dlleno
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Posts posted by dlleno
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I'm in the camp that eliminates perfumes altogether. my family prefers the smell of bromine over chlorine, so thats our "perfume". my philosophy is minimalist -- I avoid anything and everything except the chemicals necessary to maintain a safe spa. anything above and beyond this is just adding risk and potential headaches down the road.
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If you would like a "regular joe" story regarding ahh-some, I have posted a rather long (but detailed) set of experiments around my personal journey understanding/correcting biofilms. The short of it is that the product does work and I recommended it highly, but if you want to read about how I came to that conclusion my experiment is posted here.
this happens to be my hobby photography site that happens to have a blog capability. note that many people operate hot tubs successfully while remaining blind to the nefarious nature of biofilms, so keep in mind that there are two sides to the question: I'm on the side that seeks to understand them and eliminate the potential for their growth.
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I ran with TA=30 with good success but keep in mind that 30 is very close to a handing you a precipitous drop in pH which you don't want. So you gotta watch things very closely when you get that low. I stopped chasing TA as a number to achieve and controlled pH with acid until TA dropped to 30-40 at which time pH was easier to control. yes the duda diesel borates are fantastic.
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there are some good bromine articles here; it would be good to study those. you won 't have to start over, but I would recommend understanding the bromine program you are using, so you can solve problems later. without sodium bromide in the water you may have a partial CL/ Br spa which isn't a disaster its just a fact. no reason you can't add the bromide when the CL reading drops to 3ppm or so.
I'd also recommend investing is a good drop test kit like the taylor 2106. it may seem daunting at first but you will get way more accurate readings, and that will be important as you dial in the floater so that your Br concentrations don't get too high. floaters are popular and many are successful with them: I just find that i would rather do things myself so I just use granular CL (no floater) to make bromine from the bromide salts.
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nice work cooper772. a regular purge program (starting out by purging at every drain) will allow you to assess how often a purge is actually necessary, given your own usage and maintenance. in my experimentation I found that I still purged every time just because I didn't 't want any of that stuff to grow. as long as I am releasing something in the purge, I'll do it again on the next drain. you can also throw your filters in to the vessel when you purge, and they won't pick up alot of new stuff.
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I found that Ahh-Some didn't affect any of my readings but I note that best practices dictate using an elevated CL level during the purge -- that by itself can throw off the drop test readings for pH; the purple color is strong evidence of that. Note that you're adding roughly a tablespoon of Ahh-Some to a few hundred gallons of water, so I can't imagine it having any measurable impact, by itself.
One scenario I have not tested, however, is the pH contribution of whatever issues ahh-some is helping you correct. I have no idea what would happen to the balance numbers with the sudden release of contaminants within the vessel itself, because its not important
. The best practice to follow for an ahh-some purge is to bring the water balance into the ballpark, and not to worry about it. you'll be draining the spa anyway
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I try to simplify as much as possible, and don't go to near this amount of rigor to achieve a near-zero CSI with such precision. The important thing to remember is that aeration raises pH so that you can use dry acid to lower both TA and pH -- sounds like you've got that down. As for keeping it simple I just use my spa even when TA is high, and continue to add acid for a few days until I achieve TA in the 50-ish region (I don't "adjust TA" before using the spa).
Target pH measuring conditions are quiescent, yes.
Also keep in mind that you can go to a negative CSI without issues in an acrylic spa, and this allows some additional freedom in the pH rise department as well. I have CH of about 100-120 and TA=40. your CA numbers are pretty high -- can you lower that with a mixture of soft water perhaps?
here's to negative CSI
-doug
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yes as you know, the baquagoo system is not chemically compatible with bromine. i would use this opportunity to purge the spa with Ahh-some before you switch. I'm a big fan of purging regularly anyway, but cutting over to bromine makes it even more beneficial
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sure you can. you are being mis-informed.
First of all - there are many success stories with bromine floaters -- you should be able to dial it in or replace yours with one that works better. That said, I'm personally not a fan of floaters and use a simple granular addition of Chlorine in my bromine spa -- just like your mis-informed lady at the pool store suggests is only available for chlorine spas. search around this site and you can find threads about the "two-step" technique, but in a nutshell here is what I do
1. Upon first fill, dose with sodium bromide salts to create a bromide reserve.
2. when you use the spa, add pure ordinary un-adulterated dichlor (granulated chlorine) just like you had a chlorine spa. only with the bromide salts present, the oxidizer will result in bromine.
voila. a bromine spa without a floater.
its really that simple. you can even use a so-called "one step" bromine plan where you buy a prepared combination of sodium bromide and dichlor granules and dose with that regularly (no step 1 above). I'm not a fan of this method, so I just use the two-step method above.
