snaxmuppet

That is a great idea... how do I know precisely how much CYA is in any measure of dichlor? I am looking at Hot Tub Serum... just about to read your blog on it The reason I am using 2.2% bleach instead of 5%, which is normally easy to get here in the UK, is because of the horders and also many retailers of are closed right now. I am sure they will open up once the lock down is lifted so I'll then switch to using 5%. Thanks for your help with this

Thanks so much for your help and also for your background... it is always interesting to see where people are coming from so that we can put your comments and offers for help in context. I will look into borates. It does mention borates in my spa's start up instructions but it says it is optional so I haven't looked into it properly yet... perhaps now is a good time for me to do just that Yes, I used the spa for about a week using dichlor to make sure there was some CYA in the mix before switching to liquid chlorine. Using the bisulphate is lowing the TA slightly each time as you expected. I shall keep a good eye on that for sure. I test at least daily and when I use the spa I test after to gauge how much chlorine to add to add so TA is being regularly checked. Once again... thank you for all your help/comments. It is a little scary when first switching to liquid chlorine but the benefits seem well worth the effort from what I can tell. I'll keep plugging away and learning

Thanks for that explanation... so, just to be clear then, it is normal then to need to add pH reducer (sodium bisulphate) to keep the pH down and within range when using liquid chlorine?

Thanks... I used dichlor for nearly a week so there should be enough CYA. It does seem to push up the pH much more than dichlor. I am now having to add the occasional scoop of pH down to keep it within range. Is this normal when using bleach?

I have recently switched from using dichlor in my tub to bleach. I have tried to get some 5% bleach here in the UK but because of the lock down it isn't widely available. However, I can get some 2.2% bleach. It is thin bleach with no other additives (no perfume, no sufactants). Apart from having to add just over twice the amount to get the same FC level is there any other reasons why I shouldn't use this 2.2% thin bleach?

I got one of these recently and wanted to share my experiences and also see if there are others out there using one. We have had our spa now for about 7 months (Hotspring Limelight Flair). I have a home automation system (part self-built) and a solar PV generation system. We also have time-of-use electricity tariff which changes our electricity tariff every 30 mins depending on demand (Octopus Agile). When we first got the spa we started out following the dealer's recommended instructions using dip sticks in the normal way to test FC, TA pH etc but with my interest in automation I soon started looking at how I might integrate the spa into the home automation system. I could see scope for auto-monitoring some of these parameters and even possible automating the on/off cycles of the spa to avoid running the spa during the most expensive periods or making the most of our solar PV generation. I already have in place the following: A QNAP server/NAS that is on 24/7 Node-Red up and running on the server A MQTT broker on the server (Mosquitto) Vera Home Automation Server Hive Active Heating 9kWp Solar PV with solarEdge Inverter I won't go into my Home Automation system in any more detail than needed to explain what I have done with the spa. If anyone would like more info then please get in touch privately and I'd gladly tell more. So what have I done...? Heating I wanted a way to turn off the spa at the times of day that was most expensive. My electricity tariff changes it's price every 30 mins throughout the day to discourage electricity use at peak times. There is a REST API available where I can get the 30 min period price and so it is easy to use Node-Red to turn the spa on or off depending on the current electricity price. I also wanted to make sure that the spa was left on at times when the solar PV was generating surplus power so that the spa could use that power instead of exporting it to the grid. My solarEdge system also has a REST API where I can interrogate the inverter to determine whether I am importing or exporting and by how much. From this is was easy to use Node-Red to ensure that the spa was turned on when there was sufficient surplus solar power. The turning on/off of the spa is via a z-wave 40A switch which is connected to the Vera controller. When Node-Red determines that the spa should be turned on or off it sends a request to the Vera controller and that controls the z-wave switch. This all works pretty well. It means that when there is sufficient solar power to heat/run the spa it is always left on and it is also left on outside peak electricity periods (mostly 4pm - 7pm). The main issue is that the only control I have over the spa is turning the power on and off. I have no automated control of the heating temperature. The spa is designed to be on 24/7 and while it is powered down the circulation pump is not running. What I would really like is to have a way to automatically control the heater and that would allow me to turn off the heater at peak times but leave the circulation pump running. I am not sure if turning off the power to the spa in this way is likely to harm it. I did wonder whether the heater may overheat if power is cut while heating. It is only a 1600W element. Anyway, so far so good. I am going to look into installing a z-wave switch into the heating element circuit to allow me to control the heating element independently. Monitoring The vast majority of hot tub owners test the water balance and FC using test strips. They are not the best way and depending on the quality of the test strips are not particularly accurate. But for most people they give ballpark readings and that is often good enough. A better way to test the water is using a titration test kit such as the Taylor K-2006 which would give you pretty accurate values the kits are quite pricey and not easily available worldwide and they are a bit fiddly to use. I knew when I got the spa that I would soon get fed up with using the test strips and couldn't see myself having the patience to use the Taylor kit regularly (if I could get one here in the UK!) so I needed a more automated way to monitor at least the FC and pH on a daily basis. There are auto-chlorinators available for pools and for commercial spas but very little for normal, residential spas. Of what is available, it seemed to me that the simplest way to auto-measure was with a Blue Connect from Riiot Labs. This device floats in the spa or pool (works for both) and sends regular data of water condition to the cloud via SMS or you can use Bluetooth from your phone. An app on your phone gets and displays that data allowing you to monitor on your phone the condition of the spa water from anywhere. Clever. The Blue Connect measures temperature, pH and ORP or redox. Temperature and pH is good but it isn't ideal that it measures ORP. ORP is not a measurement of FC but once you have calibrated it against your pH and FC levels it can give a reasonable idea of FC and sanitisation capacity of the water. ORP is not easy or simple to use and I am not suggesting that you can just read an ORP level and determine the chlorine state of the water but it is a very useful indication once you get to know what ORP readings equate to what FC/pH/CYA levels. So now I can see the temp, pH and ORP condition of the water on the phone but I have not yet integrated it into the home automation system. There is a REST API for this but Riiot Labs have not published the details, at least I cannot find them, but I know it exists as there are others doing this kind of thing too. There are some IFTTT actions so it must exist! Once I have details of the API I will be able to use Node-Red to read the data from Riiot Labs and use that to notify me if any of the values go out of range. Conclusion So none of this is ideal. Turning the spa off when the electricity price goes high or when there is insufficient solar power probably is not the way to go with this long term. I need to put a z-wave switch into the heating element circuit so I can turn off the heating in isolation. Also, the Blue Connect is a significant step forward with automatically monitoring the water condition but there is more work to do on that too. I need to continue to get to know how the ORP reading equates to the FC but I already have a good feel for that. Also, I need to find details of the REST API from Riiot Labs so that I can get the data into my home automation system. But it is a good start

