Ahh-some causing issues?

Jump to latest Follow Reply
W

watson524

0
Nov 13, 2014
182
Lake Ariel, PA
So we set out to changing the water today, not because it REALLY needed it since it was still clear and numbers were staying where they belonged, but it has been 6 months and we didn't want to get stuck having to do it in the middle of winter.

Anyway, I put in 4tsp of ahh-some and ran the jets. Foamed up with yellow stuff and left the expected ring around the edge. Drained the tub, wiped all that down and thought huh, maybe I'll fill and run the ahh-some again. Did that and we got thick white copious foam, more foam that we had the first time around. More foam than I've ever seen before. What in the heck caused that??? So we drained, wiped down again good, filled, no ahh-some this time, still some foaming but not as bad. Drained again, wiped the whole tub with vinegar and water (50/50 mix) and filled. Now on fresh fill, we have what are clearly soap bubbles forming in the middle. They have the rainbow sheen on them. I'm scooping them out but this has never happened before.

We have well water and the Ch by default is 90 - 100. Even last fill, we had no foam before we knocked the ch up to 120. At any rate, I took the Ch up to what should be 120 - 125 (will retest in the morning) and will see what happens but if this isn't sorting it out, I'm going to dump and refill again. This is crazy, we've never had this happen and the only thing I did differently was the second ahh-some.

I did put in enough bleach to get to 6ppm just so it wasn't sitting there heating overnite with no sanitzer. Once we get this sorted we'll do the dichlor then bleach method.

I don't even want to mess with the TA and pH until this nonsense is sorted out.

foam.jpg
 
I think you should give the folks at Ahh-Some a call about this. Even if you had overdosed, a complete drain/refill should dilute things enough to not have so much foaming. Let us know what they say.

For regular foaming (not what you are seeing), having the CH at around 120-150 ppm is usually enough to keep it in check unless one adds a lot of soap-like substances such as not thoroughly rinsing soap-washed swimsuits.

The primary way to remove soap from water is to scoop out the bubbles and soap film from the surface of the water. A scum-ball will help and in extreme cases a PIG mat. Soap isn't exactly oil, but it has an oil-like end so can be treated in a similar way. That's physical removal via adsorption. The calcium (or magnesium which also works) approach is different in that it precipitates the soap (that's what soap scum/rings are).
 
Thanks. I'm going out now to check on things as far as Ch level and any foaming. I put our scum bug in last nite before bed and also put in a brand new one (I had just ordered some twin packs) hoping maybe the two together would clear this up. I did a fair amount of scooping from what was pilling up in the middle but it wasn't cutting it down oddly. At least this last round had it just in the middle and no where near as dense as the picture but it still shouldn't be there.

After the second time, I actually used something similar to the Pig Mat. I had a roll of oil absorbing shop sheets for oil spills and such. They don't float per say but I skimmed them across the water and it definitely did pick up some of the stuff.

At any rate, I'll give them a ring on Monday and see what they say but I depending on what I see when I go out there today, I may dump again and fill later. I have no tolerance for water that isn't spot on.
 
I just got to another spot in the roll and it's stamped with the Pig symbol so I guess I have pig mats and didn't realize. Picture one is first thing this morning and I read the Ch as 110 (probably really 105) and I still had some foam. So I added more and it's now 120 and I skimmed some mats across the top and it looks like that all solved it. With the jets off, all bubbles disappear right away as they're the "fizz" type not the "soap" type. Geez.... Still going to give ahh-some a call tho and send them pictures. Wasted 1,000 gallons of water because of this nonsense.

Now to work on getting pH and TA where I need it (initial readings have TA at 90 and pH at 8.0+ - which is odd, normally my tap water doesn't read that high but we've been aerating a lot so I'm attributing it to that and will wait a bit to get a true baseline reading)

before final Ch adjustment
before.jpg

after final Ch adjustment and pig mat skimming
after.jpg
 
In all fairness to awesome, check the label to make sure you didn't use the "splashless" type of bleach first. It WOULD produce those kinds of results...

Re
I did put in enough bleach to get to 6ppm just so it wasn't sitting there heating overnite with no sanitzer. Once we get this sorted we'll do the dichlor then bleach method.
Click to expand...
 