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This is great information and corroborates my own findings that Ahh-Some is superior to Seaklear. What I wish to point out is that your spa is 4 years old (I think you said), and that you regularly purged with SeaKlear. Thats a lot of purges. it means to me that yucko's have been accumulating in your spa in spite of the SeaKlear purges and it took several Ahh-Some purges to get things right again. This is exactly what i found in my experiment -- only yours is just more conclusive: SeaKlear leaves stuff behind that Ahh-Some gets. i will note that in my experiment I purged twice with SeaKlear just to make sure that I gave this product all possible chances to work. The 2nd SeaKlear purge released nothing, but left quite a bit of stuff behind that Ahh-some released.
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I'd be inclined to know more about your water source, and also the procedure you used to clean your filters and return them to the spa and the amount of the yucko material present (did any more appear). hard to identify with little information
What you picture could have been dislodged from your filters and re-introduced to the water, or it could be some spontaneously dislodged gunk in your equipment/pipes. Do you see any material sticking to the vessel walls or is it restricted to just the filter compartment? If just the filter compartment I'd be inclined to suggest that your filters maybe were not perfectly clean when you put them back in. you could wipe up the material with a micro-fiber cloth and see if it re-appears. But without a better understanding of details my inclination would be to purge, but thats just because on my spa -- if i changed the water and cleaned the filters and found that stuff still around I would start to worry that there might be more where that came from.
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thats a good overview/summary yes. There are some details that the label directions will outline, such as adding chlorine, removing the filters, ,etc. But yes you have the gist of it
BTW I have re-written the account of my experiences with purging on a blog. its just a more polished presentation (with photos)
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Nice info and summary. Its all making sense now ...I didn't realize you were only waiting 30 min between purges but yes I'm glad you stopped that routine and switched to the maintenance dose. I did that on my own spa and you were just arriving at that Pont! Turns out the low dose is a great clarifier. I was reluctant to do it but I'm convinced now. Some observations
Seaklear doesn'hold a candle to ahhsome . Your experience with 4 years using it shows that. My experience does as well.
As long as I get a release I keep purging but I let the dose sit over night. I'm glad you got some advise straight from the source that's so cool. I'm going to remember next time it's OK to quit earlier and switch to maintainable dose.
Keep watching your filters! Only thing i would add here is to suggest you purge every drain and,see what you get.
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Just keep purging until you no longer get any results. As long as you get an improvement you gotta keep going! BTW I've coached folks to purge up to 10 times before solving the problem.
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SeaKlear is an interesting product -- it produced a result on my spa so its not useless by any means; I just think based on my experimental results that there's something about Ahh-Some that allows it to clean better. what that is I don't know but I was certainly astonished to see what Ahh-Some removed and the other products left behind.
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I replied to your email, to your post on my blog, and to your thread on TFP. Bottom line is that if I were in your situation I would purge with Ahh-some repeatedly (no need to heat or balance) until you get a clean spa. fill-dose-drain-repeat until you get no more release (on my spa it took two purges). You can throw the filters into the dosed vessel as the label directions indicate, but In your situation I think I would leave the filters out -- clean them in a separate solution of Ahh-some mixed with your favorite de-greaser. If you want to get extra *** like I did -- after you achieve a clean spa (no more release while dosed with ahh-some) THEN put your CLEANED filters into their normal positions and fire up the jets. wipe up anything that may accumulate on the vessel walls. if you've cleaned them well this step will not produce anything remarkable.
When you achieve a clean spa releasing no knew material, with filters installed and dosed with ahh-some, you can smile because this is not a trivial amount of effort.
I'm not an expert in metals contamination but suggest you could have had a transient condition in your fill water or even copper erosion from your heating elements, along with whatever unknown bad guys growing in your water. I put one of those cheap sediment filters (with the rope wound filter elements you get at home depot) and that traps the sometimes transient iron content if my city water happens to be mucking with one or more of their wells.
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if you're committed to a half drain, why not just do a full drain? Just a point here, but the partial drain will also dilute the foam control products as well.
