Dust

Hey Tom, those numbers on the December 2008 chart still seem way off... On my summit, off Edmonton water, with a prefilter, your chart indicates that 3kg of water should give me, give or take, 2500ppm salt. So, we measured out and weighed with a food scale, 7 x 400g cups of (2.8kg... less than my target 3kg, but I wanted to error on the side of caution... easier to add more salt than to remove it ) And low and behold, when I measured the next day I had ~3700ppm salt. Thats roughly 1320ppm per kg of salt. Given those numbers, the entry for the summit should be something closer to 2000PPM - 1.5kg 3000PPM - 2.2kg I know you made the comment earlier about different people having different water, but I find it interesting that using Edmonton water (which is where I would guess you guys are calculating your numbers) we would have such a large discrepancy. FYI - the tub is actually filled higher that you would typically expect (we keep the pillows out, and only bring them in when we use the tub because of this)... so we even had more water than was typical, and our salt readings were this high.

Excellent, thank you for the info Richard. As I said, I was just worried about how the cya somehow interacting with the whole swg cycle, so its good to know that nothing popped out at you as a big red flag. Also, from reading your other posts, my understanding is the FC level will actually stay steady under bather load longer once cya is added to the water (as it is buffering how much FC can be consumed at a time?) Now that I know adding a bit of CYA will be safe for my tub, are the following assumption correct? a) Because CYA will limit / buffer the amount of FC used for oxidization during any period of time, I will require a lower FC concentration in the water to retain a residual level of FC after prolonged usage? (i.e., it will take longer to form CC, and then longer afterwards to recover FC)? Thanks again! Chris

So I was yacking about filters in another thread, and I realzied its been 7 months since I got my tub, and I'm still working on that original water fill. With all of the talk of a fill after 1 month, and many people shooting for 3 month fills, well, while I'm proud of having kept my water in great shape for 7 months, is it possible that it isn't as good as I think it is? Visualy, the water is always crystal clear, and smells like water with a hint of chlorine. We use a chlorine based salt generator, and the water has a tendancy of leaving your skin feel pretty soft (if dry). It is almost always just my wife and myself using the tub, usually using it for a total of 1 to 2 hours per week (each, so 2 to 4 hours), and usualy in large blocks (an hour at a time continuos). We wear swimsuits, but will hang up the swim clothes and re-use them for a week or two between re-washing. We wash swim suits with detergent. We don't rinse before the tub, but we will have always showered that day (again, with soaps, etc), but since showering probably have hair and body products on. My wife is a bit girly, and is always covered in lotions and potions. Its a 400 gallon tub TA sits around 100 pH floats between 7.2 and 8.0 (a by product of the salt generation is that it steadily climbs from 7.2... when it gets to 7.8, or 8.0 if I miss it, we knock it back down with an cap full of ph lowering chem from the spa store) FC changes from day to day depending how the salt based chlorine generator is feeling... it is often higher than average, not uncommon to be sitting at 5ppm, though if we don't use it for a week it will climb up to 8 or even more, so then we plunk into it for an hour to help bring it down ) I don't remeber the CH number, but its in the "Good" portion of the test strip. TDS was around 2100 as of last weekend when I last checked. We prefilter all water that goes into the tub, and have done two partial water changes of about 12 inches depth (in an 8 footer, 400 gallon tub) to help lower our original too high salt content, over these last 7 months. I don't know what my phosphate levels are like, but we use MPS fairly regularly, so that is the only thing I can think of that could be high. The only two chemicals we've ever used in the tub are whatever is in "ph down" (dry acid?) "alkalinity up" (baking soda?) and mps. We have never added any sort of chlorine directly to the water. And finaly, the tub is equiped with Ozone, and we use a "micron" filter that we replace every 2 (once 3, once 1) months. SOOOOOOOO after all of that, what I'm hoping to figure out is, could there be a "silent killer" lurking in our water that warrents a water change when everything seems really good / easy to balance / nice to soak in? Arctic (our spa's manufacturer) claims they have people using this salt generator system that do 12 month water changes, due to the small amount of chemicals used... but I'd really like to hear other's opinions on this. Thanks all! Dust

you know its interesting, but most of people who have had failure with their onzen were using bromine salt, not chlorine. The ones I've heard of with chlorine systems and issues had problems with the pumps or blowers with the onzen, not with the electrodes or actual generation. Might be nothing... I'm curious how accurate the observation is though.

He's refering to Nitro's suggested use of bleach from the grocery store to act as your spa's sanitizer, because, as he says, chlorine is chlorine Here is a link (found by searching for "Nitro Bleach") http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...hl=nitro+bleach Keep in mind this works for Chlorine... if I recall you use bromine salt in your arctic, which is NOT compatible with using bleach. FWIW, I use the micron filters, and I really like them, but if you let your water get out of balance I've had them sort of "explode" before... its disturbing to be floating around your tub and your surrounded by a million pieces of filter They clean up just fine in a new filter or a rescue filter, but its interesting the first time it happens and you're trying to figure it out. They definately seem to do a better job of filtering, but I only use mine for 2 months before chucking Also, I use salt generated chlorine in my spa, and haven't noticed any clogging. I'm onto the 7th month straight from my original water fill (yup, that includes the first month of terror thats supposed to ruin water so baddly, though I have done two 12 inch partial changes to lower salt, which I'm sure has helped) and my water is still crystal clear and easily maintains balance. TDS is very low as the only CHEMICALS added to my water (i.e. not from bather's skin and clothes) are ph down (dry acid of some sort) and mps... don't need all of those other clarifiers and purifiers which is nice. That being said, my father has had (and used to sell & service) arctic for a long time, and he absolutely hates the micron filters, even traveling 500km (~300miles) to buy the old style ones. Soooo, to each his own I guess

Hi All Sorry for more topics in here about salt generators... I know its not very useful to a lot of you; but to those of us who have them, its invaluable to get this info, because its so hard to find it anywhere else. Anyhoo, my question is about buffering chlorine in a salt generator system. Specificaly with the Onzen system, we run with a true zero CYA content... and these generators have no problem sneaking up to 4,5,6 even 10+ ppm FC. Because its not buffered, our FC levels can fluctuate quite a bit over time... if you want any residule FC for even 4 people and a mini hottub party (4 people x 1hour use @ 103F) you can easily deplete 6-10 ppm FC depending on the person, so you need to keep the pre use FC levels pretty high. hah, on the flip side, my water is always breathtakingly crystal clear... you can almost here the bacteria on our skin scream in horror before we jump in the tub Of course, my wife eats through 100 dollar swim suits like nothing, and our poor little seat pillows aren't going to see thier first birthday. Dealer is useless when it comes to questions about CYA... it seems they don't even know it plays a part in balancing a tub half the time... and specificaly on a salt generator, they are pretty clueless. SOOO, in a tub with a chlorine based salt generator, ozone, and NO silver ion (since it hasn't been approved here in canada yet... at least not on the onzen systems), what would be (if any) cons of bringing in maybe 20-30ppm CYA using a CYA additive, how will that affect overall water chemistry over time, and will that interfere with the salt -> sanitizer -> salt cycle? Thanks in advance if any of you gurus out there care to take a stab at this for us Thank you!! -Dust (p.s. sorry for the mispost in the wrong location earlier... my bad)

Sorry all, I posted this in the wrong section. I moved it to the best of my ability to http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19121 Dear moderators, please feel free to delete THIS post, as it is obviously garabage Sorry again, Dust

Hey Tabb Onzen is actually a pretty awesome system, and while it is "low maintenance", it has proven pretty intensive to get a handle on. Also, its sometimes like steering a big old boat... it wants to do its own thing and you kind of have to "go with it" sometimes, because if you try to fight it to hard in a different direction, you just end up finding out next week that you overcompensated Also, there is a TON of great info on this site (and specificaly, specific ways to really keep a tight chlorine based spa invented by some of the most highly respected users here) that just doesn't apply / can't be used quite the same for us onzen users because our spas have "their own way" of doing things. First thing you should do tommorow is to go buy salt test strips from your store, and know exactly what your salt is at all times. The reason for this is that if your salt is off, NOTHING else in your spa will work correctly. Luckily, salt concentration does not change, ever, in your tub, unless you are adding water or removing water (salt doesn't even evaporate when the rest of your water does). So even when you top up your tub every week or two (as your water level will evaporate a couple inches every now and again) once you have refilled your tub to the same level it was when you first measured your salt, it will be exactly the same, even months later. You want 2300ppm salt. Get to that level, and you will be a much happier owner. NEVER go below 2000, or above 2500, because then you will be a sad owner If your salt is too high, don't waste anymore money on chemicals or more salt... just dump a little water, and then refill with clean new water. You will dump the salt in solution from your tub, and replace with saltless water, so your overall salt concentration will go down. If you have 400 gallon tub, and your salt is 2800ppm, and you want to get down to 2300ppm, you need to dump 400 - ((2300/2800) * 400) = ~71 gallons of water and replace with fresh water. It can be hard to eyeball gallons of water in your spa, so just do a bit at a time until you're happy. A second pack of salt test strips is still much cheaper than wasting another bucket of salt The dial on your onzen should always be max (that dial shows you how hard your onzen should work when its working). Use your control panel to control WHEN you'd like your onzen to work (i.e. how often). Your manual or your dealer should be able to show you if you're not sure. Depending on your spa brain (usualy region dependant) the settings can be slightly different (north america vs europe). Hopefuly some of this helped out Good luck with your tub!

