first thing to note is that these meters can’t distinguish salt from other ions.  All they do is tell how conductive the water is.  That depends on the concentration of current-carrying ions in the water.  All ions of all types contribute to that.

The bottom line is that, strictly speaking, my $6 salt meter does not measure salt in the water.  It measures the total ion concentration in the water, of which salt contributes a part.  It does that by measuring the conductivity of the water.  And then it displays the result in units that match salt-concentration units (like ppm NaCl and such).  (I am also pretty sure it makes a temperature correction as well, as water conductivity varies with temperature, and the standard for reporting is conductivity of water at 25C.)

But, while these meters react to all ions in the water, they are blind to dissolved non-ionic compounds.  Like, sugar, say.  Sugar molecules remain intact (and carry no charge) when dissolved in water.  Dissolved sugar does not materially affect the conductivity of water, and so a cheap “TDS” meter will not respond to dissolved sugar or other dissolved non-ionic organic matter in the water.

The upshot is that the thing that’s sold as a “TDS” meter … isn’t.  Not if “total” includes things like sugar — dissolved organic material that is not ionic in nature.  It’s blind to that stuff, because that stuff doesn’t affect the conductivity of the water.

But that’s only fair, because the “salinity meter” version of it doesn’t measure salinity, either.  For example, I’m pretty sure that adding vinegar to the water will cause the conductivity to increase. On a meter labeled as a “salinity tester”, that increased conductivity would be labeled as increased saltiness.

As far as I can tell — and certainly at this price-point — the only way to measure the different ions separately is through chemistry.  Old school, you add reagents to react with certain ions, precipitate them out of the water.  You then filter out, dry, and weigh the precipitate to infer the quantity of the selected ion in the batch of water.  (Or you buy a meter with exotic-material electrodes that react chemically with certain ions and not other.)  Either way, that level of effort and expense is way beyond what I contemplate here.

Separately, and well known, the fact that these meters react the same to all dissolved ions means that “TDS” isn’t a good measure of drinking water cleanliness.  For most drinking water, TDS is simply measuring the total dissolved mineral content.  For me, here in the Town of Vienna VA, almost all the dissolved solids are from a water hardness of around 5 to 10 grains (per our mandated water quality report.)  This is almost entirely from harmless calcium carbonate, dissolved in the water.  The relatively high TDS in this case doesn’t mean that my tap water is bad, just that it has dissolved minerals in it.

Conclusion

I hope this has been clarificatory.

There is only one underlying type of cheap water quality meter.

Cheap (sub $10 on Amazon) TDS meters, salinity meters, and water conductivity meters all measure the electrical conductivity of water.  Water conductivity is driven by the concentration of ions present in the water.  All ions are lumped together by this measurement.  And these meters are blind to dissolved non-ionic material, because (e.g.) stuff like sugar doesn’t materially affect water conductivity.

So, really, at least at this price point, there are no salinity meters or TDS meters.  There are only water conductivity meters, and the labels placed on them.

The situation isn’t as dumb as I’ve painted it.  If you know what’s going into your water — say you are trying to adjust the salt level in a swimming pool — then yeah, that meter will function for you as a salt meter.  Because you know that it’s your salt that’s increasing the ion count and pushing up the conductivity of the water.

Similarly, if dissolved organic non-ionic compounds are not an issue for you  — no sugar in your water, that you know of — then the same meter may well serve as a useful TDS meter.  For drinking water — where dissolved organic matter is assumed to be minimal — these simple conductivity meters work well as total-dissolved-solids meters.  In other contexts — such as sampling raw water from a lake or stream — that would not be true.

For the moment, all I need to do is take a water sample a day, from my kitchen faucet.  Just a mason jar, rinsed and filled.  Store that away.

And then, if the story is as I think it is, in a couple of weeks, I should be able to go back through the samples and identify the “salty” days through blind taste-test.  And, if all goes well, my $6 TDS meter will highlight the same days as high TDS days.

If it all goes to plan, I’ll have documented the post-snowstorm salt spike in our drinking water by both blind taste test, and by measured dissolved solids.

Post #2087: Vienna pool, vote deferred until at least August 25, 2025.

 

I got a hot tip from some email correspondence that the scheduled 1/27/2025 vote to raise the meals tax … would be deferred.

