waterbear
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Posts posted by waterbear
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waterbear, can you describe what chemical routine you follow for your personal spa? I think we could all benefit from your real life experiences.
Thanks in advance.
Currently I have an inground pool/spa combo that is chlorinated with a salt water generator. I keep my pool at about 4 ppm free chlorine and the spa at about 6 ppm but that is not applicable to most people with portable hot tubs. Before I had my pool built I did own portable hot tubs, the first a modest 300 gal.and the other a big 500 gal. I kept them on both bromine and chlorine systems I never had ozonators, ionizers, etc. Just the basics and they did great with minimum effort.
Chlorine is pretty easy. I used dichlor for chlorination. 1 teaspoon raises the free chlorine about 2 ppm for 250 gallon. I tested the water daily (using a GOOD test kit, not one of the cheapie ones) until I really knew my spa so I could maintain a FC of about 6 ppm without having to test daily . With my last spa I needed to put in the diclor about every 3 days if the spa didn't get any use and if I used it I had to put some in after each use every time I used it. I would shock it when the combined chlorine was higher than the free chlorine. I shocked with liquid chlorine ( actually laundry bleach...same thing just more dilute) since it would not add any stabilizer. Dichlor is stablized chlorine so it is not the best thing to shock with. I needed to shock maybe once a week. (3/4 cup of ultra bleach, 6% or just under 1 cup of regular 5.25% bleach per 500 gal is about right I had to lower my pH with dry acid every so often but my fill water had fairly high alkalinity and perfect hardness so I didn't have to mess with baking soda and calcium that often. I drained it about every 4 months and refilled. I never used any metal removers (no metals in the fill water)
The most important thing is to not ignore it, even if you are not using it. Test the water often (daily at first) and learn how much of each chem you need on a regular basis. It really becomes a no brainer after a short while. 5 minutes a day can prevent major headaches in getting the spa back in balance after being ignored!
Bromine was a bit trickier to use but was a bit more maintenance free in terms of daily care. It took me a little while to learn a method that worked well for me.
What worked best was:
on filling I would add sodium bromide to create a bromine bank in the water and then shock with liquid bleach to activate it (convert the sodium bromide to hypobromous acid, the active sanitizer). I then put a floater with bromine tabs in the spa and ajusted it until my bromine levels were maintained at about 6 ppm. This was the tricky part! I would shock it with bleach after each use or once a week if I didn't use it. If my bromine was low and I wanted to use the spa I would shock with MPS (non chlorine shock) to reactive the bromine CAREFULLY (or the bromine levels would get too high and I would have to wait for them to drop to use the spa)
I did have more water balancing problems with bromine....had to adjust the total alkalinity and raise the pH fairly often, especially when I used the MPS. I drained and refilled about evey 4 months and added the sodium bromide and shocked to start the whole process again.
Once again, daily testing until I really knew how the spa reacted under normal use was the key!
I never messed with biguainde systems only because I knew how expensive they are and I saw first hand some of the problems that eventually occured with my customers that used them in their pools or spas. ( I am not a spa dealer, btw, I work in a pool and spa supply store)
Hope this is helpful.
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They work along WITH your chemicals.
It's not as if we're asking you to fill your spa with radioactive material. Chlorine is a good thing, not a bad thing. If you try to avoid it you're both foolish and kidding yourself IMO.
spatech is right! You need an EPA approved sanitizer. There are only three of them--chlorine, bromine and biguanide/hydrogen peroxide (Baquaspa, SoftSoak, Revacil, etc.) I personally think chlorine is the easiest to use with the fewest problems.
ALL other sanitizer systems (ozone, ioniozers and "mineral" systems (they put copper, silver, and/or zinc into your water so are hardly chemical free!), enzymes, magnets, UV light, etc. are all auxillery systems that need to be used with a sanitizer. Some of them can help reduce your sanitizer demand (Ozone is GREAT with bromine systems), others are pretty much worthless and just drain your wallet.
One thing to remember is that contact time is important in santizing. You can't compare a house water sanitizing system to a spa. A spa has contaminents added to it constantly while it is in use from the bathers and needs to have enought fast acting sanitizer in the water to deal with this. A house water system does not and santizers that require a longer contact time to be effective can work. This is the most misunderstood fact about ioniers and mineral systems. Metal ions have a very slow kill time and can't act fast enough to kill pathogens that are intorduced into the water while soaking.
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Thanks for the informative post Waterbear. My MPS is labeled "Potassium Perxoymonsulfate". Is this the same as Potassium Monopersulfate? I believe Renew and other buffered MPS brands are labeled Potassium Perxoymonsulfate. Can you explain what the differences are between the two chemicals?
same chemical, different name. Most chemicals have more than one name.
For example alkalinity increaser might be labeled sodium biccarbonate or sodium hydrogen carbonate....both a just names for baking soda.
Another example is Dihydrogen monoxide. This is a very useful and commen chemical that is necessary for life but if it gets into your lungs it can kill you! Any idea what it is? It's water! (When you drown you get water in your lungs.)
Think of it like this, if your name is Robert you might also be called Bob or Robbie but you are still the same person.
I am new to this spa stuff and the wife has been doing all the testing and adding of chemicals, the strips say all is well but I don't like the way the water smells on my body once I get out. I guess to best describe it would be a sour chlorine smell. I was thinking the Wal-Mart chems were causing this but I guess I can't blame them.Maybe I should just ask;
What brand of chemicals and what sanitation system is the most skin friendly?
We do not have an ozone injector and would like to stay with chlorine but like I said I can't stand the smell,. Thanks
IMHO, chlorine is the easiest and best sanitizer to use in a spa. What you are smelling might be chloramines (chlorine reacting with the organics on your skin.) In a properly maintained spa there should be little or no chloramine smell. If you could post a full set of test results for free chlorine, total chlorine, pH, total alkalinity, calcium hardness, and cyanuric acid (stablizer) then perhaps I could give you more information as to what is happening. The testing needs to be done with a liquid drop based test kit and NOT test strips. Strips do not have the precision needed to balance the water!
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reading is about 10ppm. want to use it tonight.help.
Most state health departments now say that Free Chlorine should be between 2 and 10 ppm. If you are under 10 ppm it should be ok.
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Waterbear, what CT time are you working to?
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I have been using Aquafinesse in my tub...which is chlorine/bromine free. Just a measured cupful in each week. It does apparently contain a sanitiser. I also use the ozonater each day. Clean filters each week. However, in the kit is also supplied a chlorine tablet + dispenser to put in the filter basket. There is no testing whatsoever required. The method is simplicity itself. Perfect clean, nice smelling clear soft water. This may sound as though I am trying to sell the stuff, I truly am not, I had 6mths supply with my new tub. 3mths on and I can't fault it and so I can't understand why more owners don't use it. Is there a reason that I don't know about.
Acccording to their website the product needs to be used with an ionizer, ozonater and/or chlorine (all santizers). They even supply chlorine with their system so their claim of chlorine free is dubious at best! It is obviously not an EPA approved sanitizer since they include chlorine with it. I suspect it is an enzyme based product since they say not to use it within 6 hours of shocking and that is pretty standard for enzymes. Enzymes help digest organics in the water but they are not sanitizers. They can be useful products to use in conjunction with a standard sanitizing system to help reduce sanitizer demand but are not necessary for easy spa maintinance. I could find no MSDS nor ingredient listing for the product.
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Waterbear, please find out who you are talking to before going off on a tangent. I was speaking about a backyard pool not a commercial pool. I would point out I helped write the code for the health department.
Water borne illness can occur just as easily in a residential pool as in a commercial pool. Proper sanitizer levels are important in either! On the same note, such things as cyanuric acid levels, which most state health departments limit to a max of 100 ppm, are allowed to rise to levels well beyond that in residential pools and cause the owners no end of problems with algae blooms and possible damage to plaster finishes! Good pool maintenance is good pool maintenance, whether in a commercial or residential pool, don't you agree?
Whilst copper can cause green water, Iron normally causes green water as the brown colour you are referring to normally reflects with the blue pool to create a greenish tinge.
