M Toupin

One last question; A friend recommended shocking one week with chlorine and the next with MPS. Is this a acceptable practice and is there any benefits or down sides? He claims the MPS will "oxidize" or eliminate any solids better than chlorine, while the chlorine shock will keep the Combined Chlorine in check. Sounds good in theory, but I can't find anything on it. I do have a large canister of MPS left over from the dealer fiasco so buying more chemicals isn't an issue. Thanks Mike

Thanks for the advice, I think we have it figured out and under control now. The 1/4 of baking soda did raise the pH and TA a bit, but it's back to a TA of about 80 and a pH of about 7.6. We've had a perpetual problem with low pH so I really wasn't too concerned with the rise. the pH has held for the last 3 days so I'm very happy with that. I used dhicor twice and switched back to liquid bleach now which is also working well. We add 3.5 oz of bleach after getting out of the spa each evening and that gives us a FC of about 2-3ppm the next night before we get in. I think we've just about got the learning curve flattened out, thanks for all the advice. Mike

Thanks for the advice. I refilled and added 1/4 cup baking soda to bring up the TA which raised it to 30. I added another 1/4 cup today and I'm up to 70 now. I'll add another 1/4 up and see what happens, that should get me in the 110 ballpark. Our water is also very soft naturally in this area (40) so I also added 1/4 cup calcium chloride dihydrate which raised it to 120, another 2 Tbs should get it up to around 150 I think. Ph is 7.6 right now so the extra backing soda should be OK as we had to fight last time to get the Ph to stabilize in the 7.5 ballpark last time. I'll let the Ph go a few days and see if it drops on it's own before I mess with it. I was told that white vinegar would lower the Ph, is this true? If so any idea how much would lower the Ph say .2 in a 325 gal spa? My last question is about the Chlorine . I added 3 oz of liquid bleach right after the fill in the morning and by 9pm the Free Chlorine was zero so we added another 3 oz after we used it last night. This morning its back to zero Free Chlorine and the Combined Chlorine zero also. I guess I'll increase the bleach to 4 oz and see if that leaves any residual in the morning. The CA says it's zero, but from my understanding the test doesn't register until 30ppm. The CA was over 150 when I drained the spa so I'm sure there is still some residual in the spa as I'm sure I didn't get 100% the old water out. Do you think I would still use Dichlor a few times or do you think there should be enough residual CA in the water? Thanks Mike

Hello all, We got our spa about 2 months ago and landed here trying to figure out the water thing. It's a lot stiffer learning curve than the dealers lead you to believe IMO... I've been reading through the old posts and picked up a lot of great info which have helped out tremendously to wrap my head around this. We had a bad session with itch right after we got the spa, which we found out too late, was was caused by no sanitizer. At the time we didn't know any better, we just believed dealers recommendation to just use MPS because "we have an ozinator for sanitation". After the itch session and another trip to the dealer we were told to use dicor to kill the itch which shot our CYA to over 150. Yes, I've figured out my dealer clueless and I won't be getting any more advice from her... Thats' how I found this great forumn! Anyhow, I've just drained and refilled to fix the CYA problem and want to get started fresh on the right foot. We haven't had any problems with the chlorine to this point (other than the high CYA caused by the dicor). We've decided to give liquid chlorine a try. I've figured out that "Regular" Clorox Ultra Bleach is nothing more than Sodium hypochlorite 6%. My question is how much should I use in our 325 gal spa on a daily basis? I know it will very but what would be a good starting point? 1 Tbs of dicor worked well to maintain 3-5ppm. Also, I have seen several references to a program named "bleachcalc" though I can't find a good link to it, all the links I've found are dead. Is this program still available and if so were? Thanks Mike