Recent content by BigOrangeSpa

So the exact thing that I felt hasn’t come back. However, I added aqua clarity this morning and a few hours later came back this. Is this just biofilm? I’m assuming it is and unrelated to the other stuff I was feeling.

I'll preface this again by saying that I am fairly new to hot tubs and water chemistry. I feel like I've learned a lot here, but I don't want to seem like an expert. :) If it were me, I'd probably do a mixture of soft and hard water. If you test the calcium hardness from both sources, you ought...

Yeah it’s not showed back up since lowering the pH. I have my muriatic acid waiting to pour on it. Maybe it’s scared to show back up! lol

Sounds good. I was just trying to illustrate that using TDS to make any sort of decisions is flying blind, not that I thought your calcium hardness was low. I bet it is really high. You mentioned in your original post that you were concerned about using soft water. Can you expand on why that is...

Looks like it got merged here. It's not conflicting definitions, really. It's not possible for anyone to give you advice based on just a TDS number. TDS is total dissolved solids. It goes up when things are dissolved in the water. It can't tell you if your water is hard. Your TDS could be 500...

Did you see my reply here? Starting up a hot tub You seem to be confusing TDS with hard water. They are not the same. You should be measuring calcium hardness directly and trying to move that down (if it's crazy high). I would suggest posting a full set of test results so that folks here can...

It should just be in the short term. Here's a good thread on it: Using MPS

Muriatic acid

What about using softened water makes pH hard to get into range? I would suggest posting some numbers for others to review. It could be that your TA or other parameters are what is making the pH hard to maintain. I would imagine that as long as you add calcium hardness increaser to your softened...

Well, it hasn't happened again since I posted (and also coincidentally lowered pH back down to 7.6). Is there any chance it actually was a bit of scale at 7.8/7.9? Seems irregular based on what I've seen posted here that it would happen at that pH for my other levels and with a negative CSI in...

How often do you use the tub? When are you running the tests? Is it after soaking? I've never had 1.5 CC, but I have seen 1 before. In those times, I raised my FC to SLAM level and left the cover off for a bit. I think leaving the cover off can help it off gas. That's worked for me and usually...

I had those exact same test strips that I ordered from Amazon when I first got my hot tub. I can't begin to tell you how off they were from my Taylor test kit. I mean like pH was reading low when it was high, FC was reading high when it was actually like 0.5. It was crazy how off they were. I...

I’ll try that. I would say it’s closer to hard and gritty than smooth and slimy/sticky.

Yep! I usually run the phenol red test a few times a week when I test and it always matches the meter. Haven’t ever seen the purple hue for 8.2 during this time. I have a bunch of the solution to calibrate the meter so I check its calibration often with that too.