I Have been a spa owner for 3 weeks now and about to do the 1st system flush prior to the first fill on my spa, a 2 yr old sundance maxxus. I have spend countless hours trying to understand a very basic setup to maintain my own spa and the more i read the more i realize theres more ways to mess up then there is to maintain it, and that of course all depends who you talk to next. The local sundance dealer guy told me after the flush cleaning, refill and add 3 cap fulls of ph down, 1/2 a cup of baking soda and two tablets of bromine in the tablet holder near the filter and i should be good to go, 580 gals worth of good times right? Then i read posts that say you should test and add this and that while in the middle of a party or BBQ or 45 min because so many people are using the spa. Did i miss something here? It is normal on a sunday BBQ that kids and adults can spend a whole day climbing in and out of a spa at a party and you mean to tell me this water and chemicals can not withstand a full day of use without having to be testing and adding chemicals to it during the party without someone getting sick or itchy, or am i just taking it to serious. Thank you for letting me vent! I am planning to use molson example 'HOW TO USE BROMINE IN MY SPA" to start off with because it looks as he knows whats going on in his explanation. The example i have seen for testing after system flushing Decontamination steps deals with putting chlorine and see if the 10 ppm drops, if it does not your ok, but what happens after your done cleaning and all that chlorine is still there, since i want to use bromine not chlorine what issues might i have or will I or do i have to dump it and do a third refill. Well thanks ahead for any input.

Welcome to TFP!

There are two articles you should read: Using Bromine in a Spa and Using Chlorine in a Spa. Using a product such as Spa System Flush for a new spa is essential to remove biofilms though superchlorinating at very high levels (around 100 ppm) can also be effective.

Spas are much lower in water volume than pools so the bather load is much higher than in a residential pool. At hot spa temperatures (104ºF) one sweats a lot and one's sweat and urine as well as dead skin and body oils creates a fairly high oxidizer demand. A rough rule-of-thumb is that every person-hour of soaking in a hot spa requires around 3-1/2 teaspoons of Dichlor or 5 fluid ounces of 6% bleach or 7 teaspoons of non-chlorine shock (43% MPS). This rule-of-thumb assumes you do not have an ozonator. With an ozonator, the amounts needed are roughly cut in half (usually). If you are using bromine, then the bromine tablets are just there to maintain a consistent sanitizer level when not soaking in the tub. You should create a bromide bank (by adding sodium bromide initially) and use an oxidizer such as Dichlor, bleach, or MPS to create more bromine to oxidize the bather waste after a soak.

Many people do not like to have higher sanitizer levels during their soak since the smell can be annoying to them so most people add the sanitizer/oxidizer after their soak in sufficient quantity such that they measure a residual by the next time they soak. If you are only soaking for an hour, then this is probably OK since any bacteria you shed won't reproduce very much and the high level of sanitizer added after the soak should kill anything at that point (assuming you are using enough). If you have a long party, however, then it would be better to add more oxidizer periodically to keep up with the bather load (or you could add a lot up-front, but people may not like it during their soak).

Richard