Not all pools are finished in a blue color these days, most fiberglass pools are white and the aggregate finishes come in a variity of colors. I was wondering if you were referring to the yellow water and blue finish causing the water to look green when I read your post but I stand by what I posted (and you just acknowledged it) that iron causes a yellow to brown color in the water.
In addition when iron is present an odd reaction occurs where algal growth accelrates on contact with chlorine inside the iron matrix. Perhaps once you have another fifteen years experience you will have treated some pools with cast iron pipework and will see this phenomenon.
Green water (or yellow water) from oxidized metals is an entirely different story then green water caused by algael blooms and needs to be treated differently. It is important to determine which is causing the problem. Algae will usually also cause the water to cloud while metals will color the water yet it remains clear. Also, if the color develops immediately after shocking then metals would be the suspect.
If you have metals dropping out of solution when using EDTA based product I would suggest you seriously invetigate the filter rate. As across four countries in more years than I carre to recall I have not seen this in every kind of water you care to name.
The majority of metal sequesterants on the market are HEDP based, not EDTA based. In fact, I only know of one personally that is EDTA based and that is NaturalChemistry's MetalFree (although there may be some others). The big ones (Jack's Magic, ProTeam MetalMagic, Advantis Metal Gon, and the vast majority of private label and white bottle products) are HEDP based or similar phosphonates.
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Okay, so the Trichlor is too slow dissolving, I can't control the flow rate in the floater so I always have too much free chlorine anyway, so I should swith to a Dichlor granule.
Thanks for the advice, every pool shop I've been to (5 of them locally) carry only 4 chlorine products...
1) Trichlor pucks labeled for spas
2) Trichlor pucks labeled for pools
3) Dicholor granules labeled for pools - and they freak at th suggestion of spa use
4) Trichlor granules labeled as shock only - again they freak at the suggestion of using this as a regular sanitizer
I'm going to ignore them and use the recommendations provided here.
Dichlor is Dichlor whether it is labeled shock or sanitizer. Shock is a verb, not a noun! It is something that you do to a pool or spa by raising the free chlorine high enough to reach beakpoint (break the chlorine/ammonia bond in the combined chlorine that forms in the water and release the ammonia) and is best done with a non stabilized chlorine, not dichor! This just goes to show how ignorant the pool industry and how money humgry the product manufacturers really are! (Hope there aren't any pool/spa chemical reps reading this but if you are you know it's the truth!) Diclor is what you want to use for normal chlorination. 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons will raise your Free chlorine approx 4-6 ppm for each 250 gallons of water (normal chlorination range) . For shocking unstabilized chlorine is your best choice. Dichlor adds stabilzier and when the stabilzer gets too high you need to drain and refill. If you shock with stabilized chlorine the stabilzer (cyanuric acid) levels can rise very quickly causing you to have to drain and refill you spa early! I personally prefer sodium hypochlorite (liquid) for shocking in either 5.25% or 6% strength. This is very easy to find in your grocery store. It is plain, unscented laundry bleach with no fragraces or thickeners or other such additives. The Regular strength bleach is 5.25% and one cup will effectively shock 250 gallons. Ultra Bleach is 6% and 3/4 cup effectively shocks 250 gallons. You can also sometimes find 6% liquid chlorine at pool stores but what they usually sell is either 10% or 12.5%. This is fine also, just dose the 10% at half the regular bleach dosage (1/2 cup per 250 gallons) and the 12.5% at 3/8 cup per 250 gallons. Most pool stores sell the liquid chlorine in 2.5 gallon jugs and it loses it's strength much faster than the more dilute bleach so if you only have a spa and not a pool and spa it will ususally have lost a lot a strenth before it is used up. This is why I like the bleach better. The lower concentration of sodium hypochlorite will maintain it's strength for a much longer time (Months if stored out of sunlight and heat)
Hope this is helpful.