But since you've already purged, then yea chem geek's advise is good here -- after your partial drain/dilution, fire up all the jets and open up all the air intakes to generate as much agitation as possible, and just start scooping off the foam, and keep scooping and scooping. don't add any anti-foam agents at this point -- your goal is to make foam and scoop it out.
if you were going to drain completely I would ask you to help the forum out and experiment with another purge:
1. tell us what you have used to purge previously (SeaKlear purge?), and the results (did you get much material release?)
2. give us please an very general overview of your water history, i.e. have you purged many times before, with what product, etc..
2. Dose your spa with Ahh-Some before you drain. follow Ahh-some label directions
3. Report back on the the results (did Ahh-Some do anything).
I'd just like to obtain some data other than mine (previously referenced) and this would help collect more data. But if you can solve your immediate problem without a purge then by all means do that.
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though I've never gone through what you are experiencing, I'd say you've done about all you can. the anti-splash ingredients are just not responding to traditional anit-foam treatments, so i think your best bet is to to purge with Ahh-some per label directions and drain.
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It's the hot tub and jetted bath product, yes.
https://www.amazon.com/Ahh-Some-Jetted-Bath-Plumbing-Cleaner/dp/B0030MYGXW
Sorry all for the severe thread drift...
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yes, well in the situation where a guest gets sick (whether you know about it or not) you want to take no chances. "based on the readings" is like saying the Olympic diving pool was green "because of alkalinity" ... but I digress
just keep in mind that especially in a commercial situation you are responsible for maintaining a healthy spa, and if it were me I would want to make sure that the spa is purged and drained regularly to avoid the accumulations of biofilm or a food supply for biofilm. the last think you want is a guest claiming that they got a rash or something after using your spa, so I applaud you for heading in that direction.
I'll just give my opinion for what its worth, with the greatest respect for what you are doing (and I applaud you for investigating!) , but I think its treading on very thin ice to operate a vacation rental spa where you are basically treating the spa like a hotel in-room wirlpool with a bromine floater without changing the water in between guests. Also, with no process in place to check and adjust sanitizer or pH during the guest stay its really a risk imho. Again, this is just my opinion, but based on what I purge out of my OWN spa I would not even consider operating a vacation rental without draining after every group, and purging on the order of once per month at least. I just think its dangerous to have warm water, great accumulations of bather waste, oils and such from who knows where that are not all all oxdized or trapped in the filter. If i may make a suggestion, it would be this: the next time you have the opportunity to drain, go through purge process with the Ahh-some product I mentioned earlier. Just see what happens! you might be astonished at what you thought was oxidized but is really hiding in your pipes
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Well, I have personally used my own spa at 10ppm bromine, but that isn't recommended especially in a commercial situation! I did it to introduce a sanitizer demand (lol) to lower the level quicker! But you really need to stay inside of established commercial norms its seems to me, as people do pay to use the spa which means its "commercial" in that sense, although I don't pretend expertise in this area. 62..5 gallons per person is a very very heavy bather load, so I wouldn't expect much life out of the water at all
about the shock. I don't think you can, frankly, and here's why: Suppose you shocked to 10ppm (bromine) -- that is only slightly higher than the 4-6ppm normal range accepted for Bromine so it really isn't a shock at all, its just over-sanitizing
. But 10ppm is higher than acceptable and people with any sensitivity to halogens could be affected, so you have to achieve 6ppm before the new guests take over the spa. With ozone in use, and sodium bromide salts in the water (as chem geek discusses above) your normal decay rate (with no bather load and no residual from the guests) would require 3 days to decay back to 6ppm! But the thing is, you DO have residual bather waste from the previous guests; you just don't know how much , so you cant really determine what shock value to use, and you don't know how much sanitizer they already added before they left. So what I'm suggesting is that you just forget about shocking -- just raise bromine level to 6ppm asap when the guests leave and measure it frequently over the next few hours to maintain 6ppm while you adjust other stuff. You want 6ppm, the top of the acceptable range, when the new guests arrive. what is your bromine delivery method?
as for education, i was thinking of a personal 10 minute face-to-face training session to make sure the guests know how to add bromine or to adjust any other parameters that might go wacko under such a heavy bather load, but written instructions I'm sure will work (if they have questions they would contact you). do you have the guests adjust pH as well?
have you considered establishing a requirement that guests shower before entering the spa? it would be the honor system, but better than nothing
another thing to consider, since the spa is SO heavily used and by a great variety of people over a short period of time, is to purge it every time you drain. here on this forum we have found (experimentally) that the product called 'Ahh-Some' is a very good purge product, as verified by my own personal story as well. Just add the correct amount of the product (follow label directions) to the spa before you drain. combine that with a 20-ish ppm bromine shock. in the afore mentioned article, I had a well-maintained spa with clear water in great shape (low bather load), and no unusual sanitizer demand and I STILL released copious amounts of waste from my spa with an Ahh-some purge, so I'm now a believer in purging frequently and especially in a commercial situation I would purge every drain.