Well this is the strangest thing I've seen. Tub has been sitting for 24 hours with only circ pump running. pH still above 8.0. I tested tap water and it's, as expected, at 7.4

The high pH even after no aeration and the bubbles that we had to knock down makes me think "soap" in there somewhere since soap is a base. Going to knock the pH down with the MA but you'd think after all the drain and refill things would be normal. We've never had fresh water be high on pH and the only difference is that it was a new jar of ahh-some. Will be interesting to see what they say when I call tomorrow.

===============

Update: Going back through the log book, last time it took 1.85oz of MA to get the TA from 90 to 50 and the pH where it needed to be (started at 7.4). This time, we started with a TA of 90 and pH of 8.0+ and 3oz of MA later (in 2 doses) pH is still 8.0+ and TA is down to 80. We're going with one more ounce and if that doesn't get us where we need to be I'm dumping it again and doing another fill. I don't know what the heck is going on but this is ridiculous.
 
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but the Ahh-some product you have is the "Hot Tubs and Jetted Baths" cleaner for spas, right? They make some other products for household washing machine cleaning and pool clarifier products.

It sounds to me like there's more Ahh-some still in the tub. The Ahh-some product is going to have a fairly high pH compared your tap water and, if you're using as much acid as you say and the pH is still not coming down, then I have to think that you have some Ahh-some still left to rinse out.

Just thinking out loud here, I hope the folks at Ahh-some help you out and throw you a coupon or refund for all your troubles...

Matt
 
Certainly not a dumb question, I was starting to wonder the same thing so I double checked the label this morning and it's definitely the right stuff. My original 2oz tub of ahh-some said 1tsp / 100 gallons and we have a 500 gallon tub. When I bought the new stuff through Amazon 6oz tub, I saw the label was slightly different and it didn't have the amount to use on it so I called and verified with the ahh-some guy that it was a legit product (bought through them on Amazon) and he told me the 1tsp / 100 gallons was fine and I was actually short on that so..... yikes.

After adding the other 1oz of MA (now up to 4 total) the TA is still at 80 and the pH is 8.0+ so I'm dumping and starting over. Tho I have the bubbles stopped, it has to be the ahh-some. There's nothing else that was added other than taking the CH from tap water of 90 up to 120.

So I'm draining, we'll wipe with 50/50 water/white vinegar again and will fill it later today when I get back. Bummer since I wanted to go in the tub tonite and it was up to temp but without these chemicals being right, I just want to get it sorted first.
 
Ok refill is done. Interestingly, my water meter that I put on the hose both yesterday and today shows 433 gallons and change where the book says it's 500 gallons to use for chemical adds. Odd, because I thought it would be greater than 500 gallons since sometimes the FC doesn't go up as high as it should based on the calculator but then I had another thread debating FC loss (which we're really going to keep an eye on now, we were 40% / day vs what we should be at) and possible degraded bleach etc.

Anyway, before we turned the breaker on I tested the water. pH = 7.4, TA = 90 and CH = 100 just like the tap water. So now we're going to let the jets run a cycle and see what happens. I expect CH and TA to stay the same and pH to go up because of the aeration. Then we'll try the MA again to get TA down and see what happens. If I turn this thing on and see foam, expect me to go ape poop!
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
watson524 said:
If I turn this thing on and see foam, expect me to go ape poop!
Click to expand...

I dunno, that makes me want to stop by and put few drops of dish soap in just to see the smoke pour out of your ears :p

Good luck.

Matt


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
 
LOL! It would be a good way to screw with me I suppose. Let's make sure none of my local friends get wind of that idea.

Aerated a cycle and no foam! pH went up to over 8.0 (entirely expected) and TA and CH was the same, as it should be. Put in 2oz of MA and aerated, the TA is 80 (should have dropped more but...) but the pH is 7.9 (higher than 7.8 but lower than 8.0 on the color scale) so we're just going to go little by little on the MA. In looking back, when we did this before and got to TA to 50, we were starting with a lower TA than normal tap water because we didn't do it right with the fill so we had a build up of acid just from use of dichlor and bleach.

At least we're finally seeing some movement like we're supposed to!

I'll update the thread once I call ahh-some and see what the heck they think happened. I can tell you one thing, I certainly will NOT be doing ahh-some twice in a row next time around.
 
