Swcg And Excessive Of Too Little Chlorine

[wishicould]

Hot tub by Hot springs SWCG. They just fixed it last year. Love the hot tub. I was having issues with not enough chlorine now the chlorine is produced is way too high. It's the largest one and before they replaced some tube I had to always run it at the highest levels. No I've lowered the settings on the size of the spa from 8 to 5 and usage level from 5 to 3 and the chlorine goes off the chart. I reset the whole spa. I also added a cup every day of peroxide to cut the chlorine levels. BTW I just refilled the spa after the levels made the salt test turn orange.
I am currently running the spa at size 5 and usage 1 and it's still too high.
What could be wrong that the chlorine levels keep going off the charts?

I called them multiple times and they just say lower the settings and If I go any lower than it doesn't produce enough chlorine.

I also had small black things all over the bottom of the hot tub that I couldn't figure out what they were. Ive cleaned them up on 2 occasions already.

Thanks.

[waterbear]

Please post your test results and how you are testing (strips, liquid reagents, meter, etc.) "Not enough", 'too high", and "off the charts" really doesn't tell us much of what is going on in your tub.

[wishicould]

I've used both the Taylor test kit and got dark orange for chlorine and also the Hot Springs test strips and the TBR and FCL levels for them are dark purple. It's supposed to be 3-5 and they read 20+. It's the Grandee spa and we use it 2x a week with 10 year old boys even and before we use it, every time we have to add 3 cups of hydrogen peroxide to get cl levels down to even use it. They immediately go back up.

Alk is 80, Ph 7.4 AND Hard is 50. The little black things look almost like small black paint chips or metal pieces. It's only 500 gallons.

I have restarted the hot tub from scratch and the salt levels are on the spa toward the low end. I've even started the hot tub up with only schocking it deminimis and within a week off the charts again.

BTW I've owned a hot tub before and never had this problem. They are normally very easy to maintain.

I'm very concerned this one is going to rot itself away with all the cl levels.

[waterbear]

which Taylor kit are you using. From the description (dark orange color) it sounds like one of their OTO test kits that only tests total chlorine, The kit we recommend is the K-2006 that uses the FAS-DPD method of chlorine testing. It is not a color matching test but a titration like the TA and CH tests. We really need to know free chlorine and combined chlorine Also, how high is your CYA level. Dark orange might only be 10-15 ppm and if the CYA is around 50 or so that is not really that high. High chlorine in the presence of CYA levels are not harmful but they can bleach swimsuits.

As far as chlorine readings being 3-5 ppm the required chlorine level is actually a function of the CYA (stabilizer) level in the water With no CYA present a FC of .5-2 ppm is sufficient (yes that is .5 or 1/2 ppm!) with stabilizer of 80 ppm then 10-12 ppm FC is not too high.

[wishicould]

The test strips showed Tbr 20+, FCL 10+, Alk 80, pH 7.4, Hard 50. It doesn't test for cyanuric acid as I thought since it was a covered hot tub we didn't need to worry about this.

They came and replaced the inside box (controller) under warranty so we'll see how it goes now.

The Taylor kit is an older one where I just replace the 2 chemicals annually.

Normally I get water tested by local pool place monthly and use my Taylor kit weekly for ph and cl levels and test strips for other stuff which I realize are not reliable but since I get it all tested monthly I'm just using them for insurance.

In my pool, the pH is always near impossible to maintain low. I get the level to 7.2 and within a week back to 7.8-8.0+ so we constantly are adding muriatic acid or dry acid to lower pH. I'm also having issues with upon opening this year seeing a concrete like substance in areas on the pool bottom. It looks like it's slowly dissolving. In winter water is dropped to half full to close so we don't maintain the ph but could that be what's causing the concrete like hard spots this year? We have very soft water in the area. My biggest chemical costs for the pool are dry acid or muriatic acid (note, I did find I had better luck with dry acid), calcium hardness, cyanuric acid, chlor brite/bleach, and salt. Every hard rain the pool needs to be drained (I wish I thought to have some overflow relief) and hardness, muriatic acid need to be added......