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Our hot tub is tripping the gfci about every two weeks. I have no idea how to diagnose teh problem since it it so intermittent without simply throwing $$ at replacing pieces. Any thoughts on diagnostics? Thanks -J

Yep, I guess leaving it open and dropping to 0 was a bad thing. Thanks Waterbear. I'll shock a couple of times and see what happens. Should I add some extra sodium bromide since I will be oxidizing the reserve? -J

Yes, but the spa has been covered except for that first day. -J

OK, so I made a switch from dichlor/bleach to 3 step bromine, and I am having trouble keeping teh Bromine level up in the spa. This is what I did... 1. Drain rinse and fill, spa approx 250 gal. 2. We're lucky here to have very balanced water from the tap... just have to add a touch of borax. 3. Add 1.25oz of Sodium Bromide 4. Add about 10tbsp of 6% bleach 5. Ran pumps and tested bromine above 10%... good good. 6. Ran out of daylight, so covered the spa and checked the next am. Bromine level at 5. 7. Uncovered the spa to let sun heat the water, checked in the evening, Bromine at 0. 8. Probably should have added bleach to oxidize some bromine, but didn't... Spa covered and left alone. 9. Checked next AM, Bromine at 1.5, again, probably should have added bleach but didn't. Figured I wanted to see where it was in about 8 hours without doing anything. 10. Checked in the evening, bromine around 1. Wanted to use the spa that evening so I added about 1/4 cup of bleach to bring bromine to 6ppm and had a soak. (2 people, 30 min) 11. No further checking after the soak. Covered spa overnight. 12. This AM check bromine at 1ppm. So, my floater is opened all the way with 4 tabs. I have this floater... seems pretty standard. So I'm wondering why the bromine level isn't maintaining. Should I be more patient and keep adding bleach to oxidize the reserve? I looked up the MSDS for the bromine tablets that I have. They are 96% 1-bromo-3-chloro-5,5-dimethylimidazolidine-2,4-dione and says the active bromine is 83.5% and active chlorine is 28.2%. Thanks for the help! -J

Thanks everyone for the help so far. The bromine went down to around 6 within a few hours and I set the floater to the lowest setting and covered the spa for the night. I checked bromine this am and it was at 5. I left the spa uncoveredall day to let the sun heat the water (living in the desert has its advantages) and about 6 hours later the reading was 1. No use or circulation other than the standard filtration which is set to circulate for 15 min every 6 hours and 5 min every 2 hours. Does an uncovered spa eat bromine that much faster?

well, I drained the tub, rinsed, refilled and added started the bromine with a sodium bromide/bleach shock. Guy at the pool supply gave me a couple of bromine tabs to try... I had to invest 10 bucks in the experiment for a packet of sodium bromide and a floater. We'll see how it works out, though after reading the bromine for beginners thread, I am excited that the system once tuned is almost completely hands off. Me likey. How much time should I expect after initial shock for the bromine to dissipate and add the floater? Thanks! -J

Was the tub being oxidized with chlorine or MPS? MPS is a known to be a skin irritant for many people. Just a thought for you since 3 step bromine would solve your other problem without needed to invest in a lot of expensive dosing equipment. It's possible. It was a few years ago, and I'm not sure of the owner(s) maintenance procedures to tell you the truth. It was two different tubs, so I guess it's possible. I guess I could try 3 step, but I'd hate to buy all of the chemicals only to have it cause a problem. Maybe I'll stop by the store and see if they have small quantities of what I need. -J

I've had mild skin reaction to bromine tubs in the past. It is definitely time to change the water in the tub, and that is actually this weekend's project. Our soaks are usually about 30 min, and I add 1/4 cup per person (so I guess more like 4ppm per person) . I checked the CYA level last week and it's still at 40-ish (I usually add 1tsp a week of Dichlor to keep it in range) One thing I am bad about with my maintenance is shocking. I have only shocked the tub twice in two months (which consists of dumping a cup of bleach to add 14ppm) So that brings me back to the auto addition. I actually have a peristaltic pump from my reef aquarium days. I was thinking of setting that up to add bleach by calculating how many ml/hr I need for the maintenance dose. -J

The problem is that we don't know when we will use it, so I've been adding bleach every night so the next evening its around 2-3ppm. This works out to about 1/4 cup of 6% per day in a 270 gal tub. After use I'll add about 5ppm per person plus the maintenance dose for the next day. -j

Been reading this forum for a while now, and I must say I really appreciate all of the information found here. Thanks to finding this forum and everyones posts, I have a very stable/clean spa. So I use the Dichlor/Bleach method due to personal health concerns with Bromine. My biggest problem is that it is very hard for me to maintain my Chlorine levels since our spa is so small. I really want a little bit more of a hands off approach. Is there any way to add the bleach portion automatically? I was hoping that there was a way of using tablets in a floater, but all of the tablets I can find are Trichlor which is a no-no from what I read. Any ideas? -J