BTW, bleach is also the best shock for a bromine system. Bromine requires an oxidizer to convert the bromine into hypobromous acid (the bromine sanitizer). Chlorine, MPS (non chlorine shock) and ozone are all effective at doing this and one is not really better than the other. However MPS will lower your pH and TA because it has a low pH and it also adds sulfates to the water, raising your TDS very quickly! Most people don't realize that bromine tablets contain both organic bromine AND either chlorine or MPS! Tablets by themselved will not properly sanitize the spa, you first need to add sodium bromide to create a bromine bank, then shock with an oxidizer to acitvate it. The tablets then help maintain the bromine levels. They are not necessary but do reduce the frequency of needing to shock the spa.
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Metal Gon removes metals from the water, stain and scale prevents calcium and other dissolved minerals from depositing on the spa. Metals are different than minerals.
Last time I checked calcium (and magnesium, the other 'mineral' that makes our water 'hard") were metals. Also the 'minerals' put into water by Nature 2, spafrog, and ionzers are copper and silver (or silver and zinc for the frog). Last time I checked they were metals also.In the pool and spa industry metals and minerals are one and the same!
Metal Gon (Advantis) is HEDP, a phosphonic acid derived seqesterant with a high chelation index for copper and iron. Stain and Scale (BioLab) is a different phosphonate (2-phosphono-1,2,4-butanetricarboxylic acid) with a high chelation index for calcium. However, all of the phosphonic acid derivatives (and the EDTA based products such as NaturalChemistry's MetalFree) all work in the same way. None of them remove metals from the water nor allow them to be filtered out, they react with the active sites on the metal ions and 'deactivate' them so they don't deposit as stain or scale nor oxidize and color the water. In effect the seqesterant makes them non reactive.
If you are putting metals (copper and silver) in your water with a N2 or ionizer to act as a sanitizer it is NOT a good idea to use a seqesterant or chelator. This will deactivate them and destroy what little sanitizing power they actually have! These products work by putting metal ions in the water (call them minerals if you must). If you seqester them they have no activity and won't sanitize. It is the metals these product put into the water that have the slight and very slow sanitizing effect!
HEDP is the most commen seqesterant used in the pool and spa industry, btw. It is found in the majority of 'metal remover' products such as Metal Gon, Jack's Magic, Metal Magic, etc. A few are based on EDTA since it will not add orthophosphates to the water which hasd been linked to algae blooms (a debatable subject) and has made a very good market for phosphate removers (another dubious product), and some others use other phosphonates when a higher specific activity to chelate calcium is desired. However, even if a specific sequesterant has a higher activity for one type of metal it will still react with ANY metal ions present in the water so using any type of seqestering agent with a copper/silver or silver santizing system is NOT a good idea!
Hope this clears up the confusion!
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The di-chlor for the pool is fine for the spa. The youngsters at your pool shop probably don't remember when we had nothing but Di-chlor for spas (in my country anyway).
I can;t think why Tri-Chlor would not be suitable for hotwater. The difference between the di and tri chlor is simply the amount of chlorine Tri has 3 and di 2. They are both essentially the same chemical. The di chlor will have more stabiliser present.
The main reason that trichlor is not for hot tubs is because it is very slow dissoving and very acidic! The bather load in a spa is much greater than in a pool and a fast dissolving form of chlorine is needed. The very low pH of trichlor in the small volume of water in the spa can cause problems with the water's pH and TA very quickly. If you want to use stabilzed chlorine then you need dichlor. Dichlor does not come in tablet form, only in granular. I don't know of any chlorine tablets that are packaged for spa use. (the only forms of chlorine that come in tablets are trichlor and calcium hypochlorite). Many state health departments now say that only unstabilized chlorine should be used in hot tubs (I don't necessisarly agree) and some manufacurers, such as HTH, now only sell calcium hypochlorite packaged for spa use.
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I think that I'll drain and refill I just hated to do that right after fillin it.
Baquaspa is NOT compatible with bromine or chlorine. You need to drain and refill or you will have some nasty colored water!
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What are your opinions on Wal-mart chemicals, I believe they are spa time?