:goodjob:

Maybe you just have such an Ahhh-some-ly clean hot tub that you only need 1/2 the normal dose!!

Look forward to hearing the report back from Ahh-Some.

Matt


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
 
Well, we really don't get a lot of "gunk" in it. I'm ultra picky about the numbers and sanitizer levels, we rinse before going in as much as we can, float a scum bug, rinse filters every week, change every 4 and generally it's only us in there so my theory is that since we didn't get a lot of the yellow scum line after the first one, I should have called it a day and maybe subsequently, it didn't have anything to eat up so the ahh-some just turned to mass amounts of foam. It sounds plausible to me over leftover pie and turkey.
 
Sounds about right to me. There's no indication from the MSDS what's in it (it's all listed as "proprietary formulation") but detergents in clean water will foam more readily than detergents in dirty water.

And a +1 to turkey-day leftovers ;)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
 
When I first did Ahh-some to my hot tub, I was a little overly generous with the teaspoonfulls. Foamed up like crazy. I've learned to use a measuring teaspoon and not a coffee teaspoon when adding.

Just adding my two cents :)

Yippee :flower:
 
Heard back from Jerry at Ahh-some. Here's my original email and his response

---------------------------------
That is partially correct. Depending on the softness/hardness of your water the Ahh-Some can foam more or less. Doing a second purge sounds like it was NOT necessary. In any event, you had some residual Ahh-Some and foam in the plumbing after the drain out. Upon refilling it was released into the tub. Next time you do a purge and drain, fill the tub, run the jets and scoop out any residual foaming. It seems like you have a very very clean hot tub at the moment.

Jerry Parker
President: Unique Solutions, Inc
860-896-0746 Fax 772-774-8857
Ahh-Some Water Cleanser, for pool, hut tub, jet bath, and washing machines
The Magic of Science in every container

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 11/30/15, Michele Craft <[email protected]> wrote:

Subject: Re: Ahh-Some Information
To: "Jerry Parker" <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, November 30, 2015, 12:21 PM

Hi Jerry,

Wanted to run something by you. We changed the water on our
500 gallon
hot tub this weekend. Before dumping the water, I put 4
level teaspoons
of ahh-some in the tub with the filters in the tub itself
and ran it.
Got the expected yellow'ish scum line and about 2" of foam.
Drained the
water all the way down, rinsing the tub down as it drained
and then
cleaned the tub with 50/50 vinegar and water. Used the shop
vac to clean
out the lines well. Refilled the tub and I thought I'd go
for super
clean so I added 3 level teaspoons of ahh-some and that's
where it all
went south.

We had so much foam (no yellow scum, just pure white, dense
foam -
picture attached) it was spilling over the sides. Drained
that, vacuumed
lines, wiped down tub and refilled. On refill, there was
still a lot of
foam, tho not as dense as last time. pH of the water was
extremely high
(tap is 7.4, tub was reading 8.0+ even before aeration).
Drained again,
rinsed well, vacuumed and filled again. This time, still had
some foam
but nothing too crazy. Our tap water has a calcium hardness
level of 90
so I typically add calcium to get it to 120. Did that here
and it helped
a bit but when I tried to get my alkalinity from tap water
of 90 down to
50 and bring the pH down, adding up to 6oz of muriatic acid
did nothing,
it just would not come down.

Dumped the water AGAIN, did the vacuum and wipe down and
finally this
time, it is normal.

I'm wondering if the second time I added the ahh-some, I
shouldn't have
and the first time took care of what it needed to. My theory
is that
while I was going for extra clean, since it cleaned it the
first time,
the second time the ahh-some had nothing to "eat up" so it
just turned
everything to foam/soap that was hard to break down and
required the
multiple fill/dumps.

Can you let me know what you think?

thanks!
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for posting that!! The information will be helpful to a lot of hot tub'ers. I knew Ahh-some was powerful but it sounds like one treatment is more than enough for a well-kept hot tub. Kudos to you on your super-clean hot tub!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006
 
:slidehalo:

Now to figure out why we use more FC than expected (40% / day vs what should be 25% - ClearRay UV is disconnected). That's another topic. Going to have to start testing after I put Bleach or Dichlor in vs just assuming it's raising it as much as it says it is.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply