waterbear

This is very similar, if not identical to the Pentair (Rainbow/Lifeguard) bromine floater that should be available in any good pool/spa supply. If they don't stock it they should be able to order you one. It really is the best bromine or 1" chlorine floater available!

Actually, if a bird pooped in your spa while it was open that could introduct cyrpto into the water. (and this does happen!)

There is truth in what he told you.

DO NOT USE DAWN unless you want a bubble bath. Use a powdered AUTOMATIC dishwasher powder like Cascade or Electrosol. They are non foaming degreasers.

I've said it before and I will say it again...test strips are NOT a reliable way to test your water. Get a good liquid reagent kit. Your water balancing will become much easier. For chlorine I recommend a Taylor K-2006 (not K-2005) and for bromine I recommend a K-2106). They are worth every penny. (and if you think that $50 -$80 is too much to spend on a GOOD test kit that will make your water maintenance much easier ask yourself how much you paid for your pool or spa and then look at the price of the test kit again!)

I'm going to back Richard up on this one. It works in actual practice and the chemistry behind it is sound!

DRY DE powder, if inhaled in large quantities, can cause silicosis (as can any finely ground silicon sand or dust). It does not contain silica...it is silica. It is the dried skeletal shells of prehistoric, one celled plants called diatoms. Proper precautions when handling it are all that is needed (wear a paper mask!) Not really different than any other pool chemical. Personally, I'd rather handle DE than muriatic acid but you don't see people trying to ban that (or are they?) Once you have the perspecitive and remove the loaded term 'carcinogen' (the LOVE to throw that one around, don't they) it becomes almost a non issue, doesn't it? The problem with things being banned stems mostly from politicians who do not have an understanding of science legislating on such matters. As an example I give you the ban on backwashable sand and DE filters in many areas. Cleaning a cartridge filter is certainly just as water intensive and if the concern is about 'grey water' I would be more concerned about the grey water that comes out of our washing machines,, showeres, dishwashers, etc. daily then about the amount that might come from our pool filters every few weeks! Woodsy, as one 'pool store guy' to another (And I'm going to guess you work in a Leslies) our job is to sell our customer's as much stuff as possible each time they come in. Not all of us agree with that philosophy but it's the truth. Most pool store clerks are clueless and a large majority of them have probably never even owned a pool or kept one, IMHO based on the amount of misinformation that is commonly repeated. There are a lot of things that are entrenched in the pool industry that just don't hold up when examined scientifically! Case in point, slugging acid to lower TA. Total fallicy. Doesn't matter if you slug it or dilute it. Lowering pH lowers TA. Period. OR how about selling customers with cartridge filters trichlor? Their pools become overstabilzied and then we tell them to drain and refill. Why not just sell then sodium hypochlorite--liquid chlorine? (Cal hypo will cause calcium hardness to increase and they are in the same drain and refill problem). Lithium hypochlorite is too expensive for practical use! How about laundry bleach. Most pool store guys will tell their customers that bleach is bad for their pool or that it will increase TDS (another bogus measurement--it's not the total amount of ionic material in the water that is important but what the ionic speicies are)! It's sodium hypochlorite! NO DIFFERENCE except in the amount needed to reach a certain ppm FC. Laundry bleach is either 3%, 5.25%, or 6% with the last 2 being the most common. Pool and/or spa liquid chlorine/shock is either 6%, 10%, or 12.5% with the last 2 being the most common. I'll get off my soapbox now but I hope it's opened your eyes a little since I suspect you are relatively new in the industry and don't have a lot of practical pool experience (I appologize in advance if I am wrong but anyone who has ever owned and taken care of a pool knows that the advice from pool stores just drains their wallets and does not solve their pool problems.) To get back to your question as to why certain training manuals say not to use DE as a filter aid...it's dirt cheap (no pun intended). If people used it to increase their filtering ability they would have no need for the EXPEN$IVE polymeric and chitosan based clarifiers that most pool stores love to sell (and that are, in most cases totally unnecessary!) or by selling the expensive and higher profit cellulose fiber filter aid. It'a all about the bottom line! Tell me how pool stores justify selling baking soda at the ridiculously high prices that they do. (Bioguard dealers will tell you that their alkalinity increaser is sodium hydrogen carbonate and not sodium bicarbonate--these are two different names for exactly the same thing--baking soda!) If the water is cloudy or foamy there is a water balance issue. Clarifiers and defoamers are not the answer, they only mask the symptom. If you fix the problem the water will no longer be cloudy or foamy. As an analogy, if your dog makes a mess on the rug you can spray it with a deoderizer so it doen't smell anymore or you can clean the mess up and solve the problem. Just some food for thought.

