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samwise801

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Everything posted by samwise801

  1. Sounds good, thanks. That’ll work for my June vacation, but what about winter time? I live in Utah and it’ll likely get cold enough to freeze the pipes over a two-week vacation in December/January. So the tub’s gonna have to stay on to prevent freezing; think the ozonator should be disconnected during that period too?
  2. Another thought I’ve had: would anyone recommend disconnecting my ozonator during the time away? My understanding is the ozone attacks free chlorine in the water, so it’s increasing my chlorine demand. Correct? If so, would it be beneficial to turn the thing off for those two weeks? If there’s no bather waste there’s nothing for the ozone to oxidize, after all. And while the increased CD isn’t a big deal when I’m regularly soaking and dosing with fresh chlorine, maybe it’s better to let the FC last longer w/o the ozone interference when I’m away. Thoughts?
  3. Whew! Lots of great information coming in here. Thanks to all for the contributions. I neglected to note previously that I’m using borates. I used the dichlor-then-bleach guides on this forum and ProTeam Gentle Spa to get to approx 50ppm borate levels. For what they’re worth borate test strips seem to confirm this level. A water change will occur before the next long-term trip, but I’ll stick with this same methodology (seems to be working well for me) - I’ll shoot for 50ppm borates, 30ppm CYA, and properly-balanced pH and TA levels (my tub seems to like to stay at 70-80 TA and 7.7 pH). I shock weekly with MPS and will do so again just before I leave town. New filter too, and then a nice dose of 12.5% liquid chlorine to get good but not too high levels. My first vacation will be just one week, so I’ll see how this regimen goes for that interval. If the water is cloudy when I come back I’ll have to re-evaluate, but if it’s not bad then in maybe two weeks without a floater / Serum / etc. isn’t so crazy. Oh, and I haven’t tried the CYA reducer stuff yet. The mention of CC accumulations scared me off, and the tub is due for a top-off soon anyway, so I’ll just have to go a little big on the chlorine until the level drops a bit.
  4. Awesome, thanks everyone for the input and help! I look forward to your experiments with Hot Tub Serum, dlleno. Trichlor and floaters just make me a little too nervous, though if that ends up being the best solution, awesome. I didn’t deep-clean the tub after my last drain - I just neglected to, oops! - but the drain-and-refill before that did cough up some sticky, blue-green stuff. So I suspect I had some biofilm that came out last time; hopefully it hasn’t reformed. I’ll certainly be deep-cleaning the tub every time going forward, and will time it so I do a drain-ahh some-refill just before my vacation so the water is as clean as possible. And yes, I monitor CYA and am working to keep it in the 30ish ppm sweet spot. But lately it’s crept up a little so I’m going to try this Bio-Active CYA-reducer stuff. I’ll trade you your findings on Hot Tub Serum for my findings with the CYA reducer. Cheers everyone!
  5. Awesome, thanks everyone for the responses. Yeah, I’ve always been apprehensive about using a floater and the tabs, which I understand will always be trichlor. Is that correct? I do suspect I can get a floater to stay put in my skimmer basket, so that might help (i.e. it won’t get stuck floating right next to one side). But I’m still apprehensive. Also, don’t those tabs usually only last 3-5 days? What happens after that?
  6. Greetings! I’m wondering what folks do with their water chemistry while they’re away from their tubs for weeks at a time. I’m eyeing some 1-3 week vacations in the future and am seeking suggestions. I’m currently on the dichlor-then-bleach method, and everything seems to be going well, generally. But if I neglect to add chlorine for more than 2-3 days or so I risk coming out to cloudy water, so certainly being away for a week or more will cause issues. My tub (2007 Hot Spot Mallorca) has a habit of throwing an error from time to time too, so especially for a winter vacation I’ll arrange to have someone stop by the house and make sure it’s still running to prevent freezing. But I’d like to not have to saddle that person with intensive water testing or monitoring if I can help it. The tub does have an ozonator that runs with the filter cycle, which is currently set to six hours per day (in two three-hour blocks) and is adjustable. Thoughts? Suggestions?
  7. It does, yes. Thank you, I appreciate your help!! Hats off to you sir
  8. Ah, okay. Why aren't you a fan of N2? Is there a negative to using it? (Aside from the cost of the silver cartridges and the associated MPS.) And yes, my mistake - I'm using Replenish, not Renew. We got started on Replenish when we first got the tub, and our local pool store told us "use the silver cartridge and then put this stuff in at the end of every soak, and you'll be fine." So I get the sense the store was just trying to simplify water maintenance for the newbies, by giving us fewer things to add. Now that I've switched to dichlor-then-bleach I'll be buying straight dichlor rather than the Replenish combined stuff once I work through my current stash of Replenish (1.5 bottles left). But you think I should ditch the MPS altogether? And the silver ions? Is it harmful to use them, or is it simply not/just barely helpful? Is there not some utility in having multiple sanitizers in the water, or do they conflict with each other in some way?
  9. Awesome, thank you for the detailed reply Waterbear. Since I made this post it seems like every time I test the pH with the Taylor kit I'm getting a value of 7.7ish, which is freaking me out 'cause a) the test strips' readings are moving over that same span and b) I'm used to my tub's pH needing adjustment regularly. But it sounds like I need to take a deep breath, trust the Taylor, and remember this is my first refill a) with the Dichlor-then-bleach method, b) with borates in the water, and c) without chasing the 120+ TA that was recommended by the tub's user manual. Yes, I let the same sample just sit and cool down for a while. It was not a new sample from a cooler tub. Two reasons: first, I do have a Nature2 silver ion cartridge in the water, mostly just for insurance / peace of mind in case I'm not perfectly diligent about the FC levels. I figure having Nature2/MPS in the water gives me that extra layer of sanitizer protection and mini-MPS shocks for cleanliness. (I also have an ozone generator, for similar reasons.) And second, the product I have on-hand (bought several bottles of it before the most recent dichlor-bleach refill) is Leisure Time's "Renew," which as I understand it is a combination of MPS and Dichlor. So I'm just using what I have already, really.
