I just purchased a used 2013 HotSpring Vista (500 Gallon) model hot tub from a private part on craigslist. It's just less than two years old and seems practically brand new. I cleaned it up, balanced the water. I've used it four times and now am fearful to even get into the tub.
I see a lot of post speaking of itchy skin or red spots. I have neither of these problems. My skin feels like I a light sunburn all over and is pretty uncomfortable. There is NO REDNESS to indicate any inflammation, but a sense of warmth, and touching it somewhat hurts and sometimes a prickly feeling as if I rolled in some fiberglass. It's a feeling of radiation or chemical burn if I could describe it. It seems much more than just dry skin.
My set up: It has an ozonator, I installed a nature 2 cartridge and am using Clorox Pool & Spa Shock Xtra Blue. I initially cleaned the spa shell with Natural Chemistry Clean & Pertect and rinsed it out. I cleaned the 5 ceramic filters with Spa Guard Filter Cleaner and spinned them with a high pressure nozzle. I filled the tub and adjusted the hardness up with Leslie's Hardness Plus (had to use a lot since my hardness was 0) which I believe is Calcium Carbonate. The PH and TA was high and used Sodium Bisulfate to bring it down. I super oxidized it with 3 TBSP of the Clorox Xtra Blue and waited 24 hours to enter the water until the chlorine burned off. Since then, all I've done is put in about a TBSP of the Clorox Xtra Blue after each use. I also had to add a fair amount of Spa Guard Anti-Foam because of excessive foaming.
From my understanding I thought the point was that with the Nature 2 cartridge and ozonator, that I could simply just add a small dose of the Chlorine after every use with a weekly or biweekly shock. The idea being that once I enter the tub, there is nothing but clear clean water every time I go for a soak.
My previous spa, I used the baqua-spa set up and never experienced any problems. I've just heard so much negative publicity with it, that I decided to continue with the chemical routine the original owner used since he gave me all of his chemicals too. I've never had a problem with Chlorine in an public pools and am not sure what my problem is now.
My thoughts:
1) I noticed that the Clorox Xtra Blue has Dichlor-s-triazinetrione with Copper added to it. It seems as if the copper has been added as an additional benefit to help kill algae. Could the addition of copper be the potential catalyst? I see that they make another similar product called Clorox Pool & Shock Plus which doesn't have the copper. Would that be a better choice. Could it be a copper sensitivity?
2) I know the Nature2 cartridge has silver in it, but seems that other post might indicate there is copper in it too, or am I mistaken? Has anyone had a problem or sensitivity to Nature 2?
3) It doesn't seem that I can find anything on line speaking negatively of ozone. Has anyone on here heard of anyone having a sensitivity to Ozone causing skin irritability?
4) I found this thread and copied and pasted it below speaking of never letting your sanitizer go to 0. I thought that with my setup above I would be basically entering the tub with 0 chemicals in it. One of the hot tub vendors in my area said that's how they keep the tubs they wet test clean with no smell or chemicals. Could this be a potential problem of me being misinformed?
5) When I filled up the tub initially, some white granular stuff came out of the ozonator. It appeared to be some sort of undissolved pool chemicals. Is that even possible or a clue to something else?
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This post shows a table of all reported rash/itch problems, mostly reported on this forum, and the main pattern is having too low or no sanitizer -- either bromine or chlorine -- or longer-term usage after 1-1.5 months. With Dichlor, this is understandable due to the buildup of CYA. With bromine it is unclear of the cause in every case. Letting the sanitizer level get close to zero is an absolute no-no. It only takes from 15 minutes to an hour for most bacteria to double in population. That's up to an increase in population of over 4 billion in 8 hours if there were no limiting factors. So being lax for just one day is all it takes to have bacterial soup. This is one reason some people use Nature2 or other metal ion systems so that uncontrolled bacterial growth is kept in check even if you forget to add some sanitizer (metal ions kill more slowly than chlorine or bromine, but still fast enough to prevent uncontrolled bacterial growth in most cases). Use of an ozonator can help kill free-floating bacteria, but won't do anything for bacteria stuck to surfaces in biofilms. If you test your chlorine level (or bromine, if you go back to that) before you get in to soak, then if it's zero or near zero (< 0.5 ppm), do not go into the tub without adding some sanitizer first and then wait for a few minutes (depending on CYA level -- if CYA level is high, then wait 10 minutes or more), and retest to make sure the sanitizer is still there. Most people just do this initially and then know their "routine" and what their tub needs to maintain a sanitizer residual. Richard
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5) I see there are different types of Chlorine available. Is Dichloro-s-triazinetrione somehow different than the type used in public pools or spas? If so, could it react differently to my skin?
I would like to make the chlorine system work. I am not in any hurry to go back to the baqua spa.
Hopefully I've given enough information here and that one of you resident experts here might know something that could steer me in the right direction. I want to use my spa, not fear it! Thanks!
JIm