That turned out to be a true rumor.  Took TC all of four minutes to raise, discuss, and vote to defer.

About half of the four minutes consists of a single long comment by Council Member Brill, regarding the uncertain outlook for the Federal workforce.  This was met with a smattering of applause, which the Mayor then immediately quashed, per TC SOP.

Here’s the four minutes of audio, starting just a few seconds before this item came up:

I gave that four minutes of audio to the AI lurking within notebooklm.google.com, to summarize.  Here’s how the AI summarized it, primarily based on a lengthy comment by Council Member Brill:

AI summary from notebooklm.google.com

1 source

A town council meeting transcript reveals a discussion regarding a proposed 10-year increase in the meals tax from 3% to 4%. A council member motions to defer the decision until August 25th, 2025, citing uncertainty surrounding potential federal telework policy changes that could impact local residents’ employment and, consequently, tax revenue. The motion passes unanimously. The deferral allows for more time to gather information and consider the implications of the evolving federal situation. This postponement is intended to ensure a well-informed and appropriate decision for the community.

Conclusion

That AI summary is close enough for me, and I listened to the whole four minutes.

If there were any specifics mentioned, about what’s supposed to happen between now and August 25th, both I and the AI missed them.  Just some boilerplate about getting more information, being responsible for this big decision, and so on.

Plus the notion that they can always defer a vote again, on August 25th.

The decision to defer a vote was unanimous.  Almost as if it had already been decided, outside of the public’s view.  Which it almost surely had.

The original recording can be found on Granicus, about 49 minutes into the recording of that Town Council meeting.

https://vienna-va.granicus.com/player/clip/1667?view_id=1&redirect=true

Any notion that Town Council Must Act NOW! has been quietly dropped down the memory hole (Post #2055).  So we’ve gone from “now or never” to “mañana”.  With zero comment on the change in the story being told to Town Council.  And zero repercussions for telling it.

Just another bit of mindless irrationality from the Town of Vienna.

Post #2083: Cold wave, heat pump, wood stove secondary heating.

 

Sometimes, all you need is a warm place.

Cold wave:  It’s going to get cold next week.

How cold?

In Vienna, VA, the National Weather Service is predicting a nighttime low of 4F, a week from now.

That’s rare but not totally unexpected.   

As of 1990, Vienna was at the edge of USDA plant hardiness Zone 6B, and could expected to see (and did see) occasional wintertime lows down to minus 5F

Three decades later, and we’re ten degrees warmer.  (In terms of our expected extreme low winter temperature).  As of the most recent USDA Hardiness Zone map, Vienna has moved into Zone 7B, with an expected extreme low of 5F.

That trend came through clearly in my analysis of annual low temperatures at nearby Dulles Airport.

So, it’s going to be cold, but it’s in line with expectations.

Heat Pump:  Cold weather remains the soft underbelly of air source heat pumps.

 

I fully grasp the irony of heating my house with an electrical appliance that, by design, quits working when it gets really cold outside.

Near as I can tell, all air source heat pumps all do this.  It’s just a question of how low can they go.  What I think of a “standard” home unit, as I recall, shuts down around freezing (32F).  Conversely, the “high heat” versions of the heat pump I got will go down to -17F or some such.   Mine — the regular versions — stop working at 5F.  This — super cold weather — is where ground-source heat pumps shine, as the ground loop temperature may be quite cold by that time, but nowhere near as cold as it is outside in a cold snap.   So the ground source is starting from much “warmer” material to extract its heat from.  Which, as you might well imagine, is an enviable position for a heat pump to be in.

But.

But 1, I didn’t think I’d hit that lower temperature limit the first winter I owned the thing.  The lower limit for mine is, in fact, 5F.  So, I will be looking at some (brief?) period when this new air-source mini-split may not run.  Not because it’s broken.  Just because it’s cold outside.

But 2, now I have to suss out the secondary heat.  Every heat pump system has secondary heat, I think.  (Or maybe it’s “should have”).  That’s what you use when the heat pump isn’t enough.  (Or to speed up the heating of rooms, when the heat pump alone would raise temperatures too slowly.)

Secondary heat for this mini-split is strictly DIY.  That’s by design.  It doesn’t come with — nor is is capable of activating — secondary heat of any sort, as far as I can tell.

So, just burn some natural gas …

White Clouds in Blue Sky ca. 1996

Secondary heat isn’t really a problem, because I can burn natural gas for heat.

But.

But 1, I can only do that — use the baseboard heating in that part of my house — by jury-rigging what’s left of my (still kind-of functioning) baseboard hot water heating.

But 2:  My fancy gas water-heater/furnace objects to serving as mere house heater.  (Another long story.)  It’ll work, but it’s bad for the device (as in, this is what burnt out the internal pump motor the first time.)

So I’m going with something simpler.

Buying a small quantify of firewood in the dead of winter.

 

I am now that guy.  That guy who is … per the title.

I wanted more than a shrink-wrapped bundle. But far less than a cord.  Where can I buy that, around here?  Preferably to pick up.

The right place for that turned out to be the Reston Farm Garden Market.  Where I paid $85 for an eight-of-a-cord, kiln-dried, stacked (by them) into the back of my hatchback Bolt.

So, $680 a cord, for kiln-dried hardwood, bought in small (one-eighth-cord) quantity.  I thought that was OK, in an area where a cord of kiln-dried hardwood, delivered, from my nearest source, would run $550 plus delivery fee.

Kiln dried or merely seasoned?  We go for kiln-dried now. It guarantees that it’s good firewood, but it’s a little too good. For sure, it burns more readily.  There are no bad logs.  But it burn faster and hotter than it ought, which means messing with the draft and relying on the air-tightness of the stove door gasket.  (FWIW, I’m convinced that the hotter burn nearly makes up for the fossil fuels used to dry the wood.  So the kiln drying step is not quite as much of an energy loser as it might seem at first.  And with all the pests harbored by firewood, it has to be kiln-dried to be moved more than a county or two away, anyway.)

FYI, the various shrink-wrapped or netted bundles of firewood for sale at local retail stores seem to work out to around $1600 a cord.

Apparently, this little out-of-the-way farm store moves tractor-trailer-loads of firewood, per year, through their yard.

That said, local air pollution aside, firewood is an expensive way to heat my house, given prices in my area.

As I recall, this is about what I found the last time I figured it.  Recognizing that for me, electricity is cheaper than natural gas, this means that firewood is my most expensive fuel option.

Short of this:

With the understanding that I’ve already shown that electricity remains my least expensive fuel, almost regardless of the outside temperature.*

* As long as the heat pumps will run.

Conclusion

My wife and I agree that there is just something comforting about having a full rack of dry firewood.

It’s not rational, practical, economical, or conducive to the public health.

But it is comforting.

And firewood is going to provide our secondary heat through this cold snap.  For the occasional night or two when we hit the extreme winter lows for this climate zone, it seems like the easiest solution.

Post #2080: Vienna, VA sidewalks in the snow.

 

In Vienna, VA, we are religious about shoveling the snow off our sidewalks.

God put the snow there.

God will remove it when he’s good and ready.

I tried to take a walk yesterday morning …

… without walking on snow and ice.

But, because I live in the Town of Vienna, that meant spending a lot of time walking in the road.

There’s no requirement to shovel your sidewalk in the Town of Vienna.  Unsurprisingly, some sidewalks are shoveled, some aren’t.  Which means that you typically can’t walk the length of a block without either walking on an un-shoveled sidewalk, or walking in the road.

This got me to thinking about what the snow-clearance laws are in Northern Virginia.  I know there’s no ordinance requiring it in Vienna.  But what about the rest of Northern Virginia?

Turns out, Vienna is in the minority.  Most of the jurisdictions around here require residents and business owners to shovel their sidewalks promptly after a snowfall.

I find that to be an oddly mixed bag.  Loudoun County is in general far more rural than Fairfax County, yet they require snow shoveling while Fairfax does not.

In all cases, the penalties for failure to clear a sidewalk are nugatory, so it’s not clear whether any of the laws are or are not effective.  I considered taking a field trip to the People’s Republic of Falls Church to see if their sidewalks really do get cleared or not.  But it hardly seems worth it.  Give it another few days, and the snow will be gone.

In the end, it’s just another oddity of living in No. Va.  These jurisdictions all have the same weather and have pretty much the same population demographics.  I’m guessing that the presence or absence of a shoveling ordinance is mostly a matter of historical accident.

In any case, in Vienna, we clear our sidewalks the old fashioned way, via religious observance.

Addendum:  Businesses in Vienna VA?

I know there’s no ordinance requiring homeowners to shovel their sidewalks in Vienna, but I was immediately questioned about businesses.  You can, and many places do, have different shoveling laws apply for business versus residential.

Old news reporting says that Vienna Town Council turned down any sort of shoveling ordinance in 2011 (Reference The Patch).

And that’s the last Google seems to have heard of it.

A search of MuniCode for Vienna VA for snow yields 13 mentions, none of which have to do with requiring businesses to shovel snow.

A search of the Town Website yields nothing useful, but that’s never definitive.

For sure, the Maple Avenue sidewalks were cleared around here.  Here’s Pleasant and Maple, looking west and east.

So, I don’t know.  There doesn’t seem to be an ordinance requiring it, but something resulted in the clearance of the Maple Avenue sidewalks in my area.  This is distinctly different from (say) Nutley, also a multi-lane road, but with large sections of un-shoveled sidewalk.

If it’s due to an ordinance, that ordinance appears well-hidden.

Post 2071: AI review of Vienna Town Council 12/16/2024 Work Session, Part I.

 

Below is NotebookLM’s report on the first 43+ minutes of last night’s Town Council Work Session.  Town posted the video promptly.

The audio of that meeting is all that NoteboolLM knows about this particular issue.  I think.

PSSST:  Then how did it get the architect’s name spelled correctly?  OK, so the AI knows a little more than it’s letting on.  The only thing I fed it, for this session, was the 43 minutes of audio.

One is never quite sure whether an AI is pulling one’s leg or not.  But, this was free, and I think I know more, after reading this, than I did before.

 

NotebookLM analysis of Vienna Town Council Work Session 12/16/2024, first portion, regarding a proposed pool/gym facility at “The Annex”.

This audio recording documents a December 2024 Vienna town council work session focused on preparing for a January 2025 session concerning a potential aquatic and fitness center. Council members submitted questions for consultants and staff regarding projected costs, revenue models, and community needs. A vote was taken to determine which questions would be prioritized for the upcoming session. Concerns were raised about funding mechanisms and the impact on local businesses and residents, including the possibility of a referendum. The session concluded with a decision to proceed with the investigation, despite some dissent.

 

NOTE that the text below is also AI-generated, but seems to have come in a form that won’t let me edit it.  (So I can’t turn the text to a different color to set it apart as AI output.)

 

Briefing Document: Town Council Work Session 12-16-2024

Subject: Aquatic and Fitness Center Annex Proposal – Information Gathering and Decision-Making Process

Date: December 16, 2024

Attendees:

  • Town Council Members: Roy, Sandra Allen, Howard, Ray, Chuck, Jessica Raminsky (represented by Mayor)
  • Mayor
  • Town Manager
  • Director of Parks and Recreation, Leslie Herman

Purpose: To identify key questions and information requirements for the Town Council to consider before making a decision on the proposed Aquatic and Fitness Center Annex on January 27th, 2025.

Background:

The Town Council is considering a proposal for an Aquatic and Fitness Center Annex. This proposal includes a significant capital investment and ongoing operating costs. A consultant, Kimmel Bogrett, has provided initial analysis, and Town Staff has conducted independent research.

Key Themes and Concerns:

  • Financial Viability and Revenue Generation: Council members expressed significant concern about the financial sustainability of the project. They requested detailed analysis of projected operating costs, potential revenue streams, and the likelihood of achieving projected membership numbers. Several members requested comparisons with similar facilities in other jurisdictions, including Fairfax County rec centers and the Herndon Community Center.

Council Member Roy: “Is it one in five [households] and for them [Kimmel Bogrett] to explain that… I want names of localities so we can call them up and find out how things are going.”

Council Member Chuck: “My questions… really relate to how much revenues can we expect to um generate from this facility to offset the pretty substantial operating costs.”

  • Membership Projections and Market Analysis: Doubts were raised about the consultant’s membership projections, particularly in light of competition from nearby Fairfax County facilities. Council members requested further analysis of the market area, considering factors like proximity, household income, and participation rates.

Council Member Chuck: “The estimates provided by the consultants is that… the annex would um attract around 2,000 memberships… the county has 16,660 countywide for nine facilities… So the consultants analysis basically posit It’s a slightly higher membership rate even though the facility is only one-third roughly one-third the size of the average county facility.”

