Any hot tub owners out there

Is spring water any different than municipal water? I had a hot tub that I filled w/ city water and used bromine. Get yourself some test strips, some hot tub shock, bromine tablets (for hot tubs), and a tablet floating dispenser. You'll need all these things. Then once you fill up the tub with water, test it with the strips to see what other chemicals you may need in order to adjust the alkalinity, PH, etc.

Local pool / hot tub supply stores can be a wealth of knowledge. They'll charge retail for the chemicals, but it's worth it to have someone local you can go to who will be happy to help you diagnose and treat the water.

In the beginning it's a P.I.T.A. but once you get used to it, a spa can be extremely enjoyable.

I would search around some spa forums - google "Vermonter Method" It is pretty simple, use Sodium Dichloro-s-triazinetrione Dihydrate or "sodium dichlor". Basically, after you use the spa, add ~1 teaspoon of dichlor and check the chlorine level in 15 minutes. You're looking for 2-3 ppm free chlorine. This will kill all the nasties and the ozone (you did get ozone didn't you??!) will keep everything fresh till the next time you get in. Next time around, adjust your dichlor amount based on the previous reading. Once a week, add 7x that level as a 'shock' and adjust the pH.

This method is about as simple as it gets, not a lot of chemicals, spa always smells nice with clear water. If you have more people in, you might want to add a bit more dichlor. But pretty soon, you'll get the hang of it and hardly even use test strips - you just know how much dichlor and pH adjustment to use.

I haven't actually checked them for hot tub advice, but I would STRONGLY reccomend that you check out TroubleFreePool.com - Since I started taking care of my swimming pool following their advice I have never spent less on chemistry, never had my pool water looking so good and staying that way (even when I didn't test and treat as often as I should have) with minimal hassles... I know many of the TFP folks also have hot tubs, and use similar methods, but there are differences and I'm not sure just what they are....

Remember the pool store has a serious conflict of interest - the easier it is for you to maintain your water, the less they make selling you lots of expensive, high markup chemicals... At TFP, which I consider to be a sort of "hearth.com for pools" we have an expression for many of the newbies that come to us after having spent large sums on chemicals, and still having problems - we call it being "Pool Stored".... In actual practice many of the chemicals pitched at the pool store will do you little good, and some will actually make your water WORSE - for instance the standard pool store dichlor and trichlor will raise your cyanuric acid (CYA) levels - while some CYA is needed in an outdoor pool, NONE is desired in an indoor pool, and in any case, having a high CYA level means you need more chlorine to sanitize the pool safely...

Instead of the pool store, most of the chemistry used by TFP members comes from the local grocery and hardware stores, or Wal-Mart, which costs less, AND we use less stuff...

And, one other nice thing - TFP pools don't have that classic "pool stink" that many pools tend to have - which actually is a sign of problems!

Gooserider

Thanks for that link Gooserider. I have a hot tub and will check it out.

Cozy heat nailed it. You only need to worry about two things, sanitizer and pH. The rest is a gimmick or only required when you fill the tub if you have funky water. I ran pools while working through high school and college and got pretty good at chemistry. I have installed hot tubs at my last two houses and use just what cozy described. Sodium dichlor for the sanitizer and sodium carbonate for the pH increaser. You'll never need to decrease pH so find the cheapest walmart pool pH increaser that you can as sodium carbonate is sodium carbonate. The dichlor is a little more spa specific and more expensive but you can still shop around. Consider the strength noted as a percent on the dichlor bottle, you will use less of a higher concentration so it is more valuable.

I use the little test kits that require drops of fluid vs. the test strips. I don't like the strips. Again, you only need to know chlorine and pH so the standard little pool kit with the test fluids from walmart will last about a year.


Oh, don't buy pool chlorine. Calcium hypochlorite is one of them. You must use the sodium dichlor. You can use bromine but I have had great success with dichlor.

I would not listen to folks who dismiss the entire water chemistry. Yes, you can have good pH and good Cl or Br and good water but over time, other parts, liner or other will wear prematurely. Hardness and Total Alkalinity should be adjusted if out of spec. If this is on a pool, costs could be an issue. Hot Tubs hold so little water, cost is not a major issue here. If this is a softtub, all the more reason to keep the water perfect. Do you know what it costs to have on reskinned??

I agree with some here that pool stores will rip you off on chemicals - there items have a very high markup. I have seen some obscene markup on pumps and filters as well as chemicals. I do understand as they have a seasonal business but it does drive many to the internet and grocery store. Why by baking soda at the pool store for double or triple what you pay at the grocery store?? AS for cyanuric acid - ditto what he said - do not let them sell you that for a hot tub.

