Why Veteran Pool Builder Marco Perrella is All-In on Ozone

For decades, Marco Perrella has been the guy other elite builders call when they’re staring down a hillside, a seismic zone, or a technical design challenge that no one else wants to touch. He carved out that reputation early, having jumped from carpentry into high-end landscape and pool design in the late ’80s and then never looking back.

But the one constant in Perrella’s career has always been curiosity — curiosity about materials, engineering, technology, and better ways to build. That instinct is what pushed him deeper into plumbing, hydraulics, and structural problem-solving offered through Genesis. It’s aslo what drew him into the Tributary Revelation, the tight-knit circle of designers and builders who continually raise each other’s game. And it’s exactly the same instinct that eventually pulled him into ozone.

Perrella laughs, describing the Tributary group now, but it’s clear his involvement in the organization means a lot to him. “It is the most life-changing, business-changing, personal-life-changing group,” he said. “Everybody just wants to keep raising the bar. Somewhere along the line, if you’re gonna try something, somebody in this group has been there and done that.”

That collaborative energy is the same force that pushed him—slowly at first—toward a completely new way of thinking about water and how people use their swimming pools.

Going All-In on Ozone

During a Tributary event in Colorado in early 2020, water became the central theme. That’s where Perrella was first introduced in depth to ozone by consultant and educator Beth Hamil, whom he jokingly calls “the Queen of Ozone.” She agreed to speak at the event, and by the end of her presentation, Perrella made a decision: “I said, okay, I want to get one of your systems and try it out in my pool and spa.” Two weeks later, as the country locked down, the units arrived at his doorstep.

With normal business on pause, he took the opportunity to replumb his equipment pad and run ozone at home.

“I had a traditional setup and a small UV system,” he explained. “I put that ozone on and it was a complete game changer.”

“There was absolutely no chlorine smell at all. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, look at this water,’” recounted Perrella. He suddenly found himself using his spa nightly. He joked with friends that he was going out for his “COVID cleanse” in the spa, but behind the humor was a serious realization. “I would just get in and the feel of the water, the clarity… it was another level.”

He had seen enough. “That’s when I decided I was all in,” he said. He began specifying ozone on new projects and offering it as a key differentiator in his builds. It quickly became integral to what he considered a truly finished, high-end pool.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Perrella’s early ozone journey almost derailed when Microplasma — the company behind his initial system — struggled during COVID. “There were a lot of hiccups,” he said. “They ended up shutting down… and that was a huge disappointment because I was so in love with ozone and committed to it.”

That’s when Beth made a timely introduction to Joe Cannavino, a commercial ozone veteran whose systems were designed for surf parks and water parks, not backyard pools. He had zero interest in the residential market, but Perrella saw something bigger.

Making The Next Big Leap, Bringing O3 Tech to Market

“ I knew I still had friends in Tributary who loved ozone, and I said to Joe, ‘What if we brought your tried-and-true machines to the residential market?’” recalled Perrella. That conversation would become the foundation of O3 Tech, a new company Perrella formed in 2023 with technical input from Beth Hamil and the engineering expertise and design skills of  Joe Cannavino.  

“After I put it in my pool and tried it for a while. I wanted to make sure this thing was as bulletproof as you could get,” said Perrella. So he had his friends and fellow Tributary members test units out in their own pools, and the feedback was phenomenal.

Today, O3 Tech units are on projects with firms like Red Rock and Premiere Paradise in Arizona, Design Ecology in Texas, Basin Pool Designs in Tennessee, Ozzie Kraft in Las Vegas, and Live Chlorine Free in Florida, just to name a few. “It’s catching on very fast,” he said, even as he acknowledges that some builders have “a little PTSD” from underperforming ozone experiences in the past.

“To be clear, these aren’t new machines,” he said. “They’ve been around forever.” What makes them unique is their size, output, and reliability — industrial-grade ozone re-engineered for elite residential builds.

Making the Case for Ozone to High-End Clients

Ask Perrella why ozone is worth the conversation, and he comes back to one word: reduction.

“The chemical reduction,” he said. “When you can have something that can take chlorine use down to a minimum, we’re living in a healthier world. People are more conscious about what they’re getting into, what’s on their skin.”

In his market of the North Bay area, that message resonates immediately. “I bet you nine out of ten of my pools that we design and build have our system on it,” he said. “It’s the easiest sell ever. The minute you start saying, I can reduce your chemicals to virtually nothing, that’s the end of the conversation.”

He also spends time demystifying salt systems. “The first thing you typically have to tell people is, do you realize that a salt pool is actually converting to chlorine?” he said. “That opens their eyes right out of the gate.”

Behind the sales conversation is a strong technical stance on what effective ozone actually requires. Perrella is candid about the limitations of many smaller systems on the market. “There are other systems out there that are really like toys,” he said. “You’ll see these AOP units dosing at, say, 500 milligrams. That’s barely enough for a spa, but you’ll see marketing that says that system is good for up to a 25,000-gallon pool.”

By contrast, he notes, “our smallest machines are fifteen and twenty-five grams at five percent weight. That’s a big difference.” For truly effective performance, he said, “the optimum is one gram per 10,000 gallons.”

Equally important is simplicity. As a designer-builder who does not run his own service company, Perrella knows his systems must work in the real world. “Our system is at the mercy of service outfits, so it has to be something that doesn’t overwhelm them,” he said. That criterion is a core fundamental of O3 Tech’s residential ozone units. “I didn’t want to end up being a tech and service center with the phone ringing all day,” he said. “I wanted something easy to plumb in, easy to program, and then easy to step away from and just watch it do its thing.”

For a designer who has spent decades perfecting structures, details, and environments, ozone represents something more elemental: better water, achieved through better engineering. Perrella sees it as an extension of the craft itself — a way to bring the quality of the water in line with the quality of the spaces surrounding it. And in his view, that alignment is long overdue.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Listen to our entire conversation with Marco Perrella on the Pool Magazine Podcast.

Featured Photo Credit: Basin Pool Designs | Jimi Smith Photography