I am still having some doubts as to whether the salt system is working so I decided to drain down and start over with fresh water and give it another go. My water was 6 months old and so I thought it could be CYA lock and as I have only been using dichlor for sanitisation and shocking it could have a lot of CYA. The CYA on the test strips is useless as there is so little difference in colour between the different levels. This is the first refill since new and my first observation after draining, cleaning and refilling was how clean the new water looks and feels. Perhaps it was just old water. I raised TA to 80 with sodium bicarbonate, CH was already at 50 so no adjustment (its low because of the salt system), I shocked with 3 small scoops of dichlor taking it to over 10ppm (max reading on the strip) and I heated to 38°C. I then set pH to 7.6 with some pH down (sodium bisulphate). This process was really easy and the water is now sensibly balanced as far as I can tell. I added the recommended amount of salt (for the Flair it is 2kg) and set the salt system to 7. The salt system looked fine (in the green). We started to use the tub. 2 of us, almost every day for 30 mins. After each soak I dipped and raised FC back to over 5 with dichlor. This has gone on for about 5 days so I guess that there is sufficient CYA ( not measuring because of the strips mentioned above) so I have now switched to liquid chlorine. I haven't touched the salt system. It is still on 7. I am finding that I am having to add less and less chlorine after use to get back to 5 so perhaps the system is working after all... of a fashion! It is still under a week since the refill so I will give it a week or two longer before coming to my final conclusion. I haven't needed to shock yet after the refill (apart from the initial shock that is) but as I am now using liquid chlorine I will try to use MPS as that will help keep the pH down. If anyone has any comments/advice on all this please shout...

I got my first hot tub 4 weeks ago. It is a Hotspring Flair with the Freshwater Salt system. It was set up by my local Hotspring supplier and they gave me a rather quick intro to water management before they left and with that, and with reading loads on the internet (including here!) I thought I had a handle on it. But I do have a few questions which I am hoping you might be able to help with... The Freshwater Salt system is struggling to keep up with my use. It seems that no matter what setting I use (even boost) there is no chlorine at all shown on the strip in the morning. I then dose with the chlorine granules to bring it up to 3ppm but it never gets higher than that even on boost and then the following morning it is back down to near zero. Is the Freshwater Salt system faulty? The water was shocked when first filled to over 10 so I know it started clean and I have shocked to 10ppm 3 more times as well each weekend just to be sure! TA is 60-80 and pH is 7.4 so that is all good. When is the best time to add sanitiser? I have seen a mix of advice... morning, before use, after use etc... When is the best time to take a reading? I would like to get to the point where I can just set the Freshwater Salt system to a sensible setting to cope with my normal weekly use and then only add chlorine if it is used more than that or with more people... is that even possible if it is used daily for 2 people for 30 mins? At the moment, it is not showing any sign that it is producing chlorine at all tbh (0.5 on the test strip) although the water is still clear. Have to admit to being rather confused.

Mods - Please delete - posted into wrong section - Sorry

Mods - Please delete - posted into wrong section - Sorry