These are EXCELLENT guidlines for pool care. We have much the same philosophy where I work! ( and we have two large storage tanks for our liquid chlorine that get refilled every week or two that we transfer to 2.5 gal carboys for sale.)

Woodsy, do you by any chance work in a pool store that sells celulose DE replacement? (I know it's a high ticket item compared to DE because we carry it!)

I also have to agree with dropping the pH first before draining. Much of the scale should hopefully redissolve and THEN you can dump the water. If it doesn't then you have only lost a few days and some acid and can then try the drain and clean, which is going to be much more work.

This same caution also applies to commercial acid based filter cleaners. The safest degreaser for a cart is either TSP (the real stuff, not the phosphate free substitues that are often sold) or automatic dishwasher powder. For either you would use 1 cup per each 5 gallons of water and soak the cart overnight (you can also find this info on the Unicel and Pleatco websites!) IF after soaking and hosing you suspect calcium deposits THEN you can proceed to test with a dilute acid solution (20 to 1) to see if there is any bubbling indicating calcium deposits (scale). If there is then soak for 15-30 minutes or until bubbling stops in the dilute acid (20 to 1 unless the deposits are heavy then you can go as strong as 10 to 1 but this wil shorten your filter life). NEVER acid wash a filter without degreasing first or the organic buildup on the filter will harden into a cement like mass that will plug up the filter and ruin it!

To add to what Chas said... The chlorine will oxidize the bromide ions in your water from the sodium bromide (Reserve) into hypobromous acid in exactly the same way the MPS (Renew) does. There will be no chlorine present in the water. It gets converted into chloride ions which, unlike bromide ions, cannot be changed back into chlorine (actually hypochlorous acid) easily.

You are using bromine tablets and MPS, both of which are acidic. This is what caused your pH and TA to drop. Also, you have discovered why test strips are not recommened for water balance. They just are not reliable. Your cheap little 2 way liquid based tester proved that to you. You will need to monitor pH and TA and most likely add baking soda to maintain your TA around 100 ppm. To raise your pH when the TA is in line (if the pH is too low) then turn on the spa jets and bubblers and run the spa until the pH rises I suspect that your pH dropped so low because you depleated the TA in your water. As far as having too high a bromine level that is either because the floater is not adjusted properly or you are shocking too often. And to the poster that told you to stop using chlorine since it does not mix well with bromine---RUBBISH! Your bromine tablets contain chlorine as one of their ingredents to oxidize the bromine ions into hypobromous acid. It really doesn't matter whether you use chlorine, MPS, or ozone to create the hypobromous acid from bromide ions. The trick is to add just enough to maintain the proper bromine levels and not let them go through the roof. When you shock your tub leave it uncovered for a few hours. That is always a good way to start. Get yourself a good test kit and you will find that your water balancing will become very easy to do! For bromine get a Taylor K-2106.

You underestimate many pool owners. They are a lot more savvy than many in the industry give them credit for. I find many industry 'professionals' are the ones lacking in true knowledge! (And yes, I do work in the industry) If you check out two other very popular pool forum boards (poolforum and troublefreepool) and ask about who is using DE in a sand filter as a filter aid and what is the proper way to do you you might be very surprised! Using DE as a filter aid in sand filters is a trick that has been around for many years. It needs to be done properly or there will be problems, you are right about that, but isn't that true of just about any aspect of pool care?

Nature2 for a spa is a combination of silver and zinc and can be used with chlorine only. The Spa Frog is a combination of silver and limestone and can be used with either chlorine or bromine. The Frog Bam is a product used for pool Frog system and is not available for use in a spa. I have used both the spa N2 cartridge and the spa Frog cartridge for extended periods in my spa. I also had a pool Frog system on my pool. For the record, my pool Frog now makes a pretty good trichlor chlorine feeder and I am not using any minerals in my spa. King Technology changed their website about a year ago and took all references to Zinc off the site at that time. Before that they said the minerals were silver, zinc and limestone. I don't know why but I don't think they made any changes to the product. Limestone is basically just calcium carbonate, which is what we call 'scale' when it deposits on the walls of our pools and spas. I suspect it is the delivery system for the metals. Nature2 uses ceramic beads. I suspect the delivery system is the main difference why N2 can only be used with chlorine and Spa Frog is suitable for use with either but it is interesting that on their website King Technology states that the PoolFrog is not EPA approved for use with bromine so it might just be about the EPA registrations each company obtained (or it might be due to the repective patents each company holds). In any case the technology is basically the same. Metals are added to the water by a passive erosion process. Zinc is probably a bit less effective an algaecide as copper but is not going to cause the same type of staining problems. Silver will and can stain. I know zinc's been added to trichlor tabs in Canada in much the same way copper salts are added to trichlor tabs in the US for the algaestatic properties.