  • Funding Options and Public Input: Council Member Allen strongly advocated for exploring alternative funding options beyond tax increases and for holding a public referendum on the project. This suggestion did not receive majority support from the Council.

Council Member Sandra Allen: “I have an issue with the funding… I want to make sure our residents have the decision the ultimate decision… and I want to put this in a referendum.”

  • Operational Considerations: Questions were raised about the potential impact of expanding the proposed pool from four to six lanes, the feasibility and profitability of various programs and services, and the potential demand for pool rentals.

Mayor: “So, we’ve talked about there’s a lot of ways to raise revenue… What is that balance? And what are the different types of um ways to raise revenue?”

Action Items and Next Steps:

  1. Compile Consolidated List of Questions: Town staff will compile a comprehensive list of questions raised by council members, ensuring clarity and avoiding redundancies.
  2. Submit Questions to Consultant and Staff: The consolidated question list will be submitted to Kimmel Bogrett and Town Staff by December 17, 2024.
  3. Deadline for Responses: Kimmel Bogrett and Town Staff will provide written responses to all questions by January 8th or 9th, 2025.
  4. Optional Two-on-Two Meetings: Between January 9th and January 20th, individual council members can schedule meetings with Kimmel Bogrett and Town Staff to clarify responses and seek further explanation.
  5. Work Session Presentation and Discussion: Kimmel Bogrett and Town Staff will present their findings and address council member questions at the Town Council Work Session on January 21st, 2025.
  6. Town Council Decision: The Town Council will make a final decision on the Aquatic and Fitness Center Annex proposal on January 27th, 2025.

Conclusion:

The Town Council is committed to a thorough and transparent decision-making process for the Aquatic and Fitness Center Annex proposal. Gathering detailed information on financial viability, market demand, and operational considerations is crucial to ensure a fiscally responsible and community-oriented outcome.

Post #2069: Last night’s Town Council meeting.

 

Town Council did not vote on raising the meals tax last night.

They’ll revisit in January.

I have only bits and pieces of observations to report.

Observation 1:  If they’d have voted, the meals tax increase would have lost.

Virginia law is reasonably clear about what it takes for a Town to impose a tax.  Virginia Code § 15.2-1427(g):  “ In towns, no tax shall be imposed except by a two-thirds vote of the council members.” 

Which means, with the seven-member Town Council, in the Town of Vienna, it takes five “aye” votes from Town Council members to impose a tax.

As noted in the picture above, there were only six Town Council members present last night.  And based on their remarks, it’s a fair guess that at least two of them would not have voted for the meals tax increase at this time.

Leaving just four potential “yes” votes.  Insufficient for imposing a tax.

If it had come to a vote last night, it would almost surely have failed.

In any case, there was no vote.

Observation 2:  An anecdote about the Town trying to renege on its promise to sunset the meals tax increase, the last time.

As it turns out, this five-votes-are-needed for tax increases mattered quite a bit the last time the Town increased the meals tax.

You may recall that the Town temporarily increased the meals tax by one cent, to pay for the land that is now the Town Green. As with the current proposal, that included a sunset clause.  I recall it being on-order-of seven years.

But when it actually came time to sunset that meals tax increase the last time, the then-Mayor and Town Council balked.  They attempted to renege on that sunset promise.  And in fact, the motion to go back on their word, and make the increase permanent, got four yes votes, and three no votes.

Which meant that the Town Attorney had to inform the then-Mayor that the motion had failed.  Because, as it was a motion to impose a tax, it needed five yes votes to pass.

Back to the present, while this may seem like legal trivia, the law is written this way for a reason.  And given that it’s the same Town, and I think the same Town Attorney, I sure don’t see any wiggle room here.  If they want to impose an additional cent of tax, it should require five “yes” votes.  Not four.

Observation 3:  If you don’t want people to think this pool thing is wired  …

… then start by removing the disinformation from the Town website.

Above is the finance portion of Town’s public-facing write-up of the proposed pool/gym, accessible at:

https://www.viennava.gov/engagement-central/annex-reimagined

I leave to the reader to count the number of times that the Town mentions the $1000/year family membership fee, or the ongoing operating losses to be covered by property or other taxes.

Zero.  Neither of those is mentioned.