Take your water to a good pool store once a month or so for a complete water test - usually free - and then adjust your water. If you do not have a good store near you, find somewhere you can send the water to...

I was fortunate to work for a good service business/store and would recommend them to anybody. Trouble is, they are not all like that. Educatet yourself for sure...

CTwoodburner said:

I would not listen to folks who dismiss the entire water chemistry. Yes, you can have good pH and good Cl or Br and good water but over time, other parts, liner or other will wear prematurely. Hardness and Total Alkalinity should be adjusted if out of spec. If this is on a pool, costs could be an issue. Hot Tubs hold so little water, cost is not a major issue here. If this is a softtub, all the more reason to keep the water perfect. Do you know what it costs to have on reskinned??

I agree with some here that pool stores will rip you off on chemicals - there items have a very high markup. I have seen some obscene markup on pumps and filters as well as chemicals. I do understand as they have a seasonal business but it does drive many to the internet and grocery store. Why by baking soda at the pool store for double or triple what you pay at the grocery store?? AS for cyanuric acid - ditto what he said - do not let them sell you that for a hot tub.

Take your water to a good pool store once a month or so for a complete water test - usually free - and then adjust your water. If you do not have a good store near you, find somewhere you can send the water to...

I was fortunate to work for a good service business/store and would recommend them to anybody. Trouble is, they are not all like that. Educatet yourself for sure...

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I agree in large part about the need to keep all the chemistry stuff in line - one of the first things that they do at TFP is get you started on doing your own testing - using a very comprehensive and fairly expensive test kit that you can either get from Taylor or as a slightly better deal through one of the TFP owners - a lot of the pool store tests aren't terribly accurate, and many (most?) are intended to push you into purchasing stuff you don't really need - the reason the pool stores do "free" water testing is that it's the sales generator - "Your XYZ parameter is out of whack, you need to buy chemical ABC" Several of the TFP folks are very heavily into the water chemistry side of things, so they are basing their reccomendations on very hard science.

One major flaw that a lot of the pool store testing, and nearly all of the home test kits have is that their chlorine test is based on the OTO test reaction, which only measures the TOTAL chlorine levels, including both Free Chlorine and Combined Chlorine / Chloramines (the latter is what makes "pool stink") The TFP test kit has an OTO test, simply because it comes with the pH test, but the reccomendation is to use it only as a check method. The test that they primarily depend on is the DPD/FAS test, which gives separate numbers for FC and CC. Since the FC is what actually sanitizes the pool, that is the number that matters... A pool that is having a borderline algae bloom can have a fine OTO result because the CC's are through the roof, but still be a very sick pool...

The other thing with many of the parametes other than pH and Clorine, is that they tend to be pretty stable - other than splashout or water changes, once you get them right, they will stay pretty close if you aren't using pool store chemicals that keep throwing them out of whack...

Gooserider

Gooserider said:

I haven't actually checked them for hot tub advice, but I would STRONGLY reccomend that you check out TroubleFreePool.com - Since I started taking care of my swimming pool following their advice I have never spent less on chemistry, never had my pool water looking so good and staying that way (even when I didn't test and treat as often as I should have) with minimal hassles... I know many of the TFP folks also have hot tubs, and use similar methods, but there are differences and I'm not sure just what they are....

Remember the pool store has a serious conflict of interest - the easier it is for you to maintain your water, the less they make selling you lots of expensive, high markup chemicals... At TFP, which I consider to be a sort of "hearth.com for pools" we have an expression for many of the newbies that come to us after having spent large sums on chemicals, and still having problems - we call it being "Pool Stored".... In actual practice many of the chemicals pitched at the pool store will do you little good, and some will actually make your water WORSE - for instance the standard pool store dichlor and trichlor will raise your cyanuric acid (CYA) levels - while some CYA is needed in an outdoor pool, NONE is desired in an indoor pool, and in any case, having a high CYA level means you need more chlorine to sanitize the pool safely...

Instead of the pool store, most of the chemistry used by TFP members comes from the local grocery and hardware stores, or Wal-Mart, which costs less, AND we use less stuff...

And, one other nice thing - TFP pools don't have that classic "pool stink" that many pools tend to have - which actually is a sign of problems!

Gooserider

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Goose, i sling chemicals for a living too. I can promise you, the easier it is for our clients to maintain there tubs, the happier they are with there tub purchase. If they did not buy the tub from us, there still happy with a system that works and is not confusing, so they still buy chems from us. We put most of our clients on silver nitrate systems with di chlor/potassium peroxymonosulfate. Few people still use bromine, but for the most part its not the system of choice due to the miss use of it. It can tear a tub up if you dont keep up with it.

Well, it's a mixed bag, and I'm not sure what the TFP reccomendation is for hot tubs - I just know they made my life with the swimming pool far easier than it ever was at the pool store... This year was my conversion year, so I needed a few extra chemicals, but next year won't be as bad since I'll have a lot left in the water from this year, though it will be down about 50% from my pumping the level down when closing...

However, my chemicals this hear have been nothing more than a bit of stabilizer (Cyanuric Acid / CYA) a lot of Borax (20 Mule Team, from Wal-Mart) a couple gallons of Muriatic Acid (local hardware store paint dept), and a bunch of 12% chlorine bleach... The stabilizer came from the pool store, and so did the bleach - but the bleach could have come from the local grocery store or Wal-Mart if I was willing to buy throwaway gallon jugs of 6% - I actually found it was slightly less hassle and maybe cheaper to get the 5 gallon deposit carboys of 12% at the pool store... OTOH I get lots of dirty looks when I do go in there, and they find that I don't want any of their other chemicals, and don't want my water tested...

Compare this to the standard pool store routine of using stabilizer at the beginning of the season to bring the CYA up to a good point, and then adding dichlor pucks or sticks, which also contain CYA - I never understood why by midsummer I was getting into increasing problems keeping the pool stable, and was getting major algae blooms constantly (Which the pool $tore was perfectly willing to $ell me $tuff to treat...) Now I know that my constantly increasing CYA level due to the pucks was making my chlorine less and less effective.

Instead this year I used bleach at opening to clean up the pool by bringing it up to shock level and keeping it there until it would hold overnight, adding just enough CYA to stabilize it, dropping the pH w/ some muriatic acid and bringing it back up with the borax - which helps stabilize the TA and CH numbers, and is a good algestat, and the pool was perfect - no stink, water looked like crystal, and felt nice, and I've kept it that way all season just by adding more bleach every few days to keep my FC levels up... I haven't even needed to backwash my filter as much.

Gooserider

goose, i dont know squat about pools, and honestly, im a tub noob. But i do deal with tub customers all day everyday, and the noob status wears off fast. What i do know, is that we want our customers on the simplest, most effective system that fits there tub use. The different sanitizing systems for tubs are for different kinds of use. If our customers are confused , they go elsewhere. We do our best to keep the systems they are on as simple as possible. When it comes to chemistry and DIY, i myself sub alot of products for reef aquariums. A example would be an aquarium product called Kalkwasser. Its pickling lime. I buy pickling lime for 1/10 the cost of kalkwasser. Im all about it, but i am not about to start recommend generic products that have the potential to mess up someones $10k tub to save them a few bucks. Tubs only have about 400 gallons in them, so they get out of whack fast!

Yeah, pools are a totally different animal.

MountainStoveGuy said:

goose, i dont know squat about pools, and honestly, im a tub noob. But i do deal with tub customers all day everyday, and the noob status wears off fast. What i do know, is that we want our customers on the simplest, most effective system that fits there tub use. The different sanitizing systems for tubs are for different kinds of use. If our customers are confused , they go elsewhere. We do our best to keep the systems they are on as simple as possible. When it comes to chemistry and DIY, i myself sub alot of products for reef aquariums. A example would be an aquarium product called Kalkwasser. Its pickling lime. I buy pickling lime for 1/10 the cost of kalkwasser. Im all about it, but i am not about to start recommend generic products that have the potential to mess up someones $10k tub to save them a few bucks. Tubs only have about 400 gallons in them, so they get out of whack fast!

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Don't get me wrong, I'm also not knowlegeable about hot tubs either, which I said in my first post... I used to not know much about pools either, and was getting mildly "pool stored" regularly over the past several years, mostly saved from worse by the fact that I tend towards being rather overly frugal, and that lots of the "miracle methods" had big price tags... Now I know a LOT more than I did, and it's saving me a lot of money and work... The stuff I was mentioning above is in relationship to my pool, and while a lot of the same principles probably appy to tubs I'm not sure on the details which is WHY I was saying to go to TFP for the full advice...

The other thing to keep in mind is that it may be easier to mess up a tub, but it is also a lot easier / faster to fix - dumping 400 gallons from a tub may hurt, but most places it's no big deal to just dump the water and start over if need be... OTOH, our pool holds 17.5k gal, which is fairly small - but it is a big hit on the water bill (and may not even be legal...) if you have to start doing even partial water changes to fix pool store induced problems (such as excessively high CYA levels)

Gooserider

ohhh how i would love a 17.5k gallon reef tank!

i think both of our points work.