I have a spa that is attached to and shares water with my pool. Unfortunately, it collects a ton of dirt, sand, and other debris at the bottom. Being only 6 feet in diameter with a seat leaving an ~3 ft diameter center, it's very difficult to keep clean. Does anyone have any suggestions on items that could help? Obviously, my automatic pool cleaner doesn't work well in there, and even the manual pool vacuum is too large to really do a good job. For manual stuff, I suppose I could just use the hose directly and either get in so I can reach, or duct-tape it to a pole, but I'd really like a more automated approach. Is there any kind of pressure-side automatic cleaner that is designed for spas? It seems that should be possible considering the power of the spa jets. It would have to be really small and climb very well so that it could get both the seat and floor.
Cleaning Attached Spa
- Thread starter wsamon
- Start date
How does your water normally flow? For example, in my pool w/ attached spa, during normal operation some water is returned via spa jets. Water leaves the spa by cascading over the spillway into my pool, basically acting like a giant skimmer. For dirt that reaches the bottom, I have to occasionally put the pool into "spa mode", whereby the bottom drains activate and suck a lot of the dirt off of the bottom. If I don't intentionally put it into spa mode, the bottom never gets clean.
Do you have options like this?
Do you have options like this?
Mine is essentially the same although the spillway is low enough that the spa and pool share water 24/7 (there's about 1/2" or so of water always over the spillway). If the spa jets are on a little, then water flows out of the spa a bit and into the pool. If they're totally off then water flows from the pool into the spa. I do have a spa drain, and I've found things to be essentially as you said re: turning the drain on and off and turning the spa jets on all the way. I typically leave the jets on at about 1/4 power so some water is always flowing into the pool during normal operation. Occasionally I'll turn the jets on full and/or the spa drain on full. However, that doesn't seem to do much with the stuff that's already on the bottom and so much dirt and debris gets blown into my pool that even with this, there is always a layer of dirt and leaves at the bottom of the spa. The only reason that isn't always the case for the pool is because I have The Pool Cleaner running 14 hours / day. To give you an idea, I have one of those Hayward large leaf canisters attached to my pool cleaner line and it is always completely full by the end of the week, often sooner.
Yeah, I've seen vacuums like that. I suppose I'll consider it, but I'm really looking for something automatic. I don't want to be manually vacuuming my spa every day or two. I already spend enough of my time adding chlorine and using the net every day, brushing the entire pool every other day, and using the corner brush a couple times / week. This is all for something that hardly even gets any use right now, and I'm sure it will take even more time & effort when we actually use the thing.