And that’s in case you didn’t get the same incorrect message from the Town’s mass mailing postcard.  Which also made it seem as if one cent on the meals tax for ten years would pay for everything.

The description of the financing, above, is both misleading and materially incorrect.  It gives the impression that the pool will be free, when in fact, it will cost as much to use as the Fairfax Rec Centers, and will come with an ongoing property tax burden to boot.

Town staff know this.  Town Council knows it.  The Mayor knows it.

And yet, the Town’s official description of the proposal goes out of its way to give the impression that the entire source of funding is a penny on the meals tax.  And yet, never quite crosses that line into saying something potentially actionable.

It merely omits any mention of unpleasant things such as user fees and property taxes.

With this kind of stuff — disinformation?  propaganda?  — with a description that makes it seem like this pool is free, why would any sane person think that the Town is interested in an even-handed discussion and decision?

Anyway, the Mayor seemed peeved that on-line chit-chat assumes this is a done deal.

All I have to say in response is, look at the what’s posted on the Town of Vienna website, and come to any other conclusion.  If you don’t want it to look like it’s wired, then start by not putting propaganda in our mailboxes or on the website.

I realize the Mayor has no direct control over the running of the website.   But, in theory at least, you’re all part of the Town of Vienna government.

Town Staff may have tipped their hand as to strategy moving forward.

Source:  TOV Granicus page, .pdf  The consulting firm who worked up the numbers for what it’ll cost Vienna to run this building (Ballard King) was, in fact, the chosen partner of the architectural firm that wants to sell Vienna the building in the first place (Kimmel Bogrette, KB above).  We, as the buyer, are literally looking at the seller’s estimate for what it’ll cost us to run our building, once we buy it.

The Town Manager went way out of his way to disparage the estimates that Town Staff had just provided, for operating losses for the proposed facility.  He described them as some sort of extreme worst-case scenario.  It was, as far as I could tell, a completely gratuitous comment.  Didn’t need to be made.  It just came out of nowhere. And, it contradicts what the staff writeup actually said, listing 35% to 50% cost recovery as the norm, making a mere 50% loss the best you could hope for, not the worst.

This in some sense matches the verbiage of the Town Staff’s materials (see prior post), but in that reading I attributed their use of “conservative”, to describe their loss estimate, as being due to the “extra revenue sources” not included (in CAPS in slide above).   But all extra-ordinary revenues aside, unless I misread that 35%-50% line, 50% cost recovery is about as good as it gets, in this industry, for a facility like the proposed one.

The other shoe to drop in this area is that they’re going to invite the consultants to present their operating cost numbers, in January.  Again, inviting somebody to show you the seller’s estimate of what it’ll cost to run the building they’re trying to sell you.

I don’t really understand why a buyer would ask the seller for any estimate of this sort.  It’s the seller’s number.  We’re the buyers.

But, on top of that, once the seller has given you a set of numbers that were so rosy as to be useless, you’d think you’d be done with it.  You’d say, OK, we were told about what we should have expected the seller to tell us.

Instead … we’re asking them back? Giving them another bite at the apple?

Edit 12/11/2024:

Why? 

It’s not clear to me.

On the one hand, they may have Ballard*King present a full-throated defense of their 15% operating loss projection. 

I’m going to hazard that this would be inadvisable, if for no other reason than that projected 85% cost recovery (15% operating loss) is well outside the range listed by Town Staff as some sort of industry norm of 35% to 50% cost recovery.  Red arrow in graphic just above.  (Part of materials posted for the 12/9/2024 Town Council meeting.  See Post #2067).

Then my thought becomes, good heavens.  Town Staff cannot be asking Town Council to see important new material regarding likely operating losses, and then vote the tax up or down in the same session.  Are they?

That also seems inadvisable, for the hurry. Although, it does convey the  “decisions just wander around until they stop” vibe that Vienna puts out.  So why not, I guess, have a presentation of new information from the seller’s side, and then have Town Council vote on the tax, immediately, all in one session.

Funny anecdote.  I had a boss like that once.  He worked with a big committee of industry hotshots.  They, in turn, needed to settle on proposed changes to Medicare’s payment policies.  My boss’s job, was, in part, to shepherd them to a decision.  There was a lot of discussion around the table.  Likening “the decision” to a ball, if the ball stopped rolling at some point my boss didn’t particularly like, he’d kick that ball back into play with some sort of pointed question.  And when the ball stopped where he wanted it, he remained silent.   