  10. Greetings all! I've had my first hot tub for about ten months now, and for this most recent re-fill I'm trying out the Dichlor-then-bleach method. (My last batch of water I only used Dichlor and started having water-cloudiness issues, which I'm attributing either to the way-too-high CYA level or to excessive TA, which I struggled to keep up in the tub manual's suggested 125-150 zone, as well as what became very, very high TDS levels.) So, for this most recent refill I've added Borates (should be right around 50ppm now) and used Dichlor for the first week or so. My test strips are...inconclusive on the CYA level but I also just got a Taylor K-2006 kit, which is telling me my CYA is just a touch higher than 30ppm. Otherwise my TA is currently 80-90ppm and CH is about 210-220. But my big question is this - Taylor K-2006's ph testing. I know, I know, test strips are notoriously inaccurate, and everyone is probably going to tell me to just trust the Taylor kit. But there seems to be a big difference in Taylor's results vs. all my test strips, of which I have like five different brands (for various reasons). Those strips all say my ph is quite low right now (after adding Dichlor and MPS yesterday, so it makes sense for the ph to be low because the MPS is acidic, correct?), in the range of 6.6-6.7. I use one of the Aqua Check readers with the TruTest strips, as well as strips from three other companies, and all the others that don't give me a digital reading also return a color hue that says ph is low. However, my Taylor test kit says my ph is 7.4. I ran the test twice on the same batch of water and viewed into clear, natural light from the north. 7.4 ph, unmistakable. The water then sat for a couple of hours and cooled a little. I just ran the test twice again and Taylor reported a little higher, somewhere between 7.5-7.6 ph. Aqua Check / TruTest strips returned ph values of 6.8-6.9 from the same sample. So cooling the water drove ph up a little, but the gap between the tests and the Taylor kit remains roughly the same. So, what's the deal here? What should I trust? Is there anything that might be causing my Taylor kit to read the ph high? Borates, MPS, the tub's temperature, etc.? Or something causing the strips to read low? Obviously if the difference were somewhat minimal I wouldn't mind much. But in this case these reading make the difference between adjusting the ph or not. So, any input here? What does everyone think?
  11. Greetings everyone! I have a 2007 Hot Spot Mallorca (bought it used, obvi) and generally it works well. Everything pumps strong and save for just a little bit of air leakage in one of the jets, it seems to function as it should. Except, every few days I come out to it and find the Entire Spa Inoperative error (four dashes) on the display. I can't pinpoint what triggers this, as it seems to happen somewhat regularly and doesn't seem to correlate with new or old water, fresh or not-so-fresh filters, etc. The strange thing is, I can always, always resolve it with two power cycles. The first time I power cycle the error will always come back after about 20 seconds or so, no matter what I do (leave the tub alone, turn on one pump, turn on both pumps, wait 2 seconds before turning the breaker back on, wait 60 seconds before turning the breaker back on, etc). But then if I power cycle the tub a second time she always stays on and works as-intended with no further errors. Anyone have any ideas as to what this might be? The manual says the heater high limit thermostat is the most likely culprit, so I replaced that with a new, genuine part. That hasn't seemed to make any difference in the frequency or other behavior of the error. The tub didn't do this when I first got it but picked up the habit last fall. So I suppose it might be correlated with cooler outdoor weather, as I only got the tub last April. (I also tend to keep the tub set a couple of degrees warmer in the cooler months, so there might be a correlation with that too.) So, anyone have any thoughts? What might be the cause here? Anything I'm concerned about / can do anything about?
  12. Great, thank you! I appreciate your help. Any tips for cutting that orange tube? It feels like pretty heavy-duty stuff. I'd love to make sure I cut it nice and straight so it sits all nice-like on both ends of the injector...
  13. Ah, yes, I suppose pictures would help huh. Should have thought of that initially... 😕 Here's my spa's equipment area: And some close-ups of what I believe / assume to be the key components when it comes to the ozonator: So, that white plug that's not currently in use must be for the ozonator. Correct? My bigger question is related to where do I splice in the ozonator's injector. I'm assuming it's that orange-ish tube I'm holding in my hand in the pic above. Is that correct? I can't find any other tubing that would seem to fit the bill. Everything else that's accessible in the compartment there is either for a pump or for a jet, or it's a drain tube or air tube. And my tub does have an outlet on the other side that the manual calls the outlet for optional ozone. I haven't traced that orange-ish tube over to that outlet (I'd have to dig out insulation to do that), but I'm assuming that's where it goes. It seems to match given where the orange tube is in my system and how it behaves when the jets/pumps are on. Is that true? Am I presuming correctly? So, cut that orange tube, fit the injector into it in-line, then run the line from the injector up to the ozonator. Plug the ozonator's electrical into that white plug (hopefully they match!), make a little Hartford loop in the ozonator's line to ensure water doesn't track back into the unit, and that's it?
  14. Greetings! I've got a 2007 Hot Spot Mallorca spa that I'm about to add an ozonator to. The spa describes itself as "ozonator-ready" but its instruction manual says nothing about how to install one. The Freshwater III I've found comes with all its original parts, but I can't be sure about its installation instructions. Something tells me I might be on my own for this one. Has anyone installed one of these units? Maybe even in the same/similar model/year spa? Got any help/advice you can offer before I embark on this project?
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