J.R.

Hopefully I can get some advice from the board gurus for my hot tub. This might be a bit long so please be patient Here is my story: Last year my parents retired and wanted a hot tub in their home and wanted me to manage it. They bought a brand new Hot Spring JetSetter with a 225 gallon capacity. Here is where we get into the beginning of my troubles. We live in Mexico and the nearest Hot Spring representative is about 3 hrs. from our town. This means that after the installation I was on my own. The only way I can get the maintenance guy to the house is if I pay for expenses. After he installed the hot tub he handed me a small tub of powder labeled "corrective shock" from a Mexican company called Spin. The label says that it contains a chemical with 65% available chlorine. I've been treating it like dichlor granules. He said to add half a tablespoon every week, to rinse the three filters every couple of months, and to replace them every 6 months. And then he left. Even though I've never read anything on hot tubs, I pretty much figured that there was more to it than that, and I confirmed it when I read the manual. For a few months, I tried to keep going by just adding the powder. I bought a drop test kit from a pool supply store to try to measure the free chlorine, once I figured what that was. It worked for a while but one time I must have added too much of the powder because the water turned cloudy green. I found out it might be because of metals and I tried to find a product that could clean it up. All I found was a blue liquid called "crystalin" sold by the same Mexican company. It's labeled as a water clarifier and the lady at the store said it might help, and it did. Also, I got a lot of "chlorine smell". So that was last summer, it was a total headache trying to maintain the hot tub. This year I decided to do things right. So I'm going to carefully balance the water and test properly. I'm also going to make a trip to the US, specifically to buy American products that are designed for hot tubs. It's been very difficult finding products here in Mexico. So this is where I need the advice. I've read Nitro's guide and I'm confident I can follow it. Here are the questions I have. My water source is city water. But like the joke goes, you shouldn't drink the water. Tap water here is not treated or filtered as much as the US so it has metals and a lot of calcium. My CH drop test was 350 ppm and my parents don't have a water softener. Will this be a problem? or can I compensate with the TA? The pool calculator says I need a TA of 50 to have balance. Is this too low and will it give me PH problems later? I know that there are products that help with scaling if you have high CH, is there a product or filter that can lower CH? What products would you recommend? I'm thinking of sticking to dichlor. What other products would I need? De-greaser? Filter cleaner? Scale remover? Spa cleaner? Remember, I'm making a trip to the US specially to get all the products I might need so I need to make this trip count. I don't want to get back and realize, "I forgot to get X or Y". One last thing. After all the trouble I've gone to help my parents, the hot tub really won't get used a lot. Maximum two people use the tub and only once a week for an hour, at most. So I'm looking for advice about maintaining this low use, high drama hot tub. Thanks for reading this far and I would appreciate any help