I could see this as a face-saving, peace-keeping maneuver, prior to a vote.  If the consultants were willing to repeat what they said already, in their written materials, which is that they assumed Vienna would be the only “REC-Center-like” facility in the market area.  And work from there.   Toward market conditions as stated by 2014 Town Council member Polychrones.  I think the consultants might reasonably suggest that our actual, observed operating losses might be more than they projected.  How much more, they can wing it if they want to, but I’d say that would require additional work to answer.  It’s out-of-scope.

Done with grace, that would serve to provide “white coat” cover to those who wish to ignore the operating cost issue.  You’d be free to interpret that as the experts saying they had it spot-on, and they might consider tweaking their estimate in response to local market conditions.  But no more than that.  So it’s pocket change.

That would also provide an out for those who have focused on Kelleher quantified, and other “benchmarks”, or just feel it isn’t worth it, to burden the restaurant industry in the first place, let alone the operating cost burden.  Those folks can say, fine, the Vienna facility would have one-third the size, but two-thirds the operating cost, of a typical Fairfax County REC Center.  We’re going to pay for that, forever.  That, so that some people won’t have to drive as far to use a gym/pool.  That suggests poor value, e.g., if there’s money to spare, I’d rather lower the water bills first.

Then have Town Council bat it back and forth one last time, and vote.  As previously noted, I’m pretty sure this takes five yes votes to pass, as it is the imposition of a tax.

As an afterthought, I hope we have all gotten our minds around a study that we paid for, using the (presumed respected) firm hand-picked by the seller.  As the buyer in this transaction, it’s that last phrase that should trigger your sense of caveat emptor.   If it does not, you are presumably part of their target audience.  But as someone who made a living consulting, I can tell you, that definitely triggers mine.  I doubt that the architectural firm for this proposed facility has a habit of shooting itself in the foot.

Still turning a blind eye to 2014.

I still haven’t heard either Kelleher or Polychrones mentioned in any Town Council discussion.

Both of those ex-Town Council members are still around, though neither lives in Vienna any more.

In any case, I think at least a couple of Town Council members get it.  That Kelleher was right about economies-of-scale, that Polychrones was right about the stiff competition for this type of facility, from the three local Fairfax County REC Centers.

But officially, as far as the current deliberations go, the rationales for the operating costs concerns that contributed to the 2014 “no” vote — those have simply gone down the memory hole.

Conclusion

So here’s my prediction.

The consultant’s original rosy scenario for operating costs was too rosy.  It was obviously wrong, when benchmarked against data for this area.  In hindsight, that was a strategic mistake.

So, Town Staff is going to have the same consultants come back and present … just guessing here … a somewhat less rosy scenario.  Edit:  Or maybe a YMMV from the consultants, as a way to reconcile all this.

Which Town Council members who wish to do so may then accept as being adequate for use in sweeping the operating loss issue — the ongoing taxpayer subsidy — under the rug.  Edit:  And, in fairness, if done well, will also provide support to those who, for a variety of reasons, expect to see less demand and higher operating losses than the original operating loss projections suggested.

There is also a work session prior to that.  I don’t even want to think about that, as my best guess is, that’ll be where Town staff will soften up Town Council members who resist accepting the seller’s new numbers.

And if five Town Council members vote “yes”, at the end of January, then it’s a go on the meals tax, and for the Vienna pool/gym.

Post #2068: Vienna Pool economics, simplified.

 

The baseline economic scenario

Near as I can tell, the following statements are true:

A small-scale facility such as the one proposed by Vienna will cost about twice as much to operate, per square foot, as the nearby Fairfax REC Centers.

If Vienna merely manages to attract as much revenue as Fairfax does, per square foot of facility, then Vienna taxpayers will cover 50% of the operating costs of the proposed Vienna pool/gym facility.  (User fees such as annual memberships will cover the other half.)

This is the scenario — 50% operating losses — now being shown Town Council, on this round of discussion.

With the staff proviso that there may well be enough un-conventional revenue sources to cover the operating losses without using Vienna tax dollars.  (Which I read as not specifics, but as a plea not to shut the door on having a pool, until Town Staff have had time to look into those alternative revenue sources, and see if anything pans out.)

That all seems squared away now, in my opinion.  I think that’s a realistic view.

