Ahhsome Usage Tips

[apostlej2015]

Just flushed and drain this weekend. What a pain but worth it. I had my new spa for 1 month now and my god the stuff that came out...oh mygod upchuk!

<back now>

Put Ahhsome as directed with 10PPM bleach to shock. Run jets for 30 min. Get a terrycloth (easier but can scratch)/microfiber (preferred) towel you will be throwing away and wipe the ring of caked on crisco looking grease. It will be green-brown. Green is probably machine oil/grease from factory (it smells like equipment). Now here is the key point: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO JUST WIPE IT. It will be super sticky and caked on like grease in oven. Simply dip your rag in the spa and start wiping. Damp will easily remove this crap. Wring it out as you go. Ahhsome will bond the grease so it cannot be reintroduced into the water. If the gunk is thick, it will drop into the spa and lie on whatever surface it touches. Simply wipe it up with your nasty rag...the rag will encapsulate yuckies in cloth fibers!

Shock it to 10PPM again (bleach) as your will have very little FC and run it again for 60min and repeat wipe off with another rag. Let spa sit an hour or two.

Now shock water to 50PPM and run 1 hour. You will have very little gunk now to wipe off. Added 32oz H202, run jets 15min, and drain water. Once drained run all jets 10 seconds. Run blower/air 10seconds. Use shop VAC to remove all water from jets, then flush top jets with fresh water to move water out of lower jets. Suck this out too with shopVAC.

dry the spa with microfiber. Add 1/8 teaspoon Ahhsome in 32oz spray bottle and clean entire spa. Any residual gunk will wipe easily with this solution. Refill SPA making sure to push water into top jets to make air bubble priming easier on startup.

[minnespa]

My only concern with this is running a pump without water. Mine has a specific warning label on it to avoid doing so. Can anyone else comment on this?

[apostlej2015]

No Need to purge w/o water. Use a shopvac to suck the lines out when its drained. Then flush the upper jets with you hose nozzle (keep drain open).

[dlleno]

I rinse my wipe cloth in a separate solution of ahh-some. another suggestion is to prove that your filters are clean -- put them back into their install locations and run the jets with an ahh-some dosed water. wipe up the small amounts of material released, and rinse rag separately. when you get no more release then you know you have a clean spa.

[mrwrick]

I have a different question about Ahh=some use. Does it leave a chemical residue that would affect the readings? The water from my tap is pH neutral, but once in the spa it began to show off the scale high, purple. The TA is in normal range, so it is not really high TA that is causing the off-scale pH. I am relying on the TA measurement and do not want to start messing around adding acid to adjust the pH. Any advice?

[Ahhsomeguy]

The pH of Ahh-Some is around 8.3.  The amount you will use will certainly not affect the pH of the treated vessel.

[dlleno]

I found that Ahh-Some didn't affect any of my readings but I note that best practices dictate using an elevated CL level during the purge -- that by itself can throw off the drop test readings for pH;  the purple color is strong evidence of that.  Note that you're adding roughly a tablespoon of Ahh-Some to a few hundred gallons of water, so I can't imagine it having any measurable impact, by itself. 

One scenario I have not tested, however,  is the pH contribution of whatever issues ahh-some is helping you correct.  I have no idea what would happen to the balance numbers with the sudden release of contaminants  within the vessel itself,  because its not important .  The best practice to follow for an ahh-some purge is to bring the water balance into the ballpark,  and not to worry about it.  you'll be draining the spa anyway