DBDMH systems are essestially 2 step bromine systems since the tablets do not contain any type of oxidizer. It must be added separately. They will build up the bromine bank faster and are probably more useful in a system that has ozone since that insures a constant oxidizer supply to the water.

The interference from chlorine is quite easy to remove by using thiosulfate whent tesing with DPD for ozone. There are basically two accepted ways to test for ozone colormetically, either DPD or the indigo methd. The DPD test is basically the same as a total chlorine or total bromine test using DPD 1 and DPD 3 (postassium iodide). Ozone (or any other ozidizer such as MPS or chloriamines or bromamines) react with the potasium iodide to release iodine. This in turn reacts with the DPD to produce the red 'wurster dye' that we compare against our color comparator to get the concentration of the oxizider we are testing for. The indigo method is the standard method of determining residual ozone in water and works by using indigo trisulfonate as an indicator. This dark blue colored dye is bleached by the ozone in direct proportion to the amount of ozone present. Chlorine and bromine can cause interference with this test also unless substances such as malonic acid are included to help prevent the interference. I suspect that the chemistry behind the strips and the meter cited above is a variation on the indigo testing method since that is considered the standard procedure for residual ozone testing.

The 'minerals' you will be adding to your water are silver and zinc. Minerals sounds more 'granola-crunchy' and 'spa like' than saying it's putting metals in your water but that is what it and all other ionizer systems, passive or active, do. The frog is a passive, erosion feeder type of device that slowly introduces metal ions into the water.(Nature2 is the other popular erosion type of 'mineral' system but it is only compatible with chlorine.) Metals have algaestatic and bacteriostatic properties but very slow kill times which is why a redidual of a fast acting sanitizer like bromine or chlorine is still needed. If you get an algae problem then the Frog system has a product called Frog Bam, which is just a chelated copper sulfate solution. This will introduce another 'mineral', copper. Copper is an effective algaecide. In fact, just about every major pool/spa product company has at least one copper based agaecide in their product line! BE aware that these metal systems, whehter active, passive, or in a bottle, are NOT primary santizers. The downside to metals in your water is that they can stain the surface of your spa and can stain people as well! (The infamous 'green hair' is caused by copper. End of story.)

Hillbilly Hot Tub is right on the money! Find out what is causing the problem first since this will determine what possible solutions you have. Bromine is known to cause skin reactions in about 17% of those who use it. MPS is also known to cause skin sensitivity. Sensitivity to chlorine is rare but does occur. "Hot tub itch" is actually caused by psuedomonas and happens when there is not enough active sanitizer residual kept in the water (or in the case of chlorine, when stabilized chlorine is used exclusively and the cyanuric acid levels become very high which causes the chlorine to be a less effective sanitizer.) Nature2 adds metals (silver and zinc) to the water but it must be used with chlorine and MPS so if your sensitivity is to MPS it might not be of help. The metal ions do have algastatic and bacteriostatic properites but very slow kill times which is why a chlorine residual is still needed in the water. However, it is possible to have a lower residual chlorine level with the Nature2 and still have safe water. However, if you calculate the dosing that the Nature2 instructions recommened it's not THAT much lower than a spa without a Nature2! You still will need to shock the spa with chlorine on a regular basis (weekly or more often,depending on usage) and add either chlorine or MPS daily. Zodiac no longer recommends using MPS exclusively with Nature2 nor shocking with MPS. They have also increased the recommened amount of chlorine to be added on startup, with shocking, and have increased the amount of chlorine or MPS to add after each use as of 2006! (Interesting topic but it belongs in a different thread.) Most of the natural products are a scam. Enzymes are NOT sanitizers, metals (usually called 'minerals' in the marketing literature) have slow kill times and must be used with either chlorine or bromine. Your final possiblitiy is a biguanide based santizer such as Baquaspa or Softsoak. They use PHMB (biguanide) as the santizer and hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer. They work well for a few years and then often tend to self destruct as bacteria develop an immunity to the biguanide and you get pink slime and white water mold. They are not compatible with many spa products so you need to be careful what you add to the spa and these systems are more expensive than either bromine or chlorine. There have also been reports of biguanide damaging some plastic parts in spas and some spa manufacuterers do not recommend their use. Filter will need cleaning and replacement much more often when using biguanide compared to either chlorine or bromine. (Nature of the beast, this sanitizer causes bacteria to 'explode' and the filter then filters out the goo that forms from this. Halogen based santizers actually 'burn up' the bacteria.) Biguanide does have some pluses...it is a bit easier to use and when it works it works well. IF you are one of the lucky ones you might be able to use it for years with no problems. Regular filter cleaning and replacement and yearly spa 'purging' with chlorine and cleaning of the spa cover (to kill bacteria in the plumbing and on the cover) seem to be the key to keeping biguanide working for a long period of time. If you turn out to have a true halogen sensitivity (BOTH bromine AND chlorine) then it's really your only alternative. Chlorine, bromine and biguanide are the ONLY three EPA approved sanitizers for spa and/or pool use. THERE ARE NO OTHER EPA APPROVED SANITIZERS! End of story. All other products are supplimentary and MUST be used with an EPA approved santizer if you want sanitized water. Some, such as ozone and UV light, have merit. Some, such as 'mineral systems' and ionizers and the 'Blue' liquid products (chelated copper sulfate) are dubious. They can bu useful under certain circumstances but the added expense is often not justified.THEY ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR CHLORINE (or Bromine) IF YOU WANT SANITZED WATER. They still require a santizer residual in the water for fast kill times. Some are just snake oil based on pseudoscience! Hope this is helpful.

get yourself a Taylor K-2106. Strips do NOT have the precision needed for water balance (NOT the same thing as accuracy!) and strip readers are unpredictable at best! I have been testing water for more years than I care to think about! A GOOD test kit will make your water testing and balancing a very easy task. The particular kit I recommend is a bit pricey (but think how much you spent for your spa!) but is VERY easy to use and get accurate and precise results.

I've said it before and I will say it again...chlorine in a spa requires daily testing and maintenance. It is certainly more work than chlorine in a pool because of the small volume of water to bather load and the higher temps. This is the one thing that makes bromine more attractive (However I personally will never go back to bromine!) The reason for a FAST ACTING (leaves out metals!) residual sanitizer in the water at all times is to prevent the spread of water borne illness. If you have two or three bathers in the tub each one, no matter how clean, is introducing sweat, uring and feces into the water. Given that some of the enteric water borne illness microbes can reproduce at very fast rates at the higher temps in a tub I hope you see the reason to maintain the residual sanitizer at all times. People freak out about soaking in a tub that has a residual of chlorine but think nothing of swimming in a pool for perhaps 2-3 times as long that has the same chlorine residual! The residual in either a pool or spa will not last and most likely needs to be replenished daily. People accecpt this with a pool but with a spa it becomes an issue. In fact, a spa with the proper residual chlorine level before a soak will most probably NOT have one left after! If you find that you need to bump up the FC 1-2 ppm before you soak what is the big deal. You can enter the tub immediately after doing so! Shock after you soak and then you don't have to worry about needing to wait to use the tub! I suspect that when one is using dichlor and they find that their chlorine residual is lasting that the CYA has probably gone through the roof! Also, why stress out whether youir bleach is weak or not? Dose the water and then test it! If the FC is low you know you need to add more! Just dosing the water and not retesting after is not good practice. Also, it might not be the strength of the bleach at fault. It might be that you have an inaccurate number for your water volume. Do you make pH adjustments and not test afterwards? Do you adjust TA and not test afterwards? Then why adust sanitizer and not test afterwards!? pH is GOING to rise in a tub because of all the aeration! It's a fact of life. IF you use acidic MPS and dichlor or bromine tablets then the pH rise is not as apparant but the drop in TA is, which is why the high TA of up to 150 ppm is usually recommened for tubs. It assumes the use of these sanitizes and oxidizers. IF you are using unstabilized chlorine (I don't care if it's bleach, cal hypo, or lithium hypochlorite!) then DROP you TA to about 60-80 ppm and maintain your pH at 7.6 and not lower to slow the outgassing of CO2 and the pH rise it causes. When the pH hits 7.8 is when you want to drop it back down to 7.6. A short while of daily testing and a bit of trial and error and you will soon know that, under normal use, your spa needs to have the pH lowered every X days by adding Y amount of pH decreaser. Bottom line, your pH WILL rise unless you never use you bubblers and venturi jets (but then why have a spa? ) Adjusting the pH is not that big a deal once you figure it all out!

First of all, total hardness is a bogus reading which is one reason why strips are not that useful. You are interested in calcium harndess since calcium is what causes scale deposits. Total hardness is a combination of calcium and magnesium hardness. Magnesium does not produce scale. How important high CH is depends mostly on the material your tub is made of. Acrylic and fiberglass tubs only really need around 150 ppm CH and that is really mostly because hard water has less of a tendency to foam then soft water. A plaster spa or one with grouted tilework would need a higher CH, usually between 200-400 to protect the plaster from surface damage. If you are worried about metal parts such as your heat exchanger, pH is the main factor in whether they will suffer any corrosion or not. Just make sure to keep yours above 7.2 at all times. High sanitizer levels will interfere with pH testing. Levels above about 10 ppm will cause the pH to read high. I would be interested in knowing what your pH reads with a drop based test when the sanitizer levls are within normal range (say about 4-6 ppm total bromine, not free bromine, as tested with either OTO or DPD testing). If your total bromine is above about 10 ppm then I would look at the pH readigs you are getting as suspect. You can actually get much more accurate sanitizer and pH readings from a $7 Taylor K-1000 pH/OTO test kit for these two measurements then you can from strips in a $600 strip scanner. At least it would get two of your measurments more under control. IMHO, the best testkit for a bromine system for home use is a Taylor K-2106. It really does make water balancing so much easier and it's much easier to read than strips. ( and no guessing as to whether the TA is closer to the 80 ppm or the 120 ppm block. Strips just don't have the precision needed for balancing water.)

Thank you for exsplaining lime for me to chem geek. My thought was that this tub was used and had a previous scale issue as he stated it was coated all over the old filter. As the tub runs, the scale that has attached inside the lines, on the heater ect. starts to dissole and dissipate into the water causing the PH rise. Sorry I did not clarify myself, being from the area I know that the water around here that has issues with lime also has alot of metals such as iron, gold, ect. This tends to chew up bromine (deplete it) I try to write things in laymans terms, not so scientific or it becomes very confusing to the customer and sometimes myself. I will be attending a spa/pool show in Atlantic City again in a couple of weeks and have been writing down many questions I have for the chemist that are doing some of the water chemistry classes. It will be interesting to see what these people have to say since they specialize in pool and spa water chemistry, specially about using household bleach since they are the ones that help the spa manufactures come up with the reasons why they would void a warrenty. Metal ions (including calcium) do not cause sanitizer demand. Please do ask the chemists to expalin how metal ions can 'deplete' bromine. It should be interesting. You might also want to ask them their thoughts on the use of 'liquid chlorine" or sodium hypochlorite as a chlorine source or whether calcium hypochorite is ok for spa use (It is marketed for this purpose by at least one MAJOR manufacurer.) Is lithium hypochorite the only unstabilized chlorine source that is ok? Funny how it's also the most expensive. In some areas dichlor is illegal in commercial hot tubs so what alternatives are there for chlorination? Scale (calcium carbonate) is relatively insoluable and as pH rises more will precipitate out of the water and deposit. Higher temperatures also increase the tendency to scale. The fact that both high pH and high tempeature of the water are the 1st and second most important factors in prediciting scaling can be seen by just looking at the SI equation in which pH and then temperature changes have the greatest impact on the results of the equation while changes in TA and CH have the least since they are used as the log(base10) of the measured value so very large changes in either factor result in very small chages in the SI. Spas have a tendency toward scaling since the water is kept at an elevated temperature and the constant aeration from the jets and bubblers tends to cause pH to rise because of the outgassing of carbon dioxide, expecially when the fill water has a high calcium content (which you refer to as 'lime'.)

2 ppm is about half the amount of FC normally recommened for a spa so the use of silver/zince from the N2 spa cart allows you to maintain the FC at about half the normal levels. This is based on recent research on CT times for certain pathogens and is quite a bit higher than the .5 ppm FC formerly suggested. However, .5 ppm FC is still what Zodiac is suggesting for the copper/siver N2 swimming pool units. BTW, I happen to maintain my own spa at about 4 ppm FC and sometimes up to 6 ppm.

Richard, "Lime" is a common term for naturally occuring hydroxides, oxides and carbonates of calcium. I guess he was implying that the water in that area has a high calcium content and as you know high calcium levels and high pH do lead to scaling. ALL scale is calcium carbonate as you well know and this certainly does fall under the definintion of 'lime'. However, I know of no way that they will cause bromine levels to decrease! HOWEVER, vermonter's pH 'hanging out' around 8.0 makes me think that possibly there is some interference to the phenol red from high sanitizer levels since he stated that he added a quart of acid and it had not effect. I would like to know exactly how high the sanitizer levels were when he tested the pH. I suspect the pH is being tested right after shocking.