Lets look at spa chemicals for a minute, doesn't matter the brand
Alkalinity increaser is sodium bicarbonate, sometimes called sodium hydrogen carbonate (different name for same chemical). You probably have this in your kitchen or medicine chest. It's baking soda! Most of it is manufactured by Church and Dwight and repackaged. You might know the Church and Dwight brand as Arm and Hammer!
pH increaser is sodium carbonate, also called soda ash. You might have this in your laundry room as washing soda. Also mostly manufactured by Church and Dwight and repackaged.
Dry pH decreaser is sodium bisulfate. Period! If you don't believe me look at the ingredients on just about any brand out there. Muratic acid and sulfuric acid are not commenly used in spas because the dosing is difficult unless they are sold in very diluted strengths. So if you are using a liquid pH decreaser for spas you are paying for mostly water with just a little bit of acid in it.
Calcium hardness increaser is cacium chloride. Most of it is manufactured by Dow Chemical and then repackaged. The Dow brand is DowFlake. It is sold by Dow as a De-icer and for pool and spa use!
If you are using a chlorine system then you are either using dichlor (stabilized granules), cacium hypochlorite (unstabilzed granules), lithium hypochlorite(very expensive unstabilzied granules), or sodium hypchlorite (liquid chlorine....also the same as laundry bleach, sometimes a stronger strength but not always!). Trichlor is not used in spas (or shouldn't be). It is too acidic and dissolves too slowly.
If you are using a bromine system then your chemical to create your bromine bank is sodium bromide. Your oxidizer is either a form of chlorine (usually dichlor or calcium hypochlorite in a 2 part bromine system that uses chlorine for the oxidizer) or is potassium monopersulfate (MPS), also called non chlorine shock.
Once again MPS is MPS. It's trade name is Oxone and was developed and manufactured by DuPont. They still sell it under that brand name. It is repackaged by other companies.
Bromine tabs are all basically 1-BROMO-3-CHLORO-5.5-DIMETHYLHYDANTION. This is a compount of bromine stabilzed with dimethylhyndation and it contains chlorine to acitive the bromine. There are a few bromine tabs on the market that contain MPS instead of chlorine.
For bromine to work it needs an oxidizer, usually chlorine or MPS (Ozone works also). Bromine by itself will not sanitize.
Water enhancers and conditioners are usually borax or a mixture of borax and dry acid (Technically borax is sodium tetraborate decahydrate, it has ten water molecules attached and the commercial products are sodium tetraborate pentahydrate, 5 water molecules attached so on a weight basis it is a bit more concentrated but it is still borax!) These are added to a concentration of 30-50 ppm to act as an algaestat, reduce sanitizer demand, help stabilize pH, and soften the water. The acid is needed to offset the pH increase from the borax. (BTW, these products work very well when used properly!). I don't believe that Walmart sells this type of chemical.
If you are buying chemicals at Walmart you are not using a biguanide sanitation system (SoftSoak, BaquaSpa, Revacil, etc.). They don't sell one.
Now as to my opinion of Walmart chemicals. The only drawback I have seen to some of them is that they sell them with more fillers so you need to use more of them. If the price is cheaper but you need more for the same dosage of active ingredients then you really aren't saving money. What you need to look at with ANY pool or spa chemical is how much does it cost per dose. Often times the cheaper products are the most expensive to use. (but not always)
I could continue with metal removers (majority are HEDP, a few are EDTA), clarifiers (sodium polyacrylate or chitosan), defoamers (simethicone), algaecides (there are really only a few of them--copper, liner quats, polyquat, inorganic ammonia, sodium bromide, silver, or mixtures of these) but I think you get the picture.
Hope this is helpful.
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The most common metal that turns your water green after shock dosing is Iron.
Actually, copper is what will turn the water green after shocking. Iron will turn it yellow to brownish, depending on the iron concentration! Manganese will cause a purple coloration. The reason the water colors is because the oxidation state of the metal ions in the water is changed by the chlorine (oxidizing agent). By raising the pH and the oxidizer level it is possible to cause the metals to precipitate out of solution but it is not a recommended procedure unless you REALLY understand the chemistry that is going on.