Hey Lisa. In a salt generator system, your ph will always increase. The form of sanitizer generated from water has a higher ph. In a normal add your own chlorine system, you end up getting acidic byproducts when the chlorine leaves the water (creating something somewhat net-neutral ph, or so says chem geek) but in a closed salt generation system we don't seem to get that effect, so our ph always rises. You will need to buy and use (all the time) some ph down (or equivelent product, some sort of dry acid from your spa store). You will find that with very high salt levels, your TA (total alkalinity) will be lower, and your ph will rise faster, as you are creating more of the sanatizer and byproducts. When TA is lower, pH can increase more quickly (and is decreased with less adjust down), so it can spiral out of control quickly in an over salted, over sanitized system. With a TA of 100, your water can still easily go from 7.2 to 7.8 in a week with Onzen (or other total salt generation systems). My guess is that this is more pronounced with chlorine, but bromine could be the same. FYI, when your water hits 7.8, assuming you have ~400 gallon spa from arctic, once cap full of arctic's Adjust Down will bring you back to around 7.2 (again, assuming fairly balanced water). Or at least, that has been my experiance. Keep in mind that if you need to raise your TA (remeber, lowering your salt with a partial water change if it is high, will in a few days, help your TA come back up to a better level) that you will also be increasing your pH even more. Don't add an Alkalinity increaser and a ph decreaser at the same time, as they'll just react with each other and not do their jobs. Make sure one completly mixed in before ever using the other. Also, if you do need to muck with TA, remeber it is as easy as adding a chemical to bring up, it can be a silly pain to lower... so don't ever over-do your TA if you can help it. Finaly, remeber that having the pumps / jets / air on will all change your ph to some extent... sometimes a bunch, sometimes not much at all (again, depends on how balanced your water is). Keep this in mind when you are testing for ph.

I know it doesn't address your question (Chem Geek already handled that nicely) but I know my spa dealler sells a product called "Spa Boss X-It" that dropped chlorine by 10ppm per 30 grams. There is no active ingredient on the bottle and it could just be packaged hydrogen peroxide (though it is a powder), but it sure worked nice.

Not sure why Tom hasn't answered you yet... he's usualy on the ball on these things Maybe he's just sick of all of the Onzen questions! As far as testing for chlorine or bromine, which type did you get? If you don't know, from Arctice "Dead Sea Salt" will change into chlorine, while "Bromine Salt" will of course change into Bromine in your tub. If your tub smells like Chlorine, you probably have Dead Sea Salt / Chlorine in your tub... that is what Arctic prefers to sell by default if you don't ask. And the temperature question, leaving it at the setting you like to use it at, imho, is your best move. You paid a lot for your actic spa, and one of the reasons for that is that they are, hands down, one of the best (the best as shown in several independant studies) and insulating and retaining generated heat. This means if you heat your spa to 103, your spa will retain that heat without using other energy to do so. If you heat your spa to 103 from 100 every time you use it, that is 3 degrees of heating you will need to spend from the heaters before every use. Rasing 100 gallons of water 1 degree takes 836 BTU of energy... so 400 gallons by 3 degrees is 10032 BTUs of energy. There are 3400 BTUs in 1 kWH, so you're using something like 3kWH of energy each time you want to use your tub (or in other terms, leaving a 100watt light bulb on for 30 hours before using your spa each and every time). Well, all of that, plus it takes a while for the tub to warm up those 3 degrees, so the impatient side of me would want that tub ready when I was Okay, onto the smell! What kind of Chlorine smell do you have? Is it "bottle of bleach" chlorine smell, or "swiming pool" chlorine smell. There is definately a difference. Essentially, if it smells like clean bleach from a bottle, then your chlorine is WAYYYYY too high (which happens with Onzen especially if you have too much salt) and you'll actually want to do a few things If your tub smells like chlorine, like from a bottle of bleach - Test for chlorine... most test strips only go to 10ppm, so if you're reading 10ppm, you're actually at AT LEAST 10, it could be way more Look for "burning" on the edges of the test strip's chlorine pad... if the (presumably) blue chlorine pad turns sort of greenish / yellow / white on the edges of the pad, then your chlorine might be really high. -Test for salt levels... it is sooo easy to put to much salt in that thing. If salt gets to high (~3000ppm) then the chemical reaction with the salt will practicaly happen on its own, regardless of your CP rating. Using the old labels on the salt containers, I got my salt above 3000ppm, and even at CP0 on the onzen generator, I was still creating about 1-2 fcl per day... it was crazy! In this situation, your ph will rise much quicker than normal, your alkalinity will want to continually drop, and your spa pillows will get eaten alive! Luckily, this is pretty easy to fix. You have two options If Chlorine AND Salt are way too high -Partial water change! The problem here is that your salt test kit probably only measures to about 3000ppm; and whats worse, the 2000-3000 range on the salt test strips are usualy the last 1/8th of the strip (it isn't linear) so figuring out your exact salt concentration can be tricky. Here is a little trick that might help. If your test your salt and find a reading over 3000pm, take a half size sample of hot tub water, and then add an EXACTLY EQUAL amount of tap water to that sample. Then measure the salt on that sample Whatever reading you get on the test strip this time will now actually be HALF the actuall reading for your tub. So if, when measuring half spa water, and half tap water, you get a 2000ppm, that means your tub is actually 4000ppm! -Your goal, imho, is to hit 2300ppm of salt, as close as possible. This makes VERY nice water soak in, and is easy for your onzen to maintain. -When yo finish this and fix your salt concentration, if your chlorine is still far too high (it will drop as your are draining a lot of chlorine in the partial change) then follow the step below as well. If salt is okay (2100 to 2500 ppm) but chlorine is way too high -turn your cp to 2 or 3 -add a fun chemical called SpaBoss X-It (or equivlent) to your water. This strong chemical will instantly remove 1ppm of flc for each 3 grams of chemical you add. Add enough to wipe out all of your chlorine. -let your spa run a few days to build back its fcl levels. after 2 days, adjust CP to where you need it. 2-3 is usualy good for most people under regular user load, but your milage will vary. If your tub smells like chlorin from the swimming pool, or your skin AFTER the swiming pool Then you have to much combined chlorine... or chlorimines. Remeber, chlorine has too jobs in the water; kill bacteria, and combine with organics (like sweat) to get them out of the free flowing water. Chlorine can kill bacteria all day, but if our chlorine is busy wrestling organics, its then too busy to kill any other bacteria (and you could get algae and such... eww). Chlorimines (combined chlorine) stink at low concentrations, and they smell like "dirty chlorine"... aka the swiming pool smell. -As mentioned above, adding arctic "refresh" (1 cap full per 100 gallons or so) will break up the chlorimines, release the organics to atmosphere, and free the chlorine to do its job (and cause it to stop stinking)

