Brand New Hot Tub

[Faded Jeans]

Brand new tub, had it less than a week, been in it every night, along with friends, relatives, etc. It's fantastic.

Been testing the water every day, sometimes multiple times a day, just to get used to how things behave.

Using the LaMotte InstaTest 3 strips that came with the tub and adding ProTech Dy-Chlor II, which also came with the tub.

Alk has been holding a fairly steady 80, and pH has been around 7.2 or slightly higher, but FCl has vaired a lot, usually on the low to none side. I'm getting a bit of foam too when the jets are on high.

Is this because of all the usage? Does the thing eat the chlorine and need to be fed this much when we use it a lot?

Since it is brand new, should I be looking to use that Spa System Flush?

Thanks for the advice and the warm welcome!

 

[Faded Jeans]

The Pool School stuff was great, as well as Nitro's "How do I use Chlorine in my Spa (or pool)?" summary / aggregation.

I guess I will need to order a Taylor Complete FAS-DPD Pool Water Test Kit K-2006 if I want to do this properly.

Looks like products like "Gentle Spa" and "Spa System Flush" are recommended products that I need to learn more about.

Also looks like - in the short term - I should be testing frequently with the strips and adding the Dy-Chlor II that came with the tub, because using the tub means eating my FCl thingies. At least until I get the Taylor kit and learn a bit more.

So goes my head at the moment. Feel free to tap me into place!

 

[chem geek]

Brand new tub, had it less than a week, been in it every night, along with friends, relatives, etc. It's fantastic.

Been testing the water every day, sometimes multiple times a day, just to get used to how things behave.

Using the LaMotte InstaTest 3 strips that came with the tub and adding ProTech Dy-Chlor II, which also came with the tub.

Alk has been holding a fairly steady 80, and pH has been around 7.2 or slightly higher, but FCl has vaired a lot, usually on the low to none side. I'm getting a bit of foam too when the jets are on high.

Is this because of all the usage? Does the thing eat the chlorine and need to be fed this much when we use it a lot?

Since it is brand new, should I be looking to use that Spa System Flush?

Thanks for the advice and the warm welcome!

Spas are high bather-load because of the low water volume so they use up a lot of chlorine. Your Premium Leisure Go 742 is 310 gallons and does not appear to have an ozonator, is that correct? Every person-hour of soaking in a hot (104ºF) spa will need roughly 3-1/2 teaspoons of Dichlor or 5 fluid ounces of 6% bleach (3-1/2 fluid ounces of 8.25% bleach) or 7 teaspoons of non-chlorine shock (43% MPS) to oxidize the bather waste. Though you can get the Taylor K-2006 kit you describe (which you can also get at tftestkits.net for less), you could get the TFTestkits TF-100 which uses the same Taylor chemistry but is a better value since it gives you more volume of the reagents you use the most. See the Pool School article Test Kits Compared for more details.

You won't want to add more than around 33-44 ppm FC cumulative of Dichlor since that will give you 30-40 ppm Cyanuric Acid (CYA) that you want and you don't want that to get much higher. After that you will switch to using bleach, but will need to get your TA lower to 50 ppm and to add 50 ppm Borates since Dichlor is net acidic (when accounting for chlorine usage/consumption) while bleach is not. With chlorine, you will be dosing after every soak and if you do not soak every day or two then you will also need to dose in between soaks. Normal chlorine usage in between soaks is a drop of 25% of the FC over 24 hours if there is no ozonator.

Since the spa is brand new, your first water fill won't last as long, but since you've already gotten started you can stick with it and when the water becomes difficult to manage by staying cloudy or having a high chlorine demand you can then use SeaKlear Spa System Flush or Ahh-Some which will clean out your pipes of biofilm. Though you could use Gentle Spa to get boric acid, some have reported that it raises the pH substantially as it apparently has Borax in it and not just boric acid. You can get boric acid directly from DudaDiesel, The Chemistry Store or AAA Chemicals.

 

[Faded Jeans]

you could get the TFTestkits TF-100 which uses the same Taylor chemistry but is a better value since it gives you more volume of the reagents you use the most.

Thanks! I just ordered a TF-100 Test Kit and look forward to getting the hang of it before I cause any unwanted issues.

The helpful fellow who sold me the hot tub told me that it "made ozone", so perhaps I have a different package - I need to look into that and get the specifics. The brochure didn't actually say "Go 742" on it, I previously found that model number on the website you linked to. That looks exactly like my tub. The brochure I was handed was unbranded and listed "Ozone" in the feature list.

Anyway, thanks again! Looking forward to the education.

 

[chem geek]

If it has a functioning ozonator, then the amount of chlorine needed after a soak to handle bather load might be around half what I wrote, but the amount of chlorine loss in between soaks might be more like 50% over 24 hours instead of 25%. So this works well if you soak every day or two, but if you soak only on weekends it means you'll have to add chlorine frequently in between your soaks.