The home test for iron is to test the chlorine if it is reading at a reasonable level and the water is green most likely it is iron. To fix iron you need to add more chlorine, and lots of it. The iron has to be oxidised before the water will come clear. The usual practice is to shock it to 10-15 mg/l nightly and run the filter constantly. Nothing will change for several days then suddenly the water will be crystal clear.
In theory this practice will work by causing the metals to precipitate out of solution and get filtered out but in actual practice what usually happens is that the metals deposit in the pool as stain, which is a more difficult problem to deal with!. The pH has to be closely monitored for this to work and the chlorine needs to be introcduced slowly into the skimmer so the staining will occur in the filter and not on the pool surfaces. It is a risky procedure at best!
You can swim in water with chlorine as low as you like, however chlorine is there to protect you and your family from bacteria build up. Bacteria is introduced to the pool from a myriad of sources including from the bather themselves. Depending on temperature you may want to increase or decrease your chlorine level, but should probably not go below 1.5 mg/l for safe bathing.
Most state health departments now say that chlorine levels should not go under 2 ppm and allow swimming up to 10 ppm for both pools and hot tubs. I personally would not go swimming if the chlorine levels were not adequite for proper sanitation. Just because the water looks clear and clean does not mean it is safe to swim in. It could contain a very high bacteria count and could cause illness.
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Question:
Why are Trichlor tablets/pucks in a floater NOT recomended for spa use? All the pool shops carry them as spa sanitizer.
The pucks for spa use are bromine, not chlorine. Trichlor is too slow dissolving, too acidic, and has too much stabilzier to be used successfully in a hot tub.
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dishwasher has detergent and could disperse soap for a nice bubble bath and perhaps unneccasary TDS into the water.
just to reinterate, powdered automatic dishwasher detergent such as Electrosol or Cascade is basically TSP. It is what is recommended by Unicel, who is one of the largest manufacturers of OEM and replacement cartridtges and others. http://www.unicelfilters.com/pool_owners/c...orine_users.asp
Using the dishwasher is probably not as effective as soaking overnight but it might work. In either case be sure to rinse it cart off well with a hose.
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How about Robarb Filter Cleaner or MA w/ water?
Muriatic acid should never be used to clean a filter unless the orgainics have been removed first with TSP or a filter cleaner. Muriatic acid will react with the organics on the filter and cause them to harden into a a cement like substance, ruining the cartridge. The only time a filter should be acid washed is if there is a lot of scale build up on it, and then only after being soaked in a degreaser.
Most commercial filter cleaner are propriatary mixtures of some type of acid and degreaser so they can usually do the job in one step.
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Has anyone used TSP " Trisodium phosphate " ?
It is a good cleaner.
I have not tried cleaning my filter with it yet but a friend of mine said he used it.
TSP is good grease remover, and I have used it to clean the wood clapboard on my house and my deck.
I read an article on using a mixture of TSP and Oxygen bleach " Sodium percarbonate " (OxiClean is 40% Sodium percarbonate) mixed with warm / hot water as a cleaner for just about anything.
I do not think this would cause foaming.
Anyone here tried this?
TSP (the real stuff, NOT the substitute sold in many areas where phosphates are banned) is the best filter cleaner there is for chlorine and bromine systems. It is what is recommended by most of the OEM and replacement filter manufacturers such as Unicel and Pleatco. Hose off, soak overnight in a solution of one cup TSP to every 5 gallons of water, and then hose off again.
If you live in an area where real TSP has been banned because of phosphates (Florida for example) then you can use powdered automatic dishwasher detergent such as Electrosol or Cascase instead of TSP. It costs a bit more but works just as well! Use the same one cup to each 5 gallons of water for soaking.
If you are using biguanide (SoftSoak, BaquaSpa, Revacil, etc) for sanitation you need to use a special filter cleaner designed for biguanide systems to remove the grey sticky film that forms on the filter. Once it is removed you can soak in TSP if you need to ( you usually don't if you are cleaning your filter regularly). If you use TSP without removing the film first with a special cleaner it wil turn into a gummy mess and your filter cartridge will need to be replaced!
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So..if its does not sanitize..i should be seeing soemthing..dirty water..or foul smell..or something right? Or, could be water still be really bad but not have any of those symptoms?