Plus the cost of the land.  And the cost of building the facility.  Both of those capital costs, paid for or to be paid for, by the meals tax.

Which is the proximate issue, for this evening’s Town Council meeting.

Well, so what.

So it costs money.  Even tax money.  So what else is new.  Parks cost tax money.  Why not here too?

Turns out, this is a rock best left unturned.

Let me start with a walk on the light side.  Only after you look at the Fairfax County Park Authority as a whole do you really appreciate how rational their system is.

Fairfax doesn’t subsidize the operating costs of the REC Centers.  That’s not where indoor swimming falls, in their spectrum of subsidy level for recreational activities.  On their subsidy-meter, indoor swimming falls at “pays its own way”.  Covers operating cost:

  • Golf courses cover operating cost, plus.
  • REC Centers cover operating cost.
  • Events held in the parks cover operating cost, minus.
  • Parks (just parks, not “attractions”), are free.  They cover none of their costs.

After you absorb that — they chose to make REC Centers cover their own operating costs (or had to, as a political bargain), then it eventually dawns on you that this is why Fairfax has just a handful (9) of gigantic REC Centers.  Their best shot at making them self-supporting was by building them big, in the presence of significant economies-of-scale.

Like it or not, REC Centers constitute part of an orderly and coherent enterprise.  They have a planned level of subsidy that fits into an overall scheme of recreational activity, from golf to a walk in the park.  And the REC Centers appear to have been built at an efficient scale.

Overall, across all its enterprises, the FCPA covers about two-thirds of operating costs with user revenues in one form or the other.  For comparison, the corresponding calculation for Vienna Parks and Rec is less than one-third, based on the 2025 Town of Vienna budget, page 101 for the revenue number.)

Then you look at Vienna, and it’s just slap-dash. 

Vienna’s subsidy level for this type of recreation isn’t chosen with forethought.  It’s going to be whatever the shortfall is, said shortfall likely owing to the inefficient scale of the facility.  So it’s 50-percent-ish, not because that reflects some purposefully decision by Vienna that indoor swimming deserves this level of subsidy, but because it’s what we gotta do, financially, to have one these pool/gym things right here in Town.

It’s literally the residual — the afterthought, just like the chosen scale of operation.  The Town happened to pick up this particular piece of land, and now because this one-third-scale facility is what fits on that land, you get the resulting high average costs, and because our user fees are effectively capped by what Fairfax charges, that’s why we end up with a 50% subsidy.

Even then, Vienna is wealthy enough, that you could just kind of laugh this off in a “what a first-world problem” kind of way.

But if most of what this does is merely cannibalize membership from the nearby Fairfax REC Centers, all we’re doing is raising everybody’s costs.  You’ve pulled people out of an efficiently-sized facility and enticed them to come to yours.  Presumably, in order to have somewhat shorter average travel times for those switching to the Vienna facility.  And you’ve enticed them to do that by subsidizing your fees, so you appear no more expensive than the further-away REC Centers.

And second, it’s not as if this is an environmentally benign thing to build.  My guess, from some projection of the electric bill, it’ll use enough electricity to power 75 homes or so.  Between 1 and 2 percent of all the homes in Vienna.

And finally, don’t forget the opportunity cost.  What is the point, exactly, of passing a Parks and Rec master plan, like, eh, a couple of months after locking up all your capital, for the foreseeable future, in this pool/gym thing.  Is that so you can talk about all the changes you’d like to make, to optimize Vienna parks, but now no longer can?

This ready-fire-aim decision-making is so weirdly a part of the Town of Vienna vibe that we who live here perceive nothing unusual in it.  But it’s not until you study the Fairfax County Park Authority that you realize just how well they have their act together.  And how little does the Town of Vienna have its act together.

And that’s what did it for me.

You know how deep our thinking goes?   It goes as deep as “citizens of Vienna have long wanted a pool”.  And that we, could, in fact, have one.  It won’t bankrupt the Town.

In the end, it boils down to dumping a whole lot of money into providing services locally, that are already provided nearby.  Not cheaper, or better, or really even, different.  Just closer.  More Vienna-centric.

I’m not seeing the value in that.

But I’ve been using the Fairfax County REC Centers for years.

Vienna pool?  Build it, don’t build it, I don’t much care.  It’s not going to affect me one way or the other.