New spa help

[Sones]

Hi I have recently purchased and moved into a new house, great news however, the house has a spa pool which I have had some issues with.

The spa is a 5 seater with a capacity of 1200 litres (317 gallons) and has an eco-spa system attached to it (http://www.monarchpoolsystems.com/). The spa is covered when not in use with a hard cover and used by two people for 30min to an hour three to four times a week. Temperature is kept at 37.5 Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit).

The spa is (or was its empty right now for a reason I will shortly explain) a salt water bromine spa. I have used ‘standard pool slat’ and a sanitiser mix from the pool shop (510g/kg chlorine present as sodium dichloroisocyanurate and 150g/kg sodium bromide) these chemicals where left by the previous owner.

To set up the spa I originally emptied the spa cleaned the surface with mentholated spirits and dismantled the jets cleaning them in a water and mentholated spirits mix. I then filled the spa and balanced it to the following:

Salt: 3700-4300pp
Ph: 7.2-7.6
Ta: 80-120
Bromine: 2-6pp

For the first few weeks the levels stayed normal then I noticed the that bromine levels increased dramatically, despite removing some of the water (about half on two occasions) the levels have remained dramatically high.

I have read a lot of the information on this board and believe that I have a small understand of how the spa chemistry works however I am unsure of the effect of the eco-spa.

Any help with the high Bromine levels would be great, is the (510g/kg chlorine present as sodium dichloroisocyanurate and 150g/kg sodium bromide) the right chemical to be using? Should I shock/supershock with bleach? Or should I cut up the spa and bin it to forget the nightmare.

Cheers,

 

[PaulR]

The Monarch site has the EcoSpa manual online so I skimmed through that. It looks like the EcoSpa device is essentially an SWG intended for use in a bromine spa.

Have you read this thread:
http://www.troublefreepool.com/how-do-i-use-bromine-in-my-spa-or-pool-t102.html

My possibly incorrect understanding is that you establish some level of bromine in the spa, then use chlorine to make the bromine into a useful sanitizer. The idea here is you need less chlorine than if you don't have the bromine.

The chemical mix you described is a combination of dichlor (chlorine + stabiliser) and bromine. My guess is you use this to establish the initial bromine level on a new fill, add salt, and then let the EcoSpa generate enough chlorine to keep reactivating the bromine.

In this system, I think you would not need to keep adding the chemical once the initial level has been achieved. The EcoSpa is supposed to take care of that for you. But you do need to set the EcoSpa to an ORP level that works for you.

Are you adding anything to the spa, after you establish the initial bromine level? The Monarch manual does not say anything about that unless there is unusually heavy use, and then does not really specify what to do about it.
--paulr