Like I said before, clear water does not always mean safe water. by the time the water is foul smelling and cloudy it will be REAL microbe soup!
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Waterbear and others, I posted this earlier, but thought I would try it again.
Howdy! We are owners of a new Sundance Cameo for about three weeks now. We are struggling with many of the same issues that I have been reading on this board, but I am bound and determined to figure it out. I think one thing I need to do right away is to buy a testor kit and stop relying on the test strips.
My question right now relates to the hardness of our well water. A local spa dealer tested my well (& spa) water for me a couple of days ago, and confirmed that my test strips are not conclusive, and that my well water is very hard - 320 PPM. Because we are on a shared water well system, and my wife wanted to irrigate a large vegetable garden, I spent the money to build a 1750 gallon rainwater collection system when we built the house for purposes of watering her garden. The system collects water off of the roof of the house into screen protected gutters. The water is stored in a totally enclosed concrete cistern. I have made provisions for sediment traps on all three gutter down legs, as well as the up-leg to the cistern (the water is pushed up into the tank by head pressure from the top of the collection pipes.) With all that said, I would like to ask if it would be easier for me to use the rainwater (filtered of course) when I fill my tub and adjust the chemical balance of the rainwater rather than use the well water and struggle with the water chemistry the way I am now.
Any suggestion will be appreciated.
JG
The rainwater should work but be aware that rainwater these days tends to be acidic. Be sure to test the pH and rasie it immediately to avoid damage to the heat exchanger in your tub. Did your dealer test for calcium hardness or total hardness. Total hardness is always higher than cacium hardness. A calcium hardness up to 400 ppm is not really a problem at all. Just keep tabs on your pH and don't let it climb too high (try to keep it around 7.6 at the most) and you should not have a problem with scale deposits. If you decide to use the rainwater make sure the pH is at least 7.2 when it is put in the tub and adjust your calcium to around 125 ppm or higher
The rainwater should work but be aware that rainwater these days tends to be acidic. Be sure to test the pH and rasie it immediately to avoid damage to the heat exchanger in your tub. Did your dealer test for calcium hardness or total hardness. Total hardness is always higher than cacium hardness. A calcium hardness up to 400 ppm is not really a problem at all. Just keep tabs on your pH and don't let it climb too high (try to keep it around 7.6 at the most) and you should not have a problem with scale deposits. If you decide to use the rainwater make sure the pH is at least 7.2 when it is put in the tub and adjust your calcium to around 125 ppm or higher.
With well water my concern would not be the calcium levels but the presence of either iron or copper, which are very commen in well water. These metals can cause more problems then high calcium levels. Have your well water tested for them and if they are high then you would probably be better off using the rain water to fill the tub.
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Thanks Waterbear....is this right that I don't have the ability to measure ORP levels myself ? What is CYA sold as?
Not unless you invest in some very expensive equipment that really isn't necessary to maintain your spa. CYA is sold as stabilizer or conditioner at pool supply stores (and places like walmart and home depot in the pool department). Most people just use dichor which is about half CYA. If you test the CYA levels with a drop based kit (most are accurate to 10 ppm) then you can stop the dichlor when your CYA is about 30 ppm and switch to liquid chlorine (or calcium hypochlorite) for sanitation and you will not have to worry about overstabiliaztion.
I thought I read that regular household bleach would damage the guts of the spa somewhere? I can't recall where....
Chlorine is chlorine. Household bleach is EXACTLY the same as liquid chlorine except about half the strength usually (sometime it's exactly the same strenth if you buy the 6%)
The strips that came with the spa (Nature 2) have so far helped us keep the the water fresh, clear, odorless and feeling good, and the indicator pads coloring do seem to adjust responsively whenever we need to balance something.
The second bottle I bought (Accucheck)...the pad colors never get to the intensity to match the key on the back and I don't trust them.
Test strips are accurate but really don't have the precision needed for water balancing. For exampe, most test strips will tell you your pH is somewhere between 7.2 and 7.8. That is a very big range and goes from acceptable to too high!
