Baqua To Bromide

[Artic Cub]

Ok. I have an Artic Spa. Used Baqua; Destroyed my Jets. Switched to their Bromide products; ie) Brillance.

Did the start up thing, etc. Took water to chemical supply dealer to be tested after 4 days; used 2x during. Results and trying to fix 4 hours later:

> Bromide was non existent: Used floater on low recommended setting: Changed to MAX; Bromide now in Line and strangely the non-chlorine is matching...I know bromide is same as chlorine essentially, but I didn't expect them to both register and ? it seems Brillance uses Dichlor something in their bromide, does this make sense or am I lost?

> Calcium was non existent: I was told to add 14 ounces!? Added 3 ounces of Calcium up: Calcium now in line. Why would they say add 14 ounces?! She said someone could get sick without it right.....and it says if too high, dump water and start over?

> Alkalinity HIGH; PH HIGH; I was told to add 30 ounces of PH decreaser?! I've added about 10 thus far; PH is perfect, but Alkalinity is still high!! What should I do?

[waterbear]

Bromine systems work by putting sodium bromide into the water. This is not your sanitizer. An oxidizer is also needed to convert the sodium bromide into hypobromous acid. Suitable oxidizers are chlorine, MPS, and ozone. When chlorine is used it (hypochlorous acid) is immediately converted into hypobromous acid if there is sodium bromide in the water. If there is not a reserve of sodium bromide in the water this does not happen. The test for bromine is the same as the test for chorine but they will register to different levels. MPS will also show up on the bromine test. To insure that you have a bromine system you have to add sodium bromide on filling. If you only use tablets it can take weeks for enough bromide to dissolve in the water.

[Artic Cub]

Yes, I have an ozonater in my tub, and when I started it up, they have a 2 ounce packet of quick Sanitizer that gets it up and running while waiting for Bromide tablets to kick in - guess the packet dissapeared to quickly?

What about all of these other large doses of chemicals they reccommend?

[waterbear]

If you would post a full set of test numbers it would help to see where your levels are. Don't use test strips, they just don't have the precision needed for water balance. For a bromine system I would recommend getting a Taylor K-2106 test kit.

BTW, Brilliance has two different bromine systems. One is your standard bromine tablet that uses chloirne as as oxidizer, the other uses MPS as the oxidizer. The second one has no advantage over the first other than the marketing hype of being 'chlorine free'.

As far as lowering TA, to do it accurately you will need a good test kit that can measure pH and TA. You need to drop the pH to 7.0 (lowering pH lowers the meaurable part of TA--carbonates and bicarbonates, the other part of TA is just carbonic acid which is carbon dioxide dissolved in water.--think seltzer! Your spa water is carbonated--that's what TA really is.) and then start aerating the water by turning on your air jets and bubblers. Your pH will start to rise because carbon dioxide is being outgassed--think shaking up a bottle of seltzer to make it go flat. By removing the carbon dixoide you are lowering the amount of carbonic acid so the pH rises and the carbonic acid cannot convert back to carbonates and bicarbonates. If you just raise the pH with chemicals you will convert the carbonic acid back into carbonates and bicarbonates and your TA will rise again when you test it! When the pH hits 7.6 check the TA again. Repeat this process until TA is where you want it. It might take a few to several times to do this and if your TA is very high you might not see much difference in the TA the first few times around. There is a faster way to do this but until you get the hang of testing your pH and TA I would recommend doing it this slower way. For bromine I would suggest between 100-120 ppm.

Calcium is not really a concern in an acrylic spa unless it is nonexistant or very high. High calcium can lead to scale deposits. Too low and you will get a lot of foaming (soft water foams more than hard water). If your calcium is around 125 ppm or higher I would not worry about it. If it is higher than about 300 ppm you should keep very close watch on your pH or you could get scale deposits if the pH climbs above 7.6 (I'm being conservative on the pH only because many people don't check it on a daily basis.)

[Artic Cub]

Last week water test:

TA 308

PH 8.05

CH ----

Iron ----

Copper ----

Total Dissolved Solids in Blank

Oxidizer N/A

Sanitizer .15

Metal and Scale N/a

1) As of this post, my test strip shows the below approx., and I will purchase the other test kit soon.

I was told to add 30 ounces PH down, which I did 10 and got me to around 7.0. TA looks to be around 120. I was told to add 16 ounces CH UP, which I did 3 ounces first and got me to around 300. I changed my Bromine Tabs from a low setting to opening the floater 100% as well as adding a second floater on lowest setting and it's about 3 and the Free Chlorine is about 1.8.

[waterbear]

Free chlorine test is not valid for bromine. You have no chlorine in the water. It's all converted into hypobromous acid when it reacts with the sodium bromide. You are only interested in total bromine. Free bromine is not an important measurement. Bromine levels will be 2 times the chlorine reading anyway so your 1.8 chlorine reading x 2 is 3.6 and since you are using strips this is within the accuracy of them and is essentiall the same as your 3 reading for bromine!