Newbie Questions: Hs Vista Owner

[Vista_Life]

Hey all,

I'm new to the hot tub world. I've had mine about 3 weeks now and things are going well thus far. And while things are looking good, I'd like to know the "why" part of what I'm doing and be certain that my water just doesn't look good, but is indeed clean and safe.

I have 2013 Hot Spring Vista

Ozone \ Nature 2

My dealer gave me starter chemicals and a procedure of hot tub water care. They told me they would give a "class" on how to care for my water. That turned out to be the installer spending 5 minutes with me and putting chemical treatment amounts on the side of the bottles with a marker. That was it. Now I'm on my own.

I want to know if I'm getting good advice from my dealer. Here is the procedure they recommend:

1 Tablespoon of Dichlor per week (I do this on Wednesday)

4oz. of Silk Balance per week (I do this on Sunday)

1 Teaspoon of MPS shock per bather per use - But no more than 3 teaspoons

I also test my PH and Alk. with test strips a few times a week.

So far, this procedure has kept things looking and feeling good. But I'm just going through the motions with no understanding of the why I do what I do. It all seems rather arbitrary when, to me, it should all be very intentional instead. I'm an Engineer and this is how my mind works.

I called the dealer one day with a load of questions about "why" I do things. I asked if I should be testing for MPS level. I asked if I should test for CYA. My dealers respsonse was "Look, I'm not a chemical engineer. I'm just telling you how to treat water they way I was taught." With a statement like that, I don't expect any additional help from my dealer. Terrible response, IMO. The dealer says with Nature 2 and Ozone, I don't need to do anything else and I shouldn't over complicate things.

So, a comment and a question:

• I've ordered the Taylor K2006 after reading this forum. Test strips suck and I want more information.
• Is the procedure above remotely close to the way I should be maintaining? Or should I be doing things in response to data and readings?

Thanks for the help! My head is spinning with the information available.

Dean

[chem geek]

Did the dealer give you the Nature² Spa Owner's Manual? You will see that with the low chlorine system you need to test your MPS level and maintain it. You can use test strips for that since it doesn't have to be that accurate. If you want to use your Taylor K-2006 for that purpose, then to distinguish between the MPS that registers mostly as CC vs. chlorine that mostly registers as FC, you need the Taylor K-2042 kit as a supplement.

The way the Nature² system works is that it adds silver ions to the spa water and these in combination with the monopersulfate (MPS) from the non-chlorine shock act as a disinfectant, but ONLY in hot water. The EPA has approved this system as a disinfectant, but only for spas since the disinfection rates drop off rapidly at lower temperatures (say, for pools). See this thread for more info on disinfection from silver+MPS.

As for how much MPS will be needed in the spa, the rough rule-of-thumb is that every person-hour of soaking in a hot (104ºF) spa with no ozonator needs roughly 3-1/2 teaspoons of Dichlor or 5 fluid ounces of 6% bleach (around 3-1/2 fluid ounces of 8.25% bleach) or 7 teaspoons of non-chlorine shock (43% MPS). With an ozonator, the needed amount is roughly half, though depends on the strength of the ozonator and its runtime.

The real rule, however, is to add whatever amount of MPS is needed after a soak so that you still have a residual for the start of your next soak. If you don't soak often, you may need to add more in between your soaks. The good news is that I do not believe ozone reacts with MPS so the MPS should last longer. Ozone does react with chlorine so with a chlorine-only system you have to add chlorine more frequently in between soaks. So an ozonator works well in a chlorine spa used every day or two, but is more maintenance in a spa that is used less frequently.

The Dichlor is added about once a week or so in the Nature² system to keep the water clear. It's initial shock helps clean away material on the cartridge and it's possible that the periodic Dichlor may help with that as well though I am not sure. I just know that if you don't use chlorine at all, the water tends to get dull/cloudy.

[Vista_Life]

Thanks for the info. I'll get some strips and start testing for MPS. I did read the Nature 2 manual but I guess I had put trust in my dealer to tell me what I needed to do. They made no mention of testing for MPS. That was one of the questions I asked them later. They made it sound like I didn't know what I was talking about. They said the strips we gave you at start up test for everything you need to test for. They are chlorine test strips.

Is the Taylor kit overkill for what I'm doing? I'd still like to have a more accurate way to measure PH and Alk since I can't tell anything on the strips.

I'll read the Silver\MPS thread.

Again, thanks for the help. The last thing I want is someone getting sick.

[chem geek]

The Taylor kit may be more than you need for Nature²/MPS, but if you decide to change and go with chlorine or if you run into any problems and need to shock the spa with chlorine then the kit will be useful. It's certainly a good kit for testing pH and much more accurate than strips for TA and strips don't even measure CH (they generally measure only Total Hardness).