Another purge product shootout

[dlleno]

Greetings everyone,

It has been some time since I performed a purge experiment, so with my water approaching 6 months old it was time.  As is my custom, I have chronicled my results with photos on my photography website, so you can see the details there:

https://boisediesel.com/blog/2019/5/purge-shootout-seaklear-silk-balance-ahhsome

 

Here is a summary of  my findings:

* Since I tested the product back in 2016, Silk Balance "Clean Start"  has changed its formula from pure Borax granules to a liquid that includes a weak concentration of a "QUAT" (see the article for what that is) in addition to  Borax.  the result is a product that is approximately equivalent to SeaKlear and O-Yuk in terms of its contaminant release performance.  All three of these products have apparently gone the "QUAT" route.

* Ahhsome is profoundly superior to both SeaKlear and Clean Start.  If you google their  respective MSDS's you will find that ahh-some contains the higher "QUAT" concentration,  and in fact my research concludes that ahhsome contains more than one  unique "QUAT" molecule.  I can only assume that this is done to improved the product's effectiveness over the others, which is certainly the case.  I'm glad to see that the industry is waking up to the effectiveness of "QUATs" for the purpose of purging hot tubs, but so far no one has been able to come close to the effectiveness of Ahhsome's formula.  

* The company that produces Ahhsome also produces an interesting water maintenance product called  "Hot Tub Serum".  In the experiment noted above, this particular product gave me a surprisingly good benefit  that I did not expect:  it prevented biofilms from accumulating in my filter pleats, such that dropping my filters into the ahhsome-dosed vessel produced no measurable release.  this result is in contrast to my previous experiments ,where throwing the filters into the vessel produced what appeared to be a biofilm release, even when the filters were previously cleaned with a standard degreaser product.  I also found that the "Serum" product produced a measurable improvement in my sanitizer decay rate ,which I'll have to describe in more detail later.  

* I find that the dye present in both Clean Start (red) and SeaKlear (blue) enhances the visual impact of an otherwise weak performance.  in the experiments above I found strong evidence in support of this conclusion.  

* I remain astonished that products such as SeaKlear and Clean Start apparently do not expect to release any pathogens trapped by, for example, a chlorine-resistant layer of biofilm.  If these products were known to be effective enough to be used in this way, their label directions would include very clear instructions to use them along with elevated levels of chlorine.  The manufacturer of Ahhsome clearly has done this.    I wonder how long it will take for the industry to catch on to this, and when some of these lesser products will have new labels suggestion the use of chlorine!