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Yea I can see the challenge. Its not hard to imagine the very high bather loads associated with a vacation rental, not to mention the oils and sunscreens as you mention. So the 4-6 weeks water life doesn't surprise me. How much time to you reserve for draining and refilling when it's time to do that? Sorry if you've already given this information, but how large is the spa (gallons), how many people use it during their stay, for how long, and do you have a rigorous education session prior to each rental?
I'm struggling to offer something useful here, in terms of a suggestion, but the only things that come to mind are:
1. maybe you should in fact consider a 24 hour change-over time just to guarantee the spa's condition for the new guests, and to assure them that you take meticulous care of the spa. If someone got sick, for example, 6 hours isn't enough time to do anything major like draining, purging, ,or a decon. What do you do today in that situation?
2. Pardon the question, but are you using Bromine, is there an ozone generator, and have you considered chlorine? I don't know about doing this on a regular basis, but at least with a chlorine spa you can correct an "overdose" with peroxide.
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I thought it would be helpful to add my experience to Richard's comments on the subject of ozone in a bromine spa
If the ozonator is working, then maintaining a bromide bank -- around 30 ppm bromide -- should have the ozone maintain a background level of bromine.
absolutely right. in my 2013 Grandee, the corona discharge ozone generator is capable of maintaining a small ( less than 1ppm) background level. However, in order for this to happen, there must be no bather or residual load, and no bio contaminants present. A stray spider, bee, pollen from nearby trees or other organic matter that might find its way under the cover can upset this balance very quickly, and if the ozone generator is not able to keep up with the additional load, the spa will quickly return to a zero sanitizer level which is not a good thing.
But right after a good Ahh-some purge it works beautifully, especially if the cover fits well and there are no dust stormsIf you shock, it goes high not just to normal. The problem with adding too much is that it will take time to get lowered but if you add the right amount after a soak then it should drop down to normal within 24 hours. So managing a vacation rental is tough, but at least the ozonator helps.
for sure. with a modern (late model) truly "clean" bromine spa with a strong corona discharge ozone in use (my Grandee for example), the sanitizer decay rate can be substantially less than 25% over 24 hours and the decay behavior appears to be rather asymptotic. I've measured as low as 10% decay rate when the sanitizer level is in the upper single digits, so you can see that it can be a lot more than 24 hours if you don't get the dose right!
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great! i got my Ahh-some jar from Amazon, btw; although they may have alternate marketing channels now as well. BTW I would like to draw a distinction between the 'first fill shock' and a true purge -- the traditional "initial" or first-fill shock is often some amount of chlorine that will dissipate quickly enough to use the spa shortly after it is filled, and by this definition it really isn't a shock at all its (my opinion) more like over-sanitizing. It is typically promoted by spa stores and manufacturer's with the goal of getting you into your new spa asap while still providing some amount of protection against contaminants.
I find it much more sensible on a new spa to purge with Ahh-Some along with a 10-ish ppm chlorine level, and then drain. you can still neutralize the chlorine with peroxide if you don't want to dump that much chlorine onto whatever it is you drain your spa. the beauty of this approach is that (for the purge) you don't have to balance your water (unless it is seriously out of whack) or heat it -- just fill er up cold, add a stain and scale inhibitor if you want (for insurance), dose with Chlorine and Ahh-some (follow label directions), and then drain. Another BIG bonus in my opinion is that with a new spa you can leave your filters in their normal positions during the purge. they are new, after all -- you aren't cleaning them. But by leaving them in their normal positions you guarantee they benefit from the purge as well.
keep us posted with your progress. I will say it is very satisfying to see a spa dosed with ahh-some running perfectly clean.
450 Gal Spa - Bromine - MPS after use?
in Hot Tub Water Chemistry
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can you describe the "slight smell" versus "sanitizer smell"? how old is your water? you're not over-sanitizing-- in fact 3-4ppm Bromine is at the low end of the recommended 4-6ppm.