I recently moved into a new house with an in-ground spa of indeterminate age (maybe 800gallons?). :-D I'm paying a pool/spa-guy $65 a month to come weekly, but would like to take it on myself, but I have no idea where to even begin! I've started reading the "How do I use Chlorine in my Spa (or pool)?" thread, so that's a great start, but would like to rely on this board's expertise to get a feel for:
- I see switches for "blower" "heater" "light" - is there a glossary somewhere so I can get an idea of what exactly these do (the last two are more obvious), and more importantly, their roles in relation to each other?
- Obviously lacking even the most basic knowledge, what common devices (e.g. heater) should I look for, and gather specs for?
- The spa-guy has recommended re-plastering, at a cost of ~$1400 -- I'm not sure how to assess the condition of the spa surface, how do I know whether a re-plaster is really necessary?
- The spa-light was broken, got "fixed", and is now broken again... are there any common troubleshooting steps for this?
- There appears to be a timer for operation of the filter (set for 2hrs/day), but not the heater -- I've noticed that many of you have your heater on a timer. Our use of the spa would be extremely infrequent... maybe once a month... how should we adjust the maintenance and filter/heater timing to account for our rare usage?
- Does the board have a general opinion on spa salt system chlorine generators, like Saltron?