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Natural Spa By Clarity Water


Desiree

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Why do you want an alternative to bromine or chlorine? If you are reading the Natural Spa by Clarity Water website, then this page has some incorrect information. I'll focus mostly on the section entitled "WHAT ABOUT BACTERIA IN MY SPA?".

Chlorine is a very powerful chemical commonly used to sanitize water. Quite simply, Chlorine has the ability to oxidize and destroy most any element it comes in contact with. Anything not destroyed by the Chlorine is bleached clear, so as not to be seen. Its the fast, easy way to clean water.

This is simply not true. Chlorine does NOT oxidize and destroy most any element it comes in contact with. It is a SELECTIVE oxidizer. As seen in Reactions of chlorine with inorganic and organic compounds during water treatment -- Kinetics and mechanisms: A critical review, chlorine reactivity with organic compounds is limited to particular sites (mainly amines, reduced sulfur moieties or activated aromatic systems). In practice, chlorine reacts very quickly with ammonia (though it takes up to an hour or so in a spa to fully oxidize the resulting monochloramine to nitrogen gas), sulfur-containing amino acids (cysteine and methionine), primary amine amino acids (glycine, alanine, serine, valine), secondary amine amino acids (sarcosine, proline), peptides (only those with terminal amines), parts of some proteins (mostly sulfur-containing), methyl ketones or aldehydes and special cases such as citric acid. It does not, in general, react either at all or very quickly with triglycerides that are a typical component of vegetable oil and many greases nor does it oxidize fatty acids. It oxidizes some metals, mostly iron, and much more slowly with copper.

Once properly sanitized, your spa is free of any harmful bacteria. Now all you have to do is keep the water clean and clear and you have nothing to worry about.

This is true (well if "free" doesn't mean zero bacteria but such a low number as to not be harmful) at least until the sanitizer goes away, but then they proceed to say not to use any disinfectant chemical in the spa but to use their enzymes instead. You then indeed do have something to worry about.

As chlorine or bromine combine with minerals in your water, corrosive salts are formed. As the hot water of your spa opens up the pores of your skin these salts imbed themselves in your hair follicles. These corrosive chemicals in your skin cause a nasty rash, usually around the waist and inner thighs. They call it the bromine rash, and experienced Doctors see it quite often. A good, hot bath in clean water will actually help to ease the symptoms.

Chlorine or bromine do NOT combine with minerals in the water. If they combine or react with chemicals, it is with nitrogenous compounds such as ammonia and urea from your sweat and urine. There is some evidence that for some people the use of bromine tabs can irritate their skin as described in this paper. The salt level does increase but you change the water before the levels get high enough to increase corrosion rates too much.

The best way to keep bad bacteria out of your spa is to not introduce it in the first place.

Harmful bacteria, cysts, and virus come from the excrement of infected animals or infected people. Keep infected people and animals out of your water and you shouldnt have to worry about this source of contamination.

The above ignores the fact that you are constantly introducing fecal bacteria into the spa water and that there is bacteria in the environment that can proliferate and grow in the spa rather quickly due to the warm/hot water temperature and the plentiful amounts of organics.

Your spa creates a lot of turbulence. This physical agitation is very destructive to micro organisms, as it literally breaks them apart. Most disease causing bacteria will not survive for long in this environment.

This is utter B.S. as is evidenced by the many spas that aren't properly disinfected that readily develop bacterial biofilms. Circulation even with aeration jets is not sufficient to kill bacteria nor to prevent biofilm formation and the spa jets aren't running constantly anyway. Bacteria can double in population every 15-60 minutes. After 8 hours, one bacteria can turn into billions if there are sufficient nutrients though in practice it usually at least takes 12-24 hours for a spa to go south with enough runaway bacterial growth to be noticeable as cloudy water or as slimy biofilms.

Water softening agents increase the exposure of unwanted organisms to the aggressive water, speeding up the process. The Natural Spa contains natural water softening agents. No toxic chemicals needed here.

If they are referring to surfactants, then some can inhibit biofilm formation, but literal water softeners will not.

Heat and filtration are the best way to get rid of dangerous cysts. Cryptosporidium, the most common of these organisms, are virtually unaffected by chlorine or bromine. It takes 10 ppm of chlorine for more than two weeks to destroy Crypto. And bromine is less reactive than chlorine, so it takes even more, for a longer time.

This is true, but unlike bacteria and fungus, Crytpo is only introduced into the water from an infected person so is very unlikely in a residential spa.

Virus, anaerobic bacteria, (and cysts, to a degree), are also destroyed by direct contact with oxygen. There are high levels of oxygen in the water in your spa. The trick is to get the oxygen to bond to the problem causing organism. The right enzymes will help the oxygen to bond with the unwanted pathogens, greatly increasing the rate of destruction. Enzymes are an important part of the Natural Spa.

This is only partly true. Oxygen is an oxidizer but a slow one as is evidenced by the fact that your own body does not oxidize rapidly nor do other living organics such as wood, but they do oxidize if heated to burn. Enzymes lower the activation energy so allow for "chemical burning" or oxidation. However, enzymes are very selective in the chemical reactions that are affected. In fact, the above quote is making pathogen kill claims that are likely a violation of FIFRA laws so I will be reporting this to the EPA for appropriate action since the way it is worded is deceitful implying a level of safety by "greatly increasing the rate of destruction".

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa are very resistant to chlorine and bromine. People that swim in public (chlorinated) pools and do not shower before using their spa run the risk of introducing pseudomonas into their spa. These bacteria are not deadly, but can give you a nasty rash. Ozone with 1 ppm chlorine will get rid of them.

This is simply not true. A list of kill times for a variety of pathogens comparing chlorine, copper and silver ions is in this post where you can see that a low active chlorine level of only 0.1 ppm does a 3-log reduction (99.9% kill) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in 1.5 minutes. This comes from this paper showing a 90% kill with a CT of 0.05 so 0.1 ppm FC would be 0.05/0.1 = 0.5 minutes (a 99.9% kill takes 3 times longer). The paper notes that biofilms were much slower to kill with chlorine with a CT of over 300, but the key is killing the bacteria before they get a chance to form biofilms.

On this forum, I kept track of reports of hot tub itch/rash/lung and even one case of Legionella and they were mostly caused by using too little disinfectant or no disinfectant (i.e. "alternative" systems) or too much build up of CYA from Dichlor (too few reports to be definitive, however).

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  • 2 years later...

I purchased my spa a couple of months ago and decided to go with Clarity Water Products Natural Spa and Mineral Spa. Even though I followed directions perfectly my water always smells like a swamp. I have refilled the tub 3 TIMES in the 2 months I have had it because it smells like bacteria and mold. I shock it every day with their non chlorine shock. I finally have started to occasionally add a cup of bleach which causes a lot of foam because I think I am sitting in potentially dangerous water. I notice they have removed everything online that permits reviews of their products, such as Google and other places. I would like to know what experience others have had with their products. So far I am NOT impressed which makes me sad because I very much wanted a chemical free solution for my hot tub.

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  • 1 month later...

Bleach should not cause foaming so you are probably using "outdoor" or "splashless" or "HE" bleach that have thickeners in it that can cause foaming.  If you us bleach, it should be regular unscented bleach.  Note that you should not use bleach alone and must have some cyanuric acid (aka stabilizer or conditioner) in the water or else the active chlorine level will be too high.  You can use Dichlor initially to build up CYA, say for a week, and then switch to using bleach and only use Dichlor once a month to bring the CYA back up (it slowly gets oxidized by chlorine over time).  See the stickies about this at the top of this forum.

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