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CYA is at 30ppm. (Though I haven't tested it in quite a while.) And my pool service place replaced the element again on their nickel, thankfully. The element looked like it was overheated, not corroded much, and my skimmer door has been sticking at the top, so they think that, or that combined...

Salt's at 1628 ppm. Borates at 31, CH 120. I know that titanium is recommended, but I just bought the spa three years ago, so the heater is whatever it came with stock and then replaced under warranty.

Checked the water just now and the salt cell definitely didn't need to be running. It was running when I came out to check this morning and the water just tested at 7.6 FC, 0-0.2 CC. pH 7.9, TA 50. FC is normally between 3 to 5 ppm with the Smarterspa. The pH and TA have been sitting at those...

We had a city-wide power outage for about an hour last night, and this morning when I went out to start changing the water for the spring, I noticed that the tub wasn't running. The smartspa chlorine generator was running, which is something it has been doing more frequently lately, but the spa...

My spa is pretty big at 10'x8', so in the winter the cover can get pretty unwieldy and ultimately bent the tubes of the lift at the bottom. The base components were basically undamaged however, so I built up a new tube frame out of mostly 1" EMT conduit, with a few 12" long 3/4" chunks to act as...

I'd say when the vinyl outer fabric layer is cracked and toast is when you buy a new one. If the foam is water logged, you can replace it with XPS rigid home insulation board for about $100. That stuff is closed cell, so will be less prone to absorbing water even without the plastic wrapping...

Keeping the pH in the 7s is exactly what I'm concerned with. While also not running out of TA. And yeah, PoolMath does all those calculations automatically and it says I need to keep my TA above 50. But if I do that, my pH climbs even when I'm not using the jets. And when I said chlorine is...

As I have discussed in a previous post, I suspect the accelerated heater (electric element heater) corrosion was due to my placement of the chlorine generator cell inside the return filter, so that the concentrated chlorine was funneled directly through the circ pump and heater, without diluting...

Thanks, that is helpful. So to sum up, I'm worrying too much. That's what I figured. I was aware that CYA buffered the effect of pH on chlorine, I know I have read that before in one form or another, I just forgot how effective it is at doing so. I do keep everything at the recommended levels...

So I've been looking at how my spa is running and considering the various pieces of advice I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, for example the Taylor test kit booklet and I have another potential reason for doing this. Bromine is acidic, like chlorine is, but as a sanitizer it is effective at...

That's a good point, I haven't noted a lot of build up. And now that I'm not adding calcium to the water, I expect I will have even less than that. One of the sensor electrodes gets a little green corrosion on it, but the plates have stayed pretty clean. The current edition of Controlomatic's...

Yeah, I know about that, and I've got a continuous circ pump, so it's doable, my only issue with that is that you're supposed to dunk the cell in vinegar for 20 minutes every two weeks and then brush off the sensor wires to keep scale from building up and if it's in the plumbing/cabinet it's...

@Mdragger88 I'm liking it a lot more lately. You may remember that at one point I was trying out placing the cell inside the hollow spa filter that's intended for a nature 2 mineral stick as a way to sanitize the pool while keeping the cell out of the way. In my head, this was essentially the...

This is fair. On the other hand, my local pool store feels no qualms about selling me baking soda at $12 per pound. So I feel a little justified to not just buy what they put on the shelf no questions asked. Half the stuff that they sell are just repackaged laundry chemicals. Anyway, I'm not...

Well, the brine that forms when Calcium Chloride absorbs water would probably feel kind of weird, as it would be super salty, but that doesn't mean that it's not the right stuff for raising the water hardness. Plain old regular Damp Rid is basically 98% Calcium Chloride with the rest being...

So I'm doing a new fill of the hot tub and going through all the steps being extra careful with my measurements to try to avoid what happened last time when I overshot the salt by 400ppm and almost ended up having to drain a bunch and try again. In the process of getting the water set up, I...

If you read the "Bromine in Your Spa" sticky, you would learn that you definitely can use them together. Bromine requires the use of an oxidizer to replenish the hydrobromous acid from the residual "bromide bank" in the water, and chlorine is often used to do this. The chlorine gets rapidly...

I suppose my objective would be to extend the life of the salt cell and realize the benefits of using bromine with it's greater pH range effectiveness and higher temperature stability. Bromine may be just as corrosive as chlorine, but if the salt cell is pushing an electrical potential into the...

After reading through the Bromine and You sticky, I was wondering about the utility of using a saltwater chlorine generator with bromine. Since bromine requires regular oxidization to maintain sanitizer levels, and chlorine provides that, would using bromine with a SWCG result in a system that...

Got the new fill done and balanced, but somehow I overshot my salinity target by 400ppm. I do not understand how 6.5 lbs of salt on the last fill was 1600ppm, and 6.5 lbs of salt this time was 2000ppm. I use a kitchen scale for my chems, accurate to the half oz. I added more fill water to take...

Yeah, that was the plan, to get a titanium assembly or at least the heating element ready to plug'n play on standby for when this latest heater needs replacing. I just dumped and refilled the last batch of water, so today the new chemical balance plan goes into action! Which basically amounts to...

On a related note, what's the deal with heater parts prices? If I search for 58083 balboa 5.5kw spa heater I get numbers all over the place. The basic direct replacement assembly, tube, collars, heater element, and sensors with the plug pigtails, vary from like $400 from a parts site that...

Fair enough. I wasn't getting that you considered the high chlorine concentration injected into the plumbing and the pH levels as the most significant contributors. Not having a pool, the comments about "don't put chlorine tablets in the 'skimmer'" have gone over my head until just now. The...

Would a sacrificial zinc anode potentially address this problem? Also, just a matter of nomenclature, but I've heard people refer to their spa heater as a heat exchanger, but my spa definitely just has a heater. A gas fired spa would have a heat exchanger, because it's transferring heat energy...