So, my first post ever here was about an arctic spa onzen chlorine generator not producing enough chlorine. After setting the settings to the manufacturer suggested (albiet undocumented) settings, the thing is a chlorine monster. My wife and I only use our spa maybe once every couple of weeks, and even with the generator cycle turned all the way down to 0 (which should be off) our chlorine is still way over 10ppm, and our ph can climb from 7 to 8 in about 5 days from what I gather is essentially lye that the system creates to form its chlorine. Does anyone know how to settle this beast down? Also, does anyone know what the side effects of having such high levels (unmeasurable levels by my test strips at over 10ppm) for months at a time? Even if we hop into the tub for an hour, we almost never drop FC back below 10ppm, so I'm really worried how high it is Having a new years party tomorrow.... THAT should bring my FC down a bit lol Thanks all, and happy new years! Dust

Hi Tom Do we have any information on the other settings? I'm finding with CP set to 0, I'm still getting a TON of chlorine production. So much so that if I don't use my tub for a day it starts smelling like a bucket of chlorine, and its actually turning the edges of my test strips green (and the center a very dark blue)... so I'm thinking way over the strips 10 ppm max. My understanding is CP of 0 turns onzen off, so I'm wondering if there is some "always run onzen" setting that I missed, or if 0 can somehow be configured as "always run"... it be nice to know before my tub turns into a pile of melted plastic and rust! lol thanks and merry christmas, Dust

750 ORP is fine.... my guess is your free chlorine is going to be highish, or your ph is lowish (remember that orp accurately reflects chlorine's property of increased effectiveness at lower ph). as free chlorine becomes combined chlorine, ORP will go down. also, as chlorine leaves your pool, ORP will go down. Also, as Cynuaric acid levels increase, ORP would go down as well. as combined chlorine is converted back to free chlorine (through salt based sanitizer generation, ozone oxidization, or chemical oxidization(shocking), ORP goes up. If you really want to get rid of chlorine from your system, shock your tub with MPS, turn your CP to 0, and let the tub run for a couple of days. Without onzen, chlorine tub dissipates from your tub at a scary rate. Your chlorine levels (and ORP) will drop alarmingly quickly. Don't let your free chlorine drop to zero!!! You'll need to monitor closely. As long as the water doesn't smell too bleachy for you though, just keep using it with your tub CP set to a lowish number (probably 1) and you will use more chlorine than you generate. just remeber to shock though, as forming combined chlorine is NOT the same as dissipating chlorine all together. Again, watch your levels... Don't let your free chlorine drop to zero!!!

I think thats a great idea!