The drop based kits seem kind of intimidating
They are actually very easy to use once you learn to use them. The good kits come with very clear instructions
I don't suppose I can get away with the 14 dollar one I saw in the grocery store yesterday?
You get what you pay for. Consider how much you spent on your spa and then consider if $50-60 dollars is really a lot of money to pay for a GOOD test kit. The cheaper kits tend to have some problems with some of the tests.....mostly the pH test giving inaccurate results when chlorine levels are high and interferacnes with the calcium test, The better kits don't suffer from these problems as much.
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I use a re-agent test kit for my testing and after use my pH is always above 8.0.
Is using pH stabalizer an effective way of handling this? I am worried that if I drop the CH below the recommended ppm to use the pH stabalizer it could have adverse affects.
IF you pH is reading high right after adding the dichlor then it is possible that the chlorine is causing interference with the pH test. The reagent used to test pH is phenol red which tests a pH range of 6.8 to 8.2. In the presence of high chlorine levels it is converted to chlorophenol red which will give exactly the same color results for a ph of 4.8 to 6.6. If you are adding enough dichlor to raise your free chlorine in the nieghborhood of 10 ppm or higher you are likely to get this interferance with the pH test. The test might indicate that your pH is 8.0 or above but in reality it is much lower. If the phenol red has been converted to chloropheno red then all you really know about the pH is that it is somewhere above 6.8! Cheap test kits are more likely to have this problem. I recommend kits by Taylor Technologies because they include a chlorine neutralizer in their pH indicator which helps eliminate this problem.Try testing your pH and adjusting it before you add the dichlor and make sure your free chlorine reading is not high when you test the pH. This is a commen problem. There are various interferances that can give you inaccurate test results and most of the inexpensive test kits really don't doucment them. Compared to what your hot tub cost investing about $50-$60 in a GOOD test kit is really not a big investment. Test strips really don't have the precision needed for water balancing and the cheap kits just don't work that well. NEver try and test your pH ater shocking because it just won't work.
Hope this helps
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Ok...so...if i am happy with the smell (or lack there off), and no one is getting any rashes/itchy stuff...i should be ok?
THe PH level seems fine so far, maybe a little high, alk and calcium are all fine. Of course, the bromine test does not change color at all. (Am using test strips).
if your bromine test is not changing color then it is safe to assume that their is probably NO residual sanitzer in your water! IMHO, that will provide a breeding ground for water borne nasties. There are only 3 EPA approved sanitizers for hot tubs--chorine, bromine, and biguaide (SoftSoak, BaquaSpa, Revacil, etc.). It's your tub so you can do what you want but personally, I would not soak in it if there was no sanitizer in the water.
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What would these pathogens do to us?
What should i look out for??
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On another note, we went away for the weekend to a hotel. Most of my family got a rash from the tub. Wife and two kids anyway. Think the chlorine was really high.
You just learned what can happen from pathogens in the water. What you got sounds like hot tub folliculitis from pseudomonas. It is one of the most commen things you can catch in a hot tub. If you smelled a strong chlorine smell in the hotel hot tub (you said you thought the chlorine was too high so I am assuming you could smell a chlorine odor....that would be chloramines) then the tub was NOT properly sanitzed and needed MORE chorine to break down the chloramines. This is what we call 'shocking' and it is why we do it!
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My wife wanted to try spa magic in our new tub (we had another one in our old house) so i gave in.
We have been running it for about two weeks now, and am actually suprised that it seems to work.
I think the water smells a wee bit..but maybe it just smells different then i am used to. She (and the rest of the people who have been in) think its fine.
We use the spa every day, several times a day usually. 4 kids (3, 3, 8, and 11) so, lots of chances to get the water..umm..dirty.
Just be aware that water that looks clean and clear can have harmful pathogens growing in it well before it starts to get cloudy and smell.
Alternatives To Chemicals
in Hot Tub Water Chemistry
Posted
For people twho have a true sentivivity to halogens (chlorine and bromine) then biguaide is about the only alternative there is! It is an effective sanitizing system. Biggest drawbacks are the price, the more frequent filter cleaning, and the possibility of water mold forming. Other